Lawson Herold and Katie Grandinetti interviewed their school principal, Sister Mary Jordan Hoover, for the initial broadcast from St. John Paul the Great Catholic High School. “I think it was a surreal experience for both of us,” Herold said. (Jonathan Hunley/For The Washington Post)

St. John Paul the Great Catholic High School recently took steps to fulfill the goal of spreading God’s word beyond its doors.

The school, which opened outside Dumfries in 2008, last month celebrated the first broadcast of its radio station, WJPN-FM (106.3). The project will allow the institution to evangelize to the surrounding community while providing new educational opportunities and marketing for the school, students and administrators said last week.

School leaders have been working for the past three to four years to launch a radio station, but the idea originally came from an outside source. Tom Vetter, a local resident who wanted to bring the message of Jesus Christ to commuters on Interstate 95, was the one who got things going, said Jennifer Cole, director of enrollment management and communications at the school. Vetter is Catholic, but he didn’t have any relationship with the school, Cole said.

“He’d not been here,” she said.

Vetter approached the school’s officials about starting a low-powered FM station that would broadcast in a limited area for noncommercial educational or community purposes.

They liked the idea, so they got to work applying for approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which granted the request to build a radio tower. But then the school ran into a problem: Administrators couldn’t find a suitable place for the tower required for broadcasting.

“Nothing was working,” said David Morales, director of technology at the school.

Engineers suggested putting the tower on a light pole at the school’s football field, for example. But John Paul the Great’s field didn’t have lights.

The solution to that quandary, however, and the related tower issue, came from Mike and Corrine Kosar. Their son was to begin attending the school, and they wanted to help with money for stadium lights.

Their donation spurred the illumination of the gridiron and the transmission of radio waves, both of which were commemorated with an on-the-field ceremony May 20. The school plans to build a recording studio later, but with the tower atop a light pole at the stadium, the first broadcast hit the airwaves that day. So far, John Paul the Great has about $235,000 invested in the combined radio and light project, Cole and Morales said.

A technical glitch sidelined the station after its launch, but Morales said it should be back on the air Monday.

When that happens, listeners should be able to hear Catholic programming as far as 10 to 12 miles away from the school. WJPN will broadcast the EWTN Catholic Radio Network when it’s not airing content geared to the “John Paul Nation” (the inspiration for the call letters).

The school plans to offer an introductory broadcasting course in the fall, and future programs could include talk shows and coverage of live sports events. Cole said she also hopes the addition of the station will further the school’s teaching about the responsible and ethical use of media, whether that’s through public channels or personal posting on social media.

Although WJPN is just getting started, students already have had an impact on the station. Its logo reflects ideas from a graphic design class, and juniors Lawson Herold and Katie Grandinetti interviewed the school principal, Sister Mary Jordan Hoover, for the initial broadcast.

“I think it was a surreal experience for both of us,” Herold said.

The 17-year-olds spoke seriously when asked about the significance of the station to their school. Herold, for example, said it will help John Paul the Great “evangelize and grow our school presence in an unprecedented way.”

But the work of putting broadcasts on the air isn’t necessarily all a solemn affair — or a somber one.

The interview that Herold and Grandinetti conducted with Hoover filled up three minutes of airtime. But it took much longer than that to record — in part because both principal and students were a bit silly in the process, laughing and even singing.

And there’s a blooper recording to prove it.