Living Water Community (LWC) leader, Rhonda Maingot, and Trinity Communications Network producer (TCN), Lisa Bhajan, attended the First World Congress of Catholic TV held last October in Madrid, Spain. They were among 300 people from 100 countries who gathered to share expertise and ideas.

The congress was organised by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, creating a space for Catholic media practitioners to explore new technological advances and discuss how to take advantage of these without losing the intrinsic Catholic character of their programming.
Traditionally, newer Christian churches have dominated the local airwaves, with preachers such as Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn and Joyce Myers influencing the Christian formation of viewers. These groups tend to invest heavily in making their preachers and productions as media savvy as possible.

“(They) have universities teaching people how to act on TV – they spend millions on that,” said Maingot. “The Catholic Church spends relatively little in comparison. (Electronic media) hasn’t been our history,” she explained. “The Catholic Church has had 2000 years of preaching from the pulpit, new churches don’t have that history.”

Lisa Bhajan, centre, and other conference delegates. They’ve created a blog to continue to exchange ideas and information.

Living Water history! One of the conference delegates was Yakov, whose father, Misha, owned Dom Marie, a residence for missionaries in Moscow, Russia. Yakov was a child when Living Water’s mission came to Russia in the early 1990s to run Dom Marie and a soup kitchen. He recognised Rhonda right away! Now, Yakov owns a Catholic production house that focuses on telling the story of communism in Russia from a Catholic perspective.

Making it easier, perhaps, for those groups to morph into media-friendly movements. However, it’s important for Catholic TV to forge its own identity in the complex media scene, said Maingot, rather than imitating the existent Pentecostal culture of opulent sets, big hair or heavy makeup.

TCN presenters are a varied lot, ranging from teens and young adults to the unapologetically elderly, without the foundation creams.

“When Mother Teresa was on TV she was lined and old because that’s who she was!” declared Maingot.

“I don’t think Catholic viewers would like to see the same sets as the Pentecostal sets; they preach a gospel of success. We don’t preach that, so our sets and surroundings and people are different.

But, what we do has to be done professionally so when people switch on they want to stay!”

That’s where Bhajan comes in.

She attended the technology workshop at the congress, exploring new developments in the field. The others in the group workshop were from Latin American and Africa, Bhajan said, and could readily identify with her experience as a Catholic media practitioner in a developing country, with all the inherent limitations of funding, expertise and technology.

However, said Bhajan, although “we’re not as far ahead as the US or Europe, (the Dutch facilitator) made it very clear that this was new to them, as well, and that it’s coming in the not-so-far future – within the next five years – so it’s not to late for us to catch up!”
And so, TCN has already begun implementing changes, its youth programme, Footsteps, being the first in line for a facelift.

“The technology has to change from the kind of TV we’re used to,” said Bhajan, to multi-media, Internet-friendly productions that whet the appetite, drawing surfers to more in-depth programmes on one’s station or channel. That’s called “podcasting” for radio programmes, “webcasting” for TV.

“It will take a little change for us in the way we see things,” she said. “Fortunately, we have started to train young people who are already familiar with the IInternet and the type of programmes on it.”

A ministry of the Living Water Community, TCN started in 1992 as Trinity Television Network. In 2000, it was re-named Trinity Communications Network, having expanded into radio and Internet broadcasting.

TCN currently broadcasts Holy Mass daily on Inspirational Radio 7.30 AM and Internet radio, and produces TV programmes aired weekly or monthly on EWTN’s Channel 10, including the Holy Mass – its flagship programme – on Sundays. Most of these programmes are live, allowing call-in time for viewers and are often produced by various parish and Church groups.

That’s an important element in Catholic media, Maingot said, for “TCN is ‘owned’ by its audience and the Church.”

Although TCN is committed to changing with the times, she said, its fundamental call is an unchangeable one which it shares with the rest of the faithful.

“As members of the Church, we have such a tremendous part to play!” Maingot declared. “We can be part of taking the Gospel message to people every single day, every minute. Jesus said go out and proclaim the Gospel message to the whole world – that’s the mission given to every one of us by virtue of our baptism. Our viewers and listeners, in ‘owning’ TCN, are participating in this evangelisation process, praise God!”