READING, Pa. – Fifty years ago, this church became a broadcast studio. Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Reading began sharing its worship on television back in 1976.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to highlight everything that\u2019s been produced here over the last 50 years,\u201d said Matthew Mellen, Trinity\u2019s Director of Technology and Communication.<\/p>\n
Mellen gave us a tour of the church\u2019s media operation all the way back to where it began: a closet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 1976, this was the control room,\u201d Mellen said. \u201cThey would have their director, their switcher, a little bit of sound control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, the church\u2019s media ministry looks very different, but its purpose is the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrinity has always been at the forefront of technology,\u201d said Pastor Hans Becklin. \u201cWe were the first church in Reading, way back in 1751, to have an organ, which was high-tech at the time. Fast-forwarding into the 20th Century, we were the very first church in all of Pennsylvania to have its services on the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, that ministry has evolved from radio and television to Instagram and TikTok.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows that even though we are 275 years old, we are still a church that\u2019s concerned with meeting people where they are today,\u201d Becklin said. \u201cWe\u2019re not just a bunch of old fuddy-duddies meeting in an ancient building doing ancient rituals. We get incredible engagement across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Fifty years ago, this church became a broadcast studio. Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Reading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[41273,41274,41272,28,736,128,130,129,41271],"class_list":{"0":"post-81833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-hans-becklin","9":"tag-matthew-mellen","10":"tag-media-ministry","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-reading","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-trinity-lutheran-church"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}