Ministry in Lapeer

The Liberty Street Gospel Church of Lapeer, Mich. (pop. 6,000) seats 280 people, but 400 crowded in one night last week. They stood six-deep at the back to pay a tribute to the Rev. Frank S. Hemingway--a man one Lapeerite called "as near a saint as anyone can be without being one."

Pastor Hemingway was 24 when he came to town 33 years ago to take over the Lapeer Methodist Protestant Church. He was what the townspeople called a "visiting preacher"; he never forgot the people who lived too far away or were too sick to come to church regularly. When radio came along in the '205, he determined to expand his job at the Methodist church into a mission of the air. He tried to interest nearby cities such as Flint and Saginaw in setting up a broadcasting station strictly for religious programs, but he got no backing. Frank Hemingway set to work in Lapeer to launch his own.

Power of Prayer. With the help of a radio encyclopedia and a few friends, Hemingway set up a one-tube transmitter that ran on a storage battery. The antenna was made of bicycle rims, and even a dog walking under it would joggle the station off frequency, but he kept it going two or three hours a day, six days a week with scripture, organ music, singing, and talks to shut-ins. Hemingway called his station WMPC after Lapeer's Methodist Protestant Church (which later became the Liberty Street Gospel Church).

To this day, little (250-watt) WMPC broadcasts nothing but religious programs. No commercials are allowed, and the station's three full-time engineers (two of them ministers) have instructions to cut any program off the air that asks for money. Part of WMPC's $40,000-a-year operating budget comes from the donations of Michigan church groups which use radio time. For the remainder, Frank Hemingway prays, and the money never fails to come in, in small, unsolicited contributions.

"Lift Them Tonight." Fourteen hours a day, Hemingway keeps his "Gospel Radio Station" turning out religion for an audience estimated at 100,000 people. Nondenominational WMPC has 170 groups representing 40 different denominations on the air every month. Neither Catholics nor Jews have yet asked for time, but Hemingway would welcome them.

Last week, when people swarmed to Liberty Street to celebrate the 25th anniversary of WMPC, well-loved Frank Hemingway was not on hand. Ill of diabetes, and the after-effects of a stroke last year, worn down by nightly vigils of prayer for his ailing wife, the 57-year-old minister collapsed two hours before the ceremony, and had to listen in like one of his own shut-ins while his friends sang old hymns such as Bringing in the Sheaves, prayed God to "bless our pastor and his wife and lift them tonight."

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