First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Stan Jeter

Christian TV journalist Stan Jeter talks about his passion for tellling stories of God at work around the world. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 30 Dec 2010
Audio Format:: other

Christian TV journalist Stan Jeter talks about his passion for tellling stories of God at work around the world.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

There's no better job in the world, as far as I'm concerned, because I get to see with my own eyes. Week after week, what God is doing in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, around the world. Welcome to First Person, a weekly program introducing you to people whose lives have been directed by God as they follow His calling. I'm Wayne Shepard, and this week we're going to meet a television journalist who has dedicated his life to telling stories of God at work around the world, more about our guest in a moment. Each of these weekly interviews can also be found online at firstpersoninterview.com, or if it's more convenient for you, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Follow the links at firstpersoninterview.com. Well, I recently was invited along with a few other broadcasting professionals to help with the conference in Romania, which brought together 150 radio and TV broadcasters from throughout the Balkan nations for training and encouragement. It was a great experience, not only for the training, but for the many friends I made, and in the future you'll meet some of them here on First Person. Today, I want you to meet one of the American broadcasters who also taught at the conference. Stan Jeter is a television journalist you may have seen his work on CBN and other outlets. How in Romania, Stan and I sat down to talk. Well, my calling is Christian news for television. Maybe 20 years ago, I was impressed by the lack of Christian news on Christian television. You could look all day, and you might see some ministry reports by ministries largely for the purpose of exposure and raising funds or exactly... Not exactly journalism, right? Not exactly. My question was, where are the Christians, where are the journalists that are like Luke in the New Testament, who basically in my book was a journalist. He documented the life of Christ in the book of Luke, the Gospel of Luke, but he also documented the early church, the first century church, the journeys of Paul, the persecution, the acts of charity of the church, the discussions that the church leaders had. The only head of video camera. So that stirred me. I'd done some news on radio years before, but journalism wasn't my first calling, but I was so stirred that I felt I had to do something about it. And through a series of steps the Lord led me through, we came up with a weekly program called Christian World News, which is now part of CBN News. And we have the joy, and there's no better job in the world, as far as I'm concerned, because I get to see with my own eyes, week after week, what God is doing in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, around the world. So let's talk about some of those stories and some of that history that you've covered for over a how long a period? Well, the program's been going for about 16 years, the stories are, you know, they're the amazing, and then they're the ordinary. Pictures stand out in my mind. One of the pictures, for example, a German evangelist by the name of Reinhard Bonke, preaching to a crowd of over a million people in Nigeria. And the camera pans this sea of faces, and pans, and pans, and pans, and it keeps panning and panning and panning, like it never is never going to end, and the crowd goes out to the horizon practically. That's an amazing, amazing sight that that many people would be interested in hearing the gospel message, and a terrific response, and it explains in part why the country of Nigeria has so many Christians. They've got the Muslim north, and there's a conflict zone, but then in the south they have so many, so many Christians. In fact, a friend of mine, I forget the name of the church, but a friend of mine actually who's a producer as well, got some footage for me of a church that's, he said it's a mile long. He actually, somebody got him a helicopter, and he took a camera up in the helicopter and went the whole length of the church over the church a mile long, and that's phenomenal. I mean, those are impressive sights, but then there are others that are not quite as large. Well, you've had a front row seat to history then, haven't you? In many aspects, yes. How many countries have you been in? Oh, I don't know, maybe 60? You know, others have traveled more. My role more recently has been more of a producer, and one of the unique things that we do is that is instead of going out so many times and getting the story on the field. I work with a footage, I work with the reporters, I work with the volunteer correspondents, and one of the exciting things that's happening these days is that so many people have in their hands, they have a high definition video camera, a little thing that they got as a consumer camera, but it's capable of taking footage that will work on a newscast if they know how to use it. Well, I'm holding an iPhone to keep track of the time that we're in this interview on, and it's a high definition video camera, too. Amazing. Isn't that something? It's in my pocket all the time. Could I be one of your correspondents? Absolutely. Let's do it. Let's do it. That's one of the things that motivates me now. I think every church anywhere in the world potentially has at least one correspondent, one news correspondent who can tell the story of what God is doing in his area. But they need some training, some guidance, not a lot of training, but some guidance of some guidance. Yeah. And what makes a good story, a balanced story, an objective story, and the cool thing about Christian news is you don't have to exaggerate. You don't have to elaborate, I mean the facts are clear, speak for themselves, and are compelling all by themselves. The fact of what God is doing. You can't out story God. No. Another highlight, looking back over the last number of years, the places you've been and stories that you've witnessed firsthand. Well, last year, I went down to, we have some friends in Costa Rica, and my wife developed a friendship with a lady who's, I think, a third grade teacher. But she has a burden for the people in the jungle area of Costa Rica, the area called Talamanca. And she goes down there periodically. She's a single mom and a teacher. She's the sole breadwinner of her little family. But she goes month after month into the jungle area to help a local pastor, to help get ministry started, to help churches take missions groups in there. So we went in with her and did a story of the ministry that she's doing. She's a catalyst. She is not a preacher, but she has a burden for these people, and she makes contacts with somebody who's got building supplies, contacts with somebody who does a children's ministry, and she brings them in and helps set them up so that they can minister to the indigenous people. And I had the fun of going down there with a camera, a one-man band, just filming this thing, getting some interviews with some of the people that are helping, and it was wonderful. So which is more fun? Being on the scene and filming and reporting or doing the producing and editing back at home? They're both fun. They're both fun. It's fun to be out there and to meet the people and to do the interviews and to get the footage. It's equally fun to look at the footage and put it together into a story that makes sense in about three or four minutes. Give us a little short course on what you would tell someone if you were equipping one of those journalists and one of those churches around the world. Sure. Number one is have an idea of the kind of story you want to get. What's actually going on here? Like the story I mentioned of the lady, this is a story about a schoolteacher who is making a difference in the jungle of Costa Rica. So I wanted to be sure to get an interview with her and get her to explain what she does. I wanted to get some shots of her in action, show the people she meets. I wanted to get an interview with the pastor that she helps out in the jungle area and that was very interesting and maybe a meeting that he's having with the indigenous people. And then a lot of footage along the way, color footage. So you can string together, you have enough footage to cover the story. The other thing is common mistakes to avoid. One is we tend to move the camera all the time. This video, it's action, so we pan it, left to right, we zoom it in, zoom it out. I say no. Just choose a shot and hold it steady on that shot. Get an establishing shot, show the whole scene and then go in and get some of the closer shots of the individuals, of the action that's going on. But the camera doesn't have to provide the action, the camera can be still and record the action. Just choose a good angle. The other thing is to watch your light. Sometimes we don't pay any attention to where the sun is and for good video, you have to be in a good position for the light. So that's another thing. And get good interviews. Ask good questions. Get close enough so that you can get, even if you just have the camera and microphone, get close enough so you get good audio because those are key elements in a story. You just made every home movie maker, a better home movie maker with those tips. I hope so. Yeah. And it serves journalists as well. Tell me about the organization that you have now that allows you to do this kind of thing. Well I work with CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network. I work in the news area and they've been very supportive of this whole project. So you've become like a mentor to many people, haven't you? I am allowed to travel as the trip to the Balkans this time. I'm allowed to travel and go to some communicators conferences as well in Latin America. I do that quite often and hold workshops and meet people and try to network them. So in fact here in the Balkans we were meeting with some TV people who all have an interest in journalism, in doing some kind of news, and are talking about networking and making a little news network for the Balkans, for Christian news. That is very exciting. So God's using you as a catalyst, I feel. I hope so. More of my interview with Stan Jeter coming up on First Person. Next time we're together you'll meet Mark Gregston, a man who has dedicated his life to helping troubled teens. I think I'm just a normal guy doing a normal thing of meeting with kids and that's it. I don't get inflated in any arena, but I do look back at my life and I go, you know, the older I get the more that I see that God has had a plan. A very personal conversation with Mark Gregston of parroting today's teens. Mark spends his life helping teens who find themselves in trouble as well as their parents. We'll learn the whole story next time on First Person. Well let's continue our conversation with Stan Jeter. While in Romania, as we sat and talked, I ask him about his love for journalism. Well, I have to say that we all have an interest in stories. We all have an interest in stories. You know, they're so basic to everything Christ taught with stories. And we're all fascinated by stories, whether they're a movie or a television drama or in this case news. And I love news because it's what's really happening, it's real, it's not made up, it's not fiction. And because we're tracking what God is doing in the world, is God, you know, is he pushing his church into areas of unreached people? Is he pushing his church to help victims of the AIDS pandemic? All of the things are disasters. You know, there's another hurricane sweeping through Haiti or somewhere. The church is there, you know, helping people in need. And that's a dramatic story, they're not always dramatic, but that's a dramatic story and it's fascinating to me and especially because it's real. But this had to come from somewhere. When did God plant that seed in your heart for this? That's a good question. I'm a missionary kid. I grew up in a number of different countries, I was born in Cuba. So I've been exposed to a lot. I remember my folks when we lived in North Africa, my dad, my mom and dad would invite other missionaries or visiting Christians in. So we had the Swedes and we had the French and we had other people from countries and they were always telling stories and it broadened our vision of the world and what's happening in the world. And we created a love for the church as well and God's people. So I've been exposed to it, I've had the, I worked with Luis Palau for a period of time. That's where we met many years ago. We met there in a famous crusade in Wembley. In London. In London? Yeah. That was great. Good old London town. And so traveling with Palau, I met a lot of people. In fact, that's where it kind of crystallized in my mind. We were, I was doing some reporting on what Palau was doing, you know, it was just part of my work, my ministry with a team. And in the process, I saw so many other stories. I would talk to some Salvation Army person who was doing this great thing in a neighborhood of London or somebody else doing an amazing ministry somewhere else. And those weren't within my job description, you know, and I, somebody needs to pick up on these stories. And that eventually, God used that, let's say, to put the burden on my heart for a Christian news something. It turned out to be a Christian news program. And really a little bit of a Christian news network because we have contacts all over the world now. Let's talk about that. That's interesting. How many people realize the networks that God has built among people? And as we are here in Romania, we're building yet more of those networks, aren't we? Absolutely. Through the National Religious Broadcasters, where we meet a lot of these people from different countries and through various travels, I've met a lot of folks that work with Christian television. There's New Zealand has Shine TV. It's a great operation. They do a great work there and they have a news and information program. And so we started talking and said, you know, you produce stories that could be interesting to us and we produce stories that could be interesting to you. Why don't we exchange stories? So we're doing that. And likewise with Hanu Haokai in Finland, and he has a ministry to Russia. And so for a while, he was doing a Russian Christian world news program and we were providing him with a good number of stories every week. And they're doing that here in Romania. Tudor Petan is broadcasting a Christian world news program every week. We supply him from our stories that we collect with maybe two thirds of what he puts on the air every week. He translates it and puts it on the air and he had some of his own stories. And then what we expect back from them is a report of two every once in a while from Romania. People say that most people listening right now didn't know about any of those locations or any of those networks, and yet hundreds of thousands of people are affected by those networks in this world. And they operate so efficiently and with such a heart for God and yet many times they don't have the resources that those of us in North America have. But somehow they get the job done and they're happy doing it. That's true. And it's very inspiring to see the faith they have. I'm blessed here in Romania to see the faith that my friend Tudor has with his television operation that covers the whole country. And then others, younger people, we've commented how young the crowd is here. And they don't have perhaps a lot of experience, but they've got some training and they're going for it. You've got to drive in a passion to serve Christ through media. Absolutely. It's very exciting to all of us. Yes. And doesn't it make you feel, I mean, God has called us to our specific ministries. But it gives you a perspective when you come to a place like we're at with this conference from students and professionals from all over the Balkan nations, you realize how small a part you play in the entire kingdom, even the media kingdom that God has. That's right. And there's territory to be conquered. True. And these folks are on the frontier. The Christian media is very well developed in the US in comparison. And so I think it's entirely appropriate that we travel overseas and we share our experience in whatever we can with these folks and give them a good boost. For both of us, we've been doing what we've been doing for quite a while. It isn't it rewarding to kind of feel like maybe you're giving something back. Now we get a lot from these young people. We get a lot from them, but isn't it kind of rewarding to give something back too? Absolutely. It's better to give than receive. That's biblical and it's true. And what a joy it is to see somebody's eyes light up and say, "I can do that." You know? In my case, you know, I just came out of a meeting with maybe 20 people from four or five countries and they're talking about networking news here in the Balkans and I could see some of them, you know, the eyes are just lighting up and they were saying, "Yeah, we can start. We can try. We can share." Well, we should say that this is the first time that this group has gotten together so that Romania is talking to Bulgaria and Bulgaria is talking to Serbia and Macedonia is in there somewhere in the Czech Republic and suddenly they know each other are there and they can begin to network with you. They don't need us, but we can be a catalyst. And we can, yeah, and an encouragement because they look to us and the fact that we're willing to come, they're blessed by that, you know, one of the comments I've picked up is how easy going and practical the instructors are, these loud Americans. But they love it and they're getting some good stuff out. Yeah. So you're encouraged by the young journalists who are out there who are coming up and starting to do the job. They're going to outdo us. You know, I trained a group in Costa Rica to do our news program for Latin America and already they're doing more than I could have done. I'm proud of them, I'm blessed. In fact, the main guy I trained was just a group of four. So the main guy I trained just got back from Chile where he went to interview one of the minors that was rescued, one of those 33 minors. They say 34 because one of them said at least 34 because Jesus was with them. Yeah. I thought about three men in the furnace, low IC4. Exactly. Exactly. So he went down and he got an exclusive interview with, I think his name is Hernandez, one of the minors. And now that minor, he just showed up this last festival that Luis Palau had. He was their guest in the festival and giving his testimony. And so we were a part of pushing that story out. You know, it's not just the story of how they rescued those minors, but it's the story of the faith of at least one of those minors and then how others came to faith. Because undoubtedly from the accounts we've heard, they came to faith. We get to capture those stories. How important is it to you that Christians, particularly in America, understand what God is doing in other places? We live in a world that's very connected. It's a small world. And we in the U.S. tend to be self-sufficient and kind of insular, you know, we don't get terribly interested in the rest of the world. But first of all, what happens in the rest of the world affects us more than we would like to admit. And secondly, God has given us so much. We have an obligation and a privilege, a privilege to share that with the rest of the world. So we should be looking out and finding opportunities not to teach them the American way or, you know, or to get them to imitate us. But whatever we have that could serve them, if we can go out in humility, I'd love to see Americans develop a reputation as the humble Americans instead of the loud and ugly Americans that we sometimes tend to be. But we have a lot to share and we should. We should. God is, if God has blessed us, it's not for us to use on ourselves. You know, that's the problem with what's called the prosperity gospel, that too often it's, you know, bless me so that I can enjoy it. But it should be, bless me so that I can bless others. And if that happens, then it's a wonderful thing. If God prospers me more than He's ever prospered me in the past, and I have the privilege of sharing more than I've ever shared in the past with ministries and people and individuals who are doing things for the Lord out there, fantastic. What a blessing. We are the most blessed. I really admire Stan, and you'll find more information about Stan Jeter and his work at our website, firstpersoninterview.com. If you're new to this program, this is a weekly conversation with people that I bump into as I work as a freelance radio host. I meet so many people who have such great stories of God's faithfulness and calling on their life, and I want you to meet them as well. All of our past interviews are archived on the website, firstpersoninterview.com, where you can listen to them anytime or subscribe automatically to the podcast, firstpersoninterview.com. Well, a great friend joins me next week. Mark Gregson of Heartlight Ministries in the radio program Parent in Today's Teens aimed at helping troubled teens and their parents. You'll hear of Mark's story next week. And now with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Join us next week for First Person. [music]