What Should a Christian Do With the Secular Media?

Here's a half-lighthearted, half-serious look at Christians and the secular media by longtime journalist Dan Wooding. This is an excerpt--to read the entire article click here.

(ANS) -- I will never forget the day that my father, the Rev. Alf Wooding, took me on one side in our home in Birmingham, England, and told me that he needed to have a “chat” with me.

Thinking he was going to talk about the “birds and the bees” I settled down for what I thought would be a most embarrassing conversation. But I was in for quite a surprise when he said, “Son, I want to warn you about getting involved with the press. They are very wicked people and they drink, smoke and swear as well.”

My Dad, at the time, was the pastor of the Sparkbook Mission in this industrial city, and had previously been a pioneer SIM missionary in Nigeria, West Africa, where he met my mother, Anne, who was also from Liverpool. They were married in 1939 in the walled city of Kano and I came along in December, 1940, in a missionary hospital in the small Nigerian town of Vom located in Plateau state.

He told me that his big dream for me was to become a pastor like himself, so when I had expressed the desire to become a journalist, he became very concerned about what I was getting myself into.

Although it was a bit of a misquote, he pointed out a verse in Luke 19 verse 3 which read, says “And he [Zacchaeus] sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press…” (Geneva Study Bible).