In 1979, an article was published that said fifty percent of people living in America receive their religious teaching from television, while only ten percent receive theirs by attending worship on Sunday. Mack Lyon was the preacher at the church of Christ in Wewoka, Oklahoma. On Thursdays The Wewoka Daily Times reported church attendance for all churches on the previous Sunday. When Thursday’s paper came out the total reported church attendance was about ten percent of the population of the town. The Church of Christ had the largest attendance, but it was less than one percent.
Mack envisioned a local television program that would reach the estimate fifty percent. With no financial support, he bought air-time on the nearest TV station, KTEN, Channel 10 in Ada, Oklahoma. Mack asked the elders at Wewoka for their financial support. The generous church increased their offering to cover the $600 per week for air-time and production costs.
Mack didn’t want to spend precious air-time fleecing the audiences for money, which was common in religious programming in those days. He strongly believed the churches of Christ should—and would finance the work of preaching the gospel to the world.
That was the beginning of a worldwide television and radio ministry. The first Sunday in September 1980, In Search of the Lord’s Way began.
Requests for materials began to increase. It soon became necessary to move Search to a larger church for a larger staff, more oversight and finances. With the encouragement of Richard Jones, preacher at the Edmond Church of Christ, Edmond was chosen. The program has remained under the oversight of the Edmond elders to this day.
The program continued to grow. It began to be used by missionaries abroad; in Mexico, Belize, India, South Korea, Africa and other nations.
When it became necessary in 2010, after thirty years as the speaker on Search, Mack had to retire. Phil Sanders was chosen to continue the work as the full-time speaker.
In Search of the Lord’s Way now appears on all 210 television markets in the United States. Search appears on nearly 150 local cable stations and on 50 radio stations.
The Search program is aired over the Pacific Broadcast Radio, a shortwave and broadcast station four times daily. This program goes out to more than 30,000 islands in the Pacific Rim. Pacific Broadcast Radio goes out to Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Zealand, Samoa, American Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna.
Search offers materials for free to those who request booklets and audio CDs. Because Search is a nonprofit ministry, it relies on more than forty volunteers to help mail thousands of requests each month.
Search’s ministry remains dedicated to its five-fold purpose: to take the Way of salvation to thousands who live right among us; to light a candle in the darkness of immorality; to resist the materialism and humanism that is choking the faith and spirituality out of so many people; to restore credibility to the religion of Christ that has been diminished in many religious programs; to tell your friends that the church of Christ is not dead, but that it is very much alive and that we care.
God bless you and we love you from all of us at In Search of the Lord's Way.