Casting a New Kind of Net
CBN.com - The number of Americans with access to high-speed Internet connections is growing at an alarming rate. A recent Pew Internet and American Life study conducted in March finds that 68 million Americans have a broadband connection either at home or in the workplace. Conversely, 55 percent of all online users use a high speed Internet connection on a consistent basis.
That coupled with the fact that nearly 65 percent of all Internet users, broadband and dial-up, use the World Wide Web for faith related content, make it one of the most critical mission fields for the contemporary church in the 21st century.
But how will the message of Jesus Christ penetrate areas that had previously been difficult due to various governmental controls and regulations? Many critics point to traditional forms of Internet content such as the printed word. But in an information age that is consistently moving faster and faster, online users are looking for something more. That something is audio and video streaming.
Standing at the forefront of this new wave of technology is ChristianNetcast.com, a company located in one of the more unlikely spots on the global cyber map. While many tech based companies call Silicon Valley or a major metropolitan area home, ChristianNetcast.com has set up shop in Bangor, Maine, a fairly small community in northern Maine once known as the lumbering capital of the world at the turn of the last century.
Despite its remote location, this nearly four year old company has made it its mission to use the Internet to change the way we live our daily lives. Using the aforementioned audio/video streaming technology, ChristianNetcast.com provides radio stations, church ministries, and even pregnancy crisis centers the ability to spread their message globally to anywhere you can get an Internet connection.
"It really doesn't make sense that we could be coming from Bangor, Maine and to have the kind of success we have had," says David Palmer, NetCast.com's Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "All I can say it that it is God. God has supernaturally opened doors for us."
So much so that the company that began with just a few hundred dollars, now has more than 200 radio stations, churches, and ministries, including Gospel Music Association Stations of the Year KXOJ-FM (Tulsa, Oklahoma) and WCQR-FM (Johnson City, Tennessee) using their service. In fact, ChristianNetcast.com streamed more than 6.2 million hours of Christian content in March, more than 700 years worth if you put all the hours back to back.
ChristianNetcast.com's origins began in 1997 when Internet streaming was in its infancy. John Elliott, who had forged a highly successful radio announcing career during the 1980's and 1990's, moved back to Maine to begin his own radio station. At that time though, he felt that God was leading him to start some sort of Internet venture that would utilize his radio background. It was while attending Abundant Life Church in Bangor that he met Todd VanTasel, a computer store owner and consultant who had also recently moved back to Maine. Together, they hatched the idea for an Internet streaming company and began to put together a business plan. While they were in the process of fleshing out their idea, Palmer, who had a background in Internet sales and marketing, started attending their church. Realizing his skill-set fit nicely into what they were planning, Palmer was brought onboard shortly thereafter. Their first client was their own church as the trio began streaming its morning service in early 2000.
"You couldn't have three guys with more diverse personalities and backgrounds," says Palmer, who co-owns the company along with Elliott and VanTasel. "It is just kind of how God threw us together to make this successful as it has been. We have three very different personalities and God has taken them, blended them, and has turned it into a very successful company."
"Our business model from the very beginning has been Kingdom first," points out Elliott, who serves as Vice President of Programming Development. "We built the company around that philosophy and we have kept our profit margins as narrow as we possibly can in order to make it easy for churches, ministries, and Christian radio stations to get online and get the Word out globally. And God has honored that.
We are a tithing company," Elliott continued. "We tithe 10 percent of all our corporate profits back into ministry and missions work. We just give God all the glory. If we had tried to do this all by ourselves we would have fallen flat on our faces."
Based on the preceding statement it is obvious that ChristianNetcast.com sees itself as a ministry first and a company second. In fact, the company takes its name from a passage of scripture found in
where Peter and Andrew, who were fishermen, were casting their nets on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus approaches them and said, "Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.""I would like to be able to take credit for our name but I really think God is the master marketer," says Elliott. "I was praying about broadcasting on the Internet and I was saying 'God, you know it really isn't broadcasting because that is more of a terrestrial term.' The name netcasting came to mind because that is what Jesus told Peter and Andrew to do. It just seemed like the perfect name for what we were doing."
Through their clients have come some pretty amazing stories related to spreading the Gospel message with the help of ChristianNetcast.com. Among their favorites is the story of a pirate radio station in Cuba that takes a feed of a Tuesday night church service off a ChristianNetcast.com client web site and broadcasts it over a low power radio station that reaches the entire city of Havana. Another favorite involves a small Christian radio station in western Canada that uses their audio streaming service. Securing the broadcasting rights to a low level professional hockey team, the station webcasted several of the team's games over the Internet. It just so happened that several families of Russian and Yugoslavian players on the team were listening to the Internet broadcasts of the games as well as the Gospel programming that followed. Soon the station began receiving emails from those countries seeking information on the Bible and becoming a Christian.
How does the service work? For less than $200 dollars per month (churches less than $100) a radio station or ministry can be up and running the very same day they subscribe. This means that an organization can have streaming audio or video available to their listeners anywhere in the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Simply put, it is audio/video streaming on demand in its purest form.
A visit to the ChristianNetcast.com web site and subsequent preliminary registration online will set the process in motion. A company representative will then contact you and walk you through the set-up process. In most cases, a radio station or ministry can begin streaming that very day.
Elliott encourages churches and small ministries who don't have a great deal of experience in this area to not be daunted by the technology. He says, "You can utilize our service with a computer that might have been collecting dust in your closet that you thought really wasn't that good for anything else. You don't need a super computer to do it."
With the number of broadband users increasing on a daily basis, the demand for audio and video streaming will likely grow at a dizzying pace. With nearly two thirds of all American adult Internet users seeking faith related material online, ChristianNetcast.com wants to assist as many Christian radio stations and ministries as possible to fulfill their evangelical missions through the world wide web.
"What is interesting is that we are really on the very edge of this wave," says Elliott. "What is going to happen when everybody has access to high speed internet or broadband in their house? It will change user patterns. It (audio/video streaming) is just going to revolutionize the way people listen to or view programming. The possibilities for global evangelization are astounding."
About The Author
