The year was 1954, and Alvin Rueter was settled in at his second parish in California. But when the call came to form a new Lutheran congregation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Alvin was ready for the adventure. Together, Alvin and his wife, Beulah, developed strategies to publicize and grow this fledgling parish. This was a time of new communications technology, but they passed up the allure of television in favor of an electronic medium that was better established and steeped in tradition— radio.
Within a year, Alvin and Beulah began a radio program of sacred music on an FM station.
“To survive, radio had to be transformed, and many stations chose to become a music box with a friendly voice,” recalls Alvin. “In going house to house inviting people to our church, I ran across the head of the department of radio and TV at the University of Tulsa. I told him I’d decided to become a disc jockey with sacred music, and he suggested I try out the idea on the university’s station.”