Dear Friends of ZOLA LEVITT LIVE,
I must say at the moment I’m almost in shock. I predicted in a recent letter that 1981 would bring raises in airtime costs but I had vastly underestimated how much those raises would amount to. Our largest national satellite network, CBN, has requested an airtime change that seems far beyond our means. The new changes will begin in April and I frankly don’t see how we’re going to meet them.
In all fairness to CBN, they have run our show without charge at all for the past two years. While the new rates do come as a shock we really can’t complain. We just have to roll up our sleeves and either try to gather the funds or get off the network. I’m asking you for the increased donations here and now and if you send them we can continue on CBN. That part of things is entirely up to you. If we don’t get the funds we’ll have to drop off hopefully on a temporary basis and look for God’s leading elsewhere.
Should we have to quit CBN for a while a number of things could happen. It’s possible that the network will back off from these rates if the majority of shows cannot pay them. It’s also possible that they would consider the quality of our particular show, rated No. 1 in our home market during the last ratings period, and want to keep us. In that event we might be able to work some other kind of trade-off since we’re a young show and simply don’t have the money. Still again, it’s possible that God simply wants us on other stations now which we haven’t served before and we are looking into that. Should your donations fall short of the mark for CBN they will be used for broadcast stations and other networks throughout the country to keep ZOLA LEVITT LIVE telecasting to as many people as possible. Perhaps the whole situation will only amount to a summer break from CBN and God will have a way to get us back on when the fall season starts.
This had to happen some day. The good folks at CBN couldn’t supply satellite telecasting free of charge forever and a day of reckoning had to arrive. We ore a little surprised by the high rate and the short notice, to be frank, but we are willing to trust that God has a way to settle all this to His greater glory.
Now I know that many ministries tell you about many crises and the news that God’s work needs help comes as no real shock to you. But I think you’re also aware that we never kid you. When we’re ahead we don’t ask you for funds but when we’re behind we’re not ashamed to (Rom. 1:16). At Christmas, which wasn’t so awfully long ago, I advised you to buy gifts for your own families since we could “see ahead” and didn’t really need the money. Now it seems my foresight wasn’t so brilliant after all and we need your gifts immediately. The deadline for whether we wish to continue on CBN at the new rate is March 1. If it is your intention to help us with this important network I have to ask you to get your money to us by that date.
Candidly, I’m not too confident. It’s not that we have bad givers—quite the contrary, I think the viewers of ZOLA LEVITT LIVE are as faithful as the viewers of any show on Christian television in their giving. It’s just that the rate has been placed far above our means and our viewership. But again, if we’re not able to put your money to use with CBN we will immediately buy time with it on new stations and networks which have not seen our shows before. In this manner we will be spreading the Message far and wide, perhaps Less efficiently than on CBN satellite but nevertheless to an entirely new group of viewers.
Now please don’t leave us in a lurch at a time like this. We need to either continue on CBN on go to the new stations and networks. We can’t just cut off an enormous number of viewers and not replace them. Obviously if we continue to send out shows but they’re watched by only half as many people, this program will slowly die for want of contributions. We consider it ironic that a situation like this should come up right after we had those wonderful ratings in the winter. But “God’s ways are not our ways” and we realize that the battle is His.
I’m sorry to spend this whole letter on the subject of funds, which is something I really don’t like to do. But let’s face it, in the end it’s us, the Christian viewers, who get Christian television into such difficult positions. Before I had a show I can remember years of Christian television programs going on in my home without my even giving a thought to supporting any of them. I listened to the appeals of the various preachers with deaf ears and even with a certain amount of cynicism, simply not believing in their expressed needs. It’s possible that I was right in being sceptical in certain cases, but overall Christian television, and particularly CBN, has delivered a good product for many years without really asking for much. You don’t have to watch insulting commercials on violent programming on any of the other inanities the secular networks blast at the people day in and day out. On the other hand, you are asked for gifts to make up the difference. How well your gifts are dispensed—how faithfully and how much according to the will of God—is up to the individual minister. You are Christians and therefore are discerning; you one equipped to decide intelligently which ministries to support. But I think it’s never an option that we viewers choose to support none of the ministries. If our support is so lacking that the network has to pay our bills or saddle small ministries with enormous airtime charges, something is wrong somewhere.
I think it’s proper at a time when we ask you for money to restate how we use it. I have just looked over the accountant’s financial report of 1980 on this ministry and I’m up to date on how every donation was used. We built no buildings, bought no cars, founded no colleges and constructed no hospitals. The host received no new suits non jewelry (I take it back; a lady in Pittsburgh gave me a $29.00 digital watch with an alarm setting so I could take my heart pills on time. I gave my old watch, the one I got when I graduated high school, to my son). Every dollar of your money was used to make television and every minute of that television was used to teach Bible. That is the policy I promised you when I began this ministry and we have stuck to it. We have no property and no fund-raising gimmicks. We merely serve you with our teaching and ask you for your offerings. When the offerings are good enough we make new productions and extend ourselves to airtime on new stations. When they lag behind we go into reruns and conserve what we have. When airtime charges rise we come back to you, the owners of the show, with the bills. And it’s all that simple.
Now I don’t want anybody’s grocery money. Occasionally I have learned that the very poor give us their last money as if this ministry would sink out of sight if they didn’t do that. I think that people should give as God leads them to give, rich or poor, but personally I’d rather see the wealthy Christians support the expensive ministries and vice-versa. I’m embarrassed to tell a poor man that his dollar means very little to a national television outreach when it means the whole world to him. I’m equally embarrassed to tell a prosperous Christian that he’s really not supposed to partake of God’s provisions without bringing anything back to the Temple, on in plainer words, he ought to support the shows he watches. The New Testament principle of giving clearly delineates those with means from those without: you are to give “as God has prospered you.”
Well this has been a mighty windy fund-raising letter and probably not a very effective one. In some ways I can’t get my heart into a situation where the odds are so against us. On the other hand the Bible guides us to present our needs and that is what I’m doing. Please help us now as you never have before because I tell you truly that we have never had so great a need.
Your messenger,
