With ‘Jesus and Tim in Las Vegas’

With ‘Jesus and Tim in Las Vegas’

Tim Berends, known to many as the “Christian Howard Stern,” is now daily lighting up the Las Vegas Strip

By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST News Service

BEVERLY HILLS, CA (ANS – November 25, 2016) -- The towering figure of Tim Berends has become a regular fixture on the Las Vegas Strip, as he hands out some 300 tracts a day to almost 40 million visitors to the gambling Mecca of America. That amounts to some 109,500 Christian tracts per year.

And for Tim, Las Vegas has become fertile ground for witnessing, as most of these visitors to Vegas have one destination in mind: The Las Vegas Strip. This is where Tim comes in, and his tracts. His prayer is that some of these visitors will take one home and teach their family and friends about the Lord.

But his ministry is not confined to Las Vegas. He has shared the Gospel and handed out tracts worldwide, ranging from the gang neighborhoods of America and Mexico, to terrorist neighborhoods of Ramallah in Palestinian Authority-held West Bank.

Besides that, Berends hosts a Saturday afternoon radio show called “Jesus and Tim in Las Vegas” on local station, KKVV Radio, 1060 AM -- www.KKVV.com -- and I’ve been a guest on several occasions.

Tim Berends grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where his father was a Baptist preacher, and he says he put his faith in Christ at a young age.

He began broadcasting in 1970 at the Moody Bible Institute radio station, WMBI in Chicago, and then secured a job at the Billy Graham-owned WMIT/WFGW radio stations in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

His quirky humor soon became evident, and once told me that, because of that, he was never invited to the great evangelist’s home in nearby Montreat, for a reception for the radio staff. So, in a bid to get Mr. Graham’s attention when he was visiting the station, Tim called out to Billy and then ripped a story from the UPI wire, and said, “Look, Mr. Graham. It says that Pearl Harbor has just been bombed by Pearl Bailey.” Apparently, even that ruse didn’t work for Tim, as Billy Graham looked at him totally bemused.

I first became aware of Berends shortly after moving to Southern California, when I would tune in to “Mornings with Tim and Al” radio show broadcast in the Los Angeles and San Diego area (KBRT AM-740), which was so popular that readers of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner voted Tim and Al “Top Jocks” in 1986 for the LA area.

In 1994 Tim and his co-host, Al Gross, moved their entertaining and often controversial “Mornings with Tim and Al” to KJSL out of St. Louis, Missouri, which ran until 2005.

I recently caught up with Tim at the recent 18th Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala at the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, where he had driven from Las Vegas to attend this glittering event, and I was able to briefly interview him.

I was recording a series of interviews for my “Inside Hollywood with Dan Wooding,” television show on the Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network (http://hsbn.tv), and they also included on-camera chats with veteran entertainer, Pat Boone (http://www.patboone.com/), Dr. Ted Baehr, founder and president of Movieguide® (http://www.movieguide.org), and Pastor Bob Rieth, founder of Media Fellowship International (http://www.mediafellowship.org), who organized the glittering event. (The keynote speaker was Michael Klausman, Executive Vice President for West Coast Operations and Engineering, and President of the CBS Studio Center).

I began by asking Tim, if while in Southern California, he had any difficulties in getting guests on the show, especially because of his hard-hitting interviews.

“Well, I was going to try and get Richard Simmonds [the American fitness guru, actor, and comedian] on the air and he said that his friends told him not to be on with me because I was ‘a Christian Howard Stern,'” he said with a smile.

I wasn’t surprised that Simmons turned him down, as Tim would regularly have unsuspecting well-known guests on the program, and then proceed to witness to them. On one occasion, he had on Timothy Leary, a noted Harvard lecturer and researcher who became an advocate for LSD, and kept on pressing Leary about whether he had a faith in Jesus, or not. On several occasions, Leary slammed the phone down, but Berends would just call him back and continue to share Christ with him.

Tim, and his side-kick, Al Gross would also often call “Houses of Ill Repute” during the show, and tell the “lady of the night” who answered the phone, that she could “win a Bible” if she could answer a question about Scripture. It all made for gripping broadcasting and several Bibles were sent to them.

Berends said, “We did the Tim and Al show for many years in Southern California, and even though we didn’t show up in the ratings, in 1986 the Lord allowed us to win the Top Jock contest.”

He concluded our chat by saying, “God bless everybody, and share your faith in Jesus Christ with somebody today!”

To know more about this extraordinary broadcaster and evangelist please go to: http://jesusandtim.org/.

And, if you would like to see the complete “Inside Hollywood with Dan Wooding” TV show in which Tim Berends is featured, please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmQk1SRV-Bc&feature=youtu.be.

Photo captions: 1) Tim on the Las Vegas Strip. 2) Tim Berends shows a tract to the wax figure of President Barack Obama in Las Vegas. 3) Timothy Leary. 4) Tim witnessing to Muslims in Jericho. 5) Norma and Dan Wooding.

Note: I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 75, is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for more than 53 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the author of some 45 books and has two TV programs and one radio show in Southern California.

** You may republish this or any of our ANS stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net). Please tell your friends and colleagues that they can receive a complimentary subscription to our news service by going to the ANS website (see above) and signing up there.