WSOT - Sunnycrest Television Ministry

In 1982, information about the ACTS Christian Network began to be sent out by the Radio and Television Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Associate Pastor, David Trimble became aware of this new media ministry opportunity and began checking into its possibilities for Sunnycrest Baptist Church. ACTS stands for “American Christian Television System,” and the concept of ACTS was to provide an alternative television network made up of Christian and family programming that never asked for money. ACTS would seek to establish local ACTS boards made up of one or more churches who would work to obtain a channel on their local cable system. Then these local ACTS boards would work together to produce local community programming for the cause of Christ.

In March of 1983, Pastor Morrison and David Trimble went to an ACTS conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Pastor Morrison went mainly with the interest of locating and finding a Greyhound - type travel bus while in Atlanta, but the Lord had other plans (the church did purchase a travel bus at a later date for the Super Sixties ministry). As they attended the different sessions about ACTS and television ministry in general, God began to move upon their hearts with the potential of how many people could be reached for Jesus Christ 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After much prayer they came back from Atlanta totally convinced that God wanted Sunnycrest Baptist Church to get involved in the ACTS television ministry.

Pastor Morrison began sharing with the people the vision for reaching people for Christ through the television ministry opportunity. The congregation got excited about this new ministry opportunity. In May 1983, they took up a special offering to help start this ministry and over $20,000 was given. Then in June 1983 at a called business session, the church body officially voted to start into the television ministry and form a local ACTS board. Then they voted to move Associate Pastor Trimble out of his music responsibilities into the television responsibilities. In addition, they voted to call another full-time Minister of Music and a part-time Associate Pastor / senior adults. Needless to say, that was an exciting evening as our church stepped in faith to start new ministries focused on reaching the lost.

By August of 1983, video equipment was purchased for $65,000 and installed by September. TV Ministry volunteers were enlisted and they began training and practicing video taping our services. At exactly the right time, God brought in a young man from a church in Ft. Wayne (Black Hawk Baptist) who had served in their television ministry. He was a great help in our early days of television.

Also in August, a luncheon was set-up at Sunnycrest for area pastors to attend where Pastor Morrison shared the vision of the ACTS Network and enlisted their support and offered them time on the station once a cable channel was obtained. A meeting was set-up with Tom Wendt, general manager of Marion Cablevision, in order to present the ACTS Network to him. He was very impressed with what we had planned, but he said, “Men I haven’t any channels available that I can place you on.” When we asked what it would take to obtain a channel, he said we would have to prove that the people wanted to have the ACTS programs. Pastor Morrison asked if we could buy airtime on their local organization, channel 7. The answer was yes at $60/hour.

Immediately, Associate Pastor Trimble began a nine-month process of visiting area churches explaining the ACTS Network to area congregations and enlisting their support. Several weeks were spent at the county fair, the mall and grocery stores with a booth promoting the ACTS Network and raising support. Then time was spent visiting educators, key pastors, politicians and key business people getting written letters of support for ACTS. On Thursday,March 7, 1984 at 7:00 pm, the “Sunnycrest Baptist Hour” aired for the first time on Marion Cable channel 7, and thereafter every Thursday at 7:00 pm. A channel was still not available on the cable system. In August of 1984, another meeting was set up with Tom Wendt, Marion Cablevision Manager. Over 5000 forms requesting ACTS to be placed on the cable system and 50 letters from leaders were handed over to Mr. Wendt. He was amazed at the support, but he said again, “I don’t have a channel available, and it doesn’t look like I will for a very long time.” Pastor Morrison at that point told Mr. Wendt that he might as well get ready, because God had told us He would provide a channel to share the Gospel.

The church began to pray. Nothing seemed to happen until two weeks before Christmas in 1984 when Mr. Wendt called Associate Pastor Trimble and asked if Sunnycrest could be ready in two weeks to go on the air with the ACTS Network. Of course, the answer was yes! Praise the Lord! God answers prayer! On December 26, 1984, ACTS of Marion on Channel 3 was born, reaching into 15,000 homes with the Gospel.

Our philosophy of programming is to first and foremost provide the best doctrinally-sound Bible teaching and preaching programs available from across the country, as well as use Connecting Lives (Sunnycrest’s Worship Service) as the flagship program of our station. Secondly, we desire to provide family programming as an alternative to the network smut. Our motto is “Family Programming You Can Trust.”  Thirdly, we provide as much local programming as possible for two reasons – 1) we use the local programs to provide a service back to our community with a servant’s heart and love for our community and 2) the local programs work as a hook to get people to watch our station, get curious and then watch our worship service. Many people have been won to the Lord, as well as people joining our church through this ministry. If you were to take a survey of our church membership, more than 60% would say they were influenced by the television ministry to come to Sunnycrest. Lastly, our desire is to use the station to promote the different ministries of the church. For instance, we run an infomercial-type program to promote Upward Basketball and King’s Kids Summer Camp to increase sign-ups.

The television ministry has steadily grown over the past 16 years, and God has used it in a mighty way for His glory! The following is a timeline of growth events:

• 1985 - Began broadcasting Marion Giant Basketball
• 1986 - Began broadcasting High School Football & Baseball
• 1987 - Began broadcasting Christmas & James Dean Parade
• 1988 - Began taping local community events and speakers
• 1989 - Cable systems in the county began requesting our programming
• 1989 - Low Power Television license was applied for UHF25
• 1990 July - UHF25 license was granted
• 1990 August - Sunnycrest Media, Inc. was formed
• 1990 August - A venture in FAITH television stewardship started with a banquet (Over $168,000 was raised over the next 1½ years for the new low power station
• 1990 November 29 - WSCT-TV25 began broadcasting reaching a 50-mile radius
• 1991 - Began broadcasting city and county sports
• 1995 - Call letters changed to WSOT-TV25
• 1995 - Added more cable systems
• 1995 - TV production truck purchased
• 1998 May- Began process preparing for Digital Television changes
• 1998 November - Began process for building our own 500 foot tower
• 1999 January - Land donated for tower
• 1999 January - Church voted to build new tower and purchase new transmission equipment in order to move to UHF57
• 1999 July - Tower applications approved
• 1999 September - Zoning for tower approved
• 1999 September - Tower transmitter building built by church volunteers
• 1999 November - Tower began to be erected
• 2000 January 30 - transmitter officially came on the air - WSOT-TV57
• 2002 October - Major purchase of new video broadcast equipment from Tiltrac corp. will enable us to provide more reliable and "crisper" post production airing while taking WSOT one step closer to the 2009 " digital deadline."

Today our station is in a good position for the future in broadcasting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.We reach out over a 60-mile radius now with a potential of over 150,000 homes and we are on 15 cable systems with more possibilities of getting onto surrounding cities cable systems. Our biggest challenge in days ahead is aging cameras, VTR’s and monitors, but God has always provided for our needs and He will again!