LA Story – The Line Of Fire

Sitting across from a network TV reporter who is doing a negative story on the church is about my least favorite thing in life. He or she is armed with questions carefully crafted to entrap me, magnifying every word and facial expression with video cameras. Almost every interview is the same, full of the “when did you stop beating your wife?”-type questions. An hour-long interview is normally edited down to a couple of minutes of the most damaging-sounding Religious freedom is a great blessing, but most of us who have it take it for granted. comments they can piece together – often out of context. After one interview for a national program, I asked the producer why he focused on the comments of a negative few rather than on the many marriages that have been rescued by the church, the almost non-existent divorce rate, our many projects to help the poor, or our racial diversity. His answer still rings in my ears: “Churches are supposed to do good things and that is not news that people will watch!”