5 @ 30: Dr. Bob Roberts on Making the “Sixty Second Sermons”
This week News Five is celebrating thirty years on the air, beginning with our first broadcast on December ninth, 1991. As part of our special series “News Five Remembers” tonight we look at Dr. Bob Roberts and his “Sixty Second Sermons.” These have been a part of our news package, airing just before or during the news, for decades. The short format, with its compact stories offering wisdom and inspiration, are just as relevant today with people’s hectic lives, as they were when he first joined the News Five family. We spoke with Dr. Bob a few days ago, from his home in Texas.
Dr. Bob Roberts
, host of “Sixty Second Sermon”
“One day when we were walking passed the studio with a friend of mine and I said you know, let’s just go in and talk to them and see what the possibilities are. And Stewart Krohn was there. I said, “I have a good program.” He said, “I know, but it’s too western.” And I said, “That is why we are talking to you. We want to try to make it Belizean.” A lot of people don’t realize the purpose of those backgrounds. I’ve been all over the country, preaching from Punta Gorda to Corozal, and the back country. One of my purposes is not only to share the Gospel, but I love Belize. I been coming there at least forty years, and I want people to love Belize and to see and understand Belize like I have. As you well know, some of the people in Belize City will never be able to see the Hummingbird Highway, and the mountain that appears to be like a sleeping giant. Or the oranges, or the hydroelectric plant near the Guatemala border. When you see those backgrounds, most of them are ours. Are seventy-five to eighty percent taken in Belize. We try to make it as Belizean as we could and at the same time preach the Gospel and inform the people also of their lovely country. The good thing about it is that I can write my sermons, I can produce them there at the studio at Channel Five and then I can get on the plane and come home and know that it is not me, that is going to be able to get the glory, or get the honor, but it is Jesus and the word of God. How happy I am to know that I can do that, without the daily praise of men. One of my friends in Belize, pastor Lloyd Welch, he was checking on me, so he called me one day he said Bob, I saw Sister So-and-so in the park yesterday and I told her to pray for you, that you were in the hospital in Dallas, Texas. And she said, he is not! He is right here in Belize, I saw him on Channel Five last night. I was on the street there in Belize City one day, when a little young guy, ten or eleven years of age, he walked up to me and he had been watching me on tv and so he walked up to me and said, “Hello friends, I’m Dr. Bob Roberts, with another sixty-second sermon from God’s word. The Bible says…” And my, I can tell you how my heart felt that day, you know. For him to be able to mimic what I was saying there with those messages, and to know that as a young kid he was listening, cared enough.
We put our full confidence in Channel Five… This was the greatest investment I’ve ever made in my ministry. So happy anniversary, Channel Five and God Bless you with thirty more wonderful years.”
