Great Sermons on Tape

"Dwight L. Moody will preach on Sunday morning to a group of lumberjacks in upper Michigan. Martin Luther will preach on Sunday afternoon in a school-house in the mountains of Virginia. Charles Wesley will preach twice next Sunday, repeating the same service, in the state penitentiary in California. Dr. R.A. Torrey, the famous Presbyterian preacher, will speak next Sunday in the parlor of John Farmer, R.F.D. 6, Pea Creek, North Fork, Ozark County, Ark., at 11 a.m."

To make such a preaching calendar come true is the ambition of Donald Grey Barnhouse, the bustling pastor of Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church. It does not matter to him that these illustrious preachers are all dead or that some of their audiences may number no more than 15 people. The trick will be turned by a spool of plastic tape and a standard 110-volt light socket. To distribute what he calls Portable Church Services, Barnhouse has turned to the tape recorder.

Vividness & Timbre. The idea came to him more than three years ago, when he heard a home missionary say that there are 30,000 Protestant church buildings in the U.S. in which no regular services are conducted. At first Barnhouse could not believe it, but he found that the figure was close to right--and that thousands of other small communities have no church buildings whatever. The radio sermon was one answer (Barnhouse's own sermons are broadcast over 40 stations in 22 states). Then he thought of tape transcriptions, with organ music, hymns with the listeners joining in, prayers and a rousing good sermon written by one of the great preachers of the ages and delivered in a voice to do it justice.

Barnhouse outlined the idea to his congregation, which immediately voted him $5,000 to go to work. He set up a nonprofit corporation known as the Evangelical Foundation, and began experimenting with tape, playbacks and voices of the proper combination of vividness and ministerial timbre.*

So far, Barnhouse has spent $28,000 experimenting with the scheme, trying out his recordings on 75 audiences. Under an easy-credit plan, he intends to supply 33-lb. playback machines and hour-long recorded services to hospitals, ships and housing projects, as well as to churches Without regular pastors.

Devoted Laymen. Rugged (6 ft. 2 in., 225 lbs.) Donald Barnhouse, 56, carries his own full six-day schedule of preaching without benefit of tape recorder. Last week he spoke three times in Philadelphia, once each in New York City, Detroit, Akron, McKeesport, Pa., and Pittsburgh. A good executive, he has built up a staff of 20 full-time workers for his project, plus some part-time help. Last week he was beginning to ship out the first 500 playback machines.

Barnhouse is under no illusion that his canned services can or should "supplant the living voice or the tender heart of the pastor." Even where there is no pastor, he says, "there has to be a devoted layman . . . The whole secret of this thing is audience participation."

* Just before his death in January 1950, Dr. Walter Maier, famed radio preacher of the Lutheran Hour, enthusiastically agreed to edit a dozen of Martin Luther's sermons and record them for Portable Church Services as the voice of Luther. Barnhouse is still looking for another voice with the proper German undertones to fill the role.

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