A small, Bucharest basement was once the scene for the Seventh-day Adventist Church's television production in Romania. Today, a national media center stands in this capital city with the task of producing radio and television programs for the nation. On
A small, Bucharest basement was once the scene for the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s television production in Romania. Today, a national media center stands in this capital city with the task of producing radio and television programs for the nation. On Nov. 24, the media center officially joined six other major church-owned media centers around the world.
“I come with joy to this place, and this center is a way of bringing light to the hearts of many people,” Romanian Senator Virginia Vedinas told the audience of nearly 100 Adventists and guests at the event. Vedina is an attorney and religious liberty scholar who also teaches at the University of Bucharest.
Just two weeks before the media center’s opening, Romanian officials granted the Adventist church a national broadcast license. “It could not have come at a more suitable time,” declared Adventist Pastor Teodor Hutanu, president of the church in Romania, under whose leadership the center was completed.
“It’s a thrilling day for me,” said Adrian Bocaneanu, an Adventist pastor and former president of the church in Romania, under whose vision the media center was developed. Bocaneanu and other Romanian Adventists pioneered a nightly television talk show on life and spiritual matters that was produced in a basement studio at the church headquarters.
Other government officials in attendance included Romanian parliamentarians Dan Liga and Ciuca Bogdan, Attila Gáspárik, vice chairman of the Romanian National Audio-Visual Council, and Stefan Ionita, who read a prepared statement from the State Secretariat for Romanian Religious Affairs. The statement mentioned that Adventist media would make a strong contribution to religious freedom and diversity under the Romanian constitution.
The facility covers an area of 2,500 square meters (approximately 25,000 square feet) and has a large television studio. It is expected the center will produce more than 20 weekly radio programs and two hours of national television programming each week, as well as programs for the Adventist-owned Hope Channel (Europe). Thirty-eight private radio stations are licensed to Adventists in Romania; the stations also broadcast programs for the Hungarian minority in Transylvania.
The new media center, which united radio and television production under one roof, “will add more to our efficiency, creativity and the output of more programs,” said Pastor Nelu Burcea, director of the center. The first transmissions from its own production and syndicated programs are to be broadcast in the second half of 2006.
“They deserve it,” added Peter Kunze, treasurer of the Adventist Church’s Euro-Africa region. “The Romanian church is made up of such good people. The dream has become a reality due to good management.”
Mark Finley, a general vice president of the Adventist world church, lauded both the visionary leadership of Romanian Adventists as well as the sacrificial giving of church members to make the center possible. Pastor Brad Thorp, director of the church’s Hope Channel, said the network was proud to have Romanian programming as part of its lineup. In a congratulatory statement, Rajmund Dabrowski, Adventist world church communication director, said through involvement in the media in Romania, and elsewhere, Seventh-day Adventists “build bridges of hope and embrace those looking for a better way of life, not giving into fear and despair, but being part of a solution.”
There are 71,000 baptized members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Romania, and an estimated 100,000 Romanian Adventists in other nations around the world.