Mark's Notebook


	I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking. - Albert Einstein

Reality TV finds God

ABC Australia

Monday 10 January 2005, 12:03 pm
Keywords: Christian Topics , News Articles

In the world of bug-eating, bungee-jumping reality television, here's a twist: Christian missionaries living a travelogue life while viewers watch their aches, pains and trials trying to spread the Gospel.

The show, Travel the Road, is now in its third season, reaching 250,000 to 300,000 US households per show on cable's Trinity Broadcasting Network, which bills itself as the world's largest Christian network.

Tim Scott, 27, and 30-year-old William Decker are the two missionaries, doing their own filming to record an odyssey that has put them in dozens of countries from Tibet to Rwanda.

The pair has been cursed at and threatened with death in Ethiopia, betrayed in India by a thieving convert, attacked by leeches in Laos and bone-rattled for hours on end in the cargo holds of third-world transports.

The pair has just finished filming their missionary work in Rwanda and Congo and at last report was headed for a return trip to Darfur in Sudan where a 22-month rebellion has killed 70,000 people and driven 1.6 million from their homes.

They were also recently in Afghanistan and plan to visit Somalia which along with the previously mentioned African stops will comprise a package of new shows airing next autumn, Scott said in an interview.

At times the pair seems to stumble into situations, looking for converts or even an interpreter to help carry their message. At one point they and some colleagues got flat-out lost.

But the resulting travelogue overlay and the human focus on the two travellers, along with highly professional editing and musical backgrounds, moves the show beyond religion alone.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1277942.htm