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His broadcast audience is the largest of any American working the airwaves today. His listeners are greater in number than Brokaw's, Jennings', or Rather's. He dwarfs Rush. In fact, outside of the president, he may be the most influential voice in the country today.

Dr. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family 25 years ago this week, and it has grown into a modern media phenomenon, as well as a hugely significant ministry here and abroad. Dobson's broadcasts reach 220 million listeners every day spread over 117 countries. Focus on the Family produces 14 different broadcasts, a dozen magazines, and sends a monthly newsletter to 2.5 million readers. The Colorado Springs headquarters employs 1,300 people and operates with an annual budget of $130,000,000.

No matter how you measure it, the impact of Focus on the Family has been, is and will continue to be huge. James Dobson has, throughout the quarter century of explosive growth for his organization, remained a thoughtful, even-tempered and winsome voice. "Celebrity is an illusion," he told a reporter from the Colorado Springs Gazette in an interview last week.

"First of all, it's very temporary, and you can lose it in an afternoon. Secondly, it's not to be taken very seriously. I don't say that falsely humble. I just am keenly aware I'm an ordinary man with ordinary flaws and some of them pretty pronounced, and I'm just doing the best I can to deal with an awful lot of hurt that's going on out there."

This "ordinary man" saw a need in the mid-'70s to speak to the crisis in the American family. Before anyone else saw it coming, he anticipated and began to address the collapse of cultural support for society's central, crucial unit – the two-parent family raising children. While his ministry has always tried to support single parents and all sorts of other demographic groups, Focus on the Family has always stayed focused on children and parents, spouses and marriages. It has prospered not because it is the first with the newest, but because Dobson has carefully studied and patiently repeated the tried and true wisdom on these subjects from the ages.

James Dobson is, of course, an evangelical Christian who has studied the Judeo-Christian heritage and who has relied on Scripture for a great deal of his advice and his inspiration. To that very firm foundation he added innovation in technology and an eye for talent to build the institution that is now Focus. There has been controversy because Dobson has not avoided bruising fights when he deemed them necessary, as with campaigns to preserve marriage as a union between man and woman, or to continually remind people of the huge toll of abortion on both the unborn and their parents. Dobson is a tough but fair opponent on these political matters, but his greatest achievements are in the hundreds of thousands of families that have been strengthened through his advice and the ministry of his staff.

Any other organization of similar scope and influence would find its silver anniversary the subject of hundreds of features in national television and newspapers and on the cover of the Time and Newsweek. But elite media still doesn't know quite what to do with Focus on the Family, largely because the Christian worldview is so alien to so much of the media establishment. Sociologist Peter Berger famously remarked that if India was the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States was a nation of Indians governed by Swedes. To which we should add, "and covered by Swedes."

Dobson and his troops have simply refused to march to the beat of the Swedes, and have instead focused on the families of the country and indeed of the world. Often alone and rarely with the assistance of politicians or big business, Focus on the Family has been doing repair work on America's culture for a quarter century. We should all pray for another 25 years and more of the same success, and for more Dobsons.