Victoria Osteen, Laurie Crouch and Christine Caine film a segment for TBN's "Better Together." (Facebook/Better Together TV)
Matt and Laurie Crouch are making some huge changes at TBN—the largest Christian television network in the world—since they took over from Matt's late parents several years ago. Next week TBN launches the first daily TV program made by women for women. I invited the Crouches onto my "Strang Report" podcast to talk about their new endeavor called Better Together that will launch April 22 at 10:30 a.m. PT. From what they told me, this show offers Christian women a type of encouragement and ministry they won't find on any other women's TV programs. (You can listen to the interview here or scroll to the end of the article.)
I've known Matt and Laurie since around the time they got married in 1985. We've traveled the world together and supported each other in ministry for years. So I was excited to interview them about their new, much-needed program.
"We started thinking about how, quite frankly, underserved the female audience is on Christian television," Matt tells me. "We have dynamic people like Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore and others, but as far as having regular programming on our network, Trinity Broadcasting, we wanted to change that. So about a year ago, we started dealing with set people—decorators, producers, all sorts of different people it takes to make a TV program."
Their goal is to create an atmosphere where women can have an authentic conversation about life and faith. Matt and Laurie have noticed throughout the years that whenever they attend a large dinner party, the women invariably congregate toward one end of the table and the men then go to the other end. Matt says that by the time the men sit down, the women are usually deep in conversation, fully engaged with each other. That's the dynamic the Crouches want for their new show.
"We [want to] basically create an atmosphere where women could sit facing each other—in our case that's a circle—and they could have genuine dialog," Matt says.
To do so, the Crouches hide small, high-quality, remote-controlled cameras around the set. They then roll the doors to the set closed so all the women are facing each other without the interruption of cameramen and cue cards. With women like Christine Caine, Victoria Osteen, Lisa Harper, Lisa Bevere, Holly Wagner, DeeDee Freeman, Jen Johnson and others, the conversation is ...
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Better Together with Matt and Laurie Crouch
38 Minutes - April 15th 2019
"Better Together" is Trinity Broadcasting Network's (TBN) first daily original program made by women for women. Listen to this interview with Matt and Laurie Crouch on why they developed the show. Hear who the guests will be to help develop a community of women doing life together.
The first episode airs April 22 at 10:30 AM Pacific Time. For more information visit
www.tbn.org/programs/better-together.
