Pr. Michael shares the importance of this method of sharing the Gospel. 

Michigan Virtual Camp Meeting 2020: Forward to the Finish

<p>Pr. Michael shares the importance of this method of sharing the Gospel. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Digital Evangelism

Michael Kusarawana

01 Why Digital Evangelism

Today we're going to be talking about digital evangelism.

It feels very different to be this side of the production because during the week I'll be behind the scenes.

As the SCEM meeting started, I was behind the scenes as well.

I was responsible of getting people online and actually seeing my team telling me, hey, go on stage This is now your time It kind of feels different but praise the Lord for the technology and you want to praise the Lord as well that we could do this Online something that we usually do in person.

So let us pray before we begin our presentation.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we want to come before your throne again.

I know Bryce has prayed, but I just feel like we need your presence all the time.

We pray that you may be with us as we learn about digital evangelism.

May you lead us and guide us, Lord, into all truth and help us to understand that you gave us this too to be able to reach the world.

1 of my favorite verses in the Bible is Matthew chapter 24 verse 14, which says, And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached into all the world, then the end will come.

So if you take a look at that verse, it tells you something about God.

That's the reason why he wants the whole world to hear of the good news of the gospel.

That's why he wants us to preach it to every tongue, kindred, and people, as our message says in Revelation chapter 14, verse 6 and verse 7.

If we go to the book of Hebrews chapter 11 verse 13, let us go to the book of Hebrews chapter 11 verse 13.

It says here, these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

So if you're like me, you are tired of hearing of disasters, you are tired of hearing all the calamities that are happening in this world, We are in the midst of a pandemic.

You're tired of all the pain and the sorrow and the suffering that we hear each and every moment in our lives.

If you're like me, you're longing for heaven where there will be no more pain, where there will be no more sorrow.

But as the verse that we have read or I have recited at the beginning, we are not going to see him coming into the clouds if we haven't done our part of spreading the gospel.

The same chapter, Hebrews 11, at the end of the chapter, verse 40, or verse 39 and verse 40, it says here, "'And these all, having obtained a good report "'through faith, received not the promise, "'God having provided some better things for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." So Paul, as he concludes the chapter of faith, the hero's echo of the generals of faith, he said, these died having obtained a good report.

But he goes on to say they're resting, and for them to be able to receive the promise, they're waiting on us.

They're sleeping in their graves, they did their part, they're waiting for us to be able to finish the gospel.

So you and I are the ones that are holding Christ to come for the second coming.

We are the ones who are keeping all the fathers of faith and all the people that slept before us from obtaining the promises of the kingdom of God.

So as we look at the world today, as we look at the billions that populate the world today, it might seem overwhelming to think of finishing the gospel in our day and age, finishing the work.

You might be saying, Pastor Michael, how is it possible that when we look at the Adventism or Adventist today, we are in our millions, how we will be able to reach the world in this day and age?

God has given us tools today to be able to finish the work that he gave us.

As I was looking into the book that was written by the servant of God, I was looking at this quotation, and I was very encouraged.

She says here, at a meeting held in Dorchester, Massachusetts, November 1848, I had been given a view of the proclamation of the sealing message and of the duty of the brethren to publish the light that was shining upon our pathway.

So at this moment in time, it's 4 years after the disappointment.

The servant of God was given a vision of the publishing work and she says here she was given the vision of the proclamation of the sealing message.

If you remember the sealing message you go to Revelation chapter 7 and you also go to our message that we're given in Revelation chapter 14 that we have read.

That's the same message that she sees in the vision as it was being proclaimed.

And of the duty of the brethren to do what?

To publish the light that was shining upon the pathway.

Before we go to the next paragraph, I just want to highlight that word publish.

So our message was given for us to publish it to the world.

You know, Israel of old was given a task by the Lord to be able to share the message of the first advent or maybe even the second advent of Christ, but they failed.

They didn't go with the message to the entire world.

Now we as Adventists, we know that we are present-day Israel, and we're given the task by the Lord to be able to spread the gospel to every tongue, kindred, and nation to publish the truth, the light that is shining upon our path.

We're going to talk about this more when we look at the statistics of people who are looking and searching for the gospel.

But the gospel was meant to be published.

The gospel was given for us to be published to the whole world.

She goes on to say, after coming out of vision, I say to my husband, I have a message for you.

You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people.

Let it be small at first, but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print.

From this small beginning, it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear around the world.

The context is the publishing work, the printed page.

But I would like to apply this same principle, this same quotation, to what we are going to be talking about this evening.

So here she says after coming out of the vision she told her husband some principles that we want to take to digital evangelism.

She said you must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people.

As I was looking online, I was comparing some of our avenues that we're using online to reach to the world.

And I was looking at some of the popular pages, either on YouTube or on Facebook.

I was seeing that the people of the world, people in the world, they have huge numbers of followers.

But if you go to our channels, to our pages, we see that the numbers are not as big.

And some may think that in order for me to be able to start to make a difference in the world, to put an influence for the gospel, I must start big, maybe having 10, 000 followers, maybe having 20, 000 or 100, 000 followers, or maybe a million followers like the popular pages online.

But here we get a principle from the servant of God saying, let it be what?

This is the principle that we must take from this quotation.

Small at first and let it grow as it goes.

But as the people read, they will send you means with which to print." And the last statement there, she says, from this small beginning, it was shown to me to be like streams of light that weren't clear around the world.

Interestingly enough, as you look at some of the images that you get online, if you just type in Google and you type in internet logo or picture or images, you find images like these.

I'm not implying that the servant of God was talking about the Internet, she was talking about the printed page, she was talking about the printing press, But as we see the gospel today in our day and age, we know and we understand that God has given us a tool to be able to reach the world.

And if you see how fast is light, you can easily see how we can be able to take that same principle that she said she saw streams of light going around the world, how fast Internet is in its capabilities to be able to help us to spread the gospel as fast as possible.

Let us now look at some of the ways our pioneers used to spread the gospel.

The printing press was invented in the 15th century.

The printing press was the technology of the day.

When she was talking about the streams of light, she was of course talking about the printing press.

It was in 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg, I believe that he was inspired by the Lord, sitting right there, inspired by the Lord, inventing, experimenting, and he came up with the printing press.

It was in 1450 that the printing press became popular around the then known world.

Let's see how our pioneers utilized the printing press for the gospel.

We read in the book Gospel Workers, she says this, in these last days, in these days of travel, the opportunities for coming in contact with men and women of all classes and of many nationalities are much greater than in the days of Israel." Wow.

This was in the 1800s, And if we take a look at today, if she was alive, if she was to rewrite this statement, she was going to write it in a different way.

I think she was going to put more emphasis to say they are even greater and greater these days because of the technology that we are using these days.

The world has become smaller because of the connectivity that technology has given us.

The title for this presentation is Why Digital Evangelism?

And she goes on to say, the thoroughfares of travel have multiplied a thousandfold.

God has prepared a way for us to be able to reach the world.

If God had prepared the way with the printing press, how much more has God prepared the way for us to spread the gospel online?

The same paragraph, she goes on to say, the agency of the preaching press with its manifold facilities is at our command.

Bibles and publications in many languages setting forth the truth for this time are at our hand and can be swiftly carried to every part of the world.

I want to remind you that this was the swift way she was she was referring to, that the gospel was to be carried to the world.

The books were printed using the printing press.

They were loaded on the ships, and when they were loaded on the ships, They would go to far distant countries, and when they get there, they would be taken from the harbors by this kind of transportation, horses and carts.

02 Platforms and Demographics

Good afternoon, this afternoon we'll be talking again about digital evangelism.

It's so exciting that God has given us a tool that we can be able to use to reach out to the world.

And as we saw yesterday, that the message, the gospel, is to be preached to the whole world, to every tongue, kindred, and people.

And I want to thank you, Pastor Bryce, for bringing that question from 1 of our viewers.

How do I share the presentations that are being presented on this CAM meeting.

If you go to our YouTube channel, if I had known this question before starting this presentation, I was going to come with some images.

I hope Pastor Jonathan will be able to bring some images tomorrow to be able to show you how to share.

If you go to YouTube and search Village SDA, you'll be able to see different results, but our page, our YouTube page comes in, comes on the results first.

It's the front of our church, but it is drawn in a nice way in a blue icon.

If you click there, you'll be able to see videos that have been posted from our live stream.

When you see those videos, click 1 of them that you would like to share with your friends.

And you see many options on that video, then you click share.

If you are using a phone, it automatically picks the application that you have on your phone.

If you have Instagram, if you have Facebook, if you have Facebook Messenger, or even a text, it will pop up a list of options where you want to share your videos or our videos that are presented here.

And then you just click 1 of the platforms and then your friends can be able to see these messages as well.

So there are some people who are asking, so how do I get a lot of information?

Because digital evangelism is so broad we have no time to talk about web development and a lot of things like SEOs and blogs and different things that we can be able to utilize online.

We are going to be looking into creating another series of talks or of presentations or seminars that are going to address those topics or those areas of digital evangelism.

But for Now, whilst we are still preparing for that series, you can be able to go to Center for Online Evangelism.

My friends, some of my friends work there, and they run a lot, a lot of campaigns online, and they have amazing, good information.

Even our division and our general conference, they utilize this platform.

So I'm going to share with you a 1 minute video with what they do.

Every day countless people are searching online to know more about Jesus Christ.

They're also searching to know more about Seventh-day Adventists, who we are, and what do we believe in.

Unfortunately, over the past 2 decades, our online story doesn't match the story that we're telling our friends and family members and neighbors.

And so at the Center for Online Evangelism, we want to partner with you as we seek to affirm our story online.

It's our vision that when you tell your friends about who you are, that when they do Google us, they will find out that we are people who's looking forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ, that we care for society and we believe in resting in Christ alone.

So if you wanna join us on this journey, visit our website, centerforonlineevangelism.org.

So if you'd like to share with your friends or if you'd like to know more about different aspects of digital evangelism, whilst we are still preparing the seminars, you can go to Center for Online Digital Evangelism as well.

So a quick recap from yesterday, we read this quotation from the pen of inspiration where the servant of God was given in a vision or in a dream that her husband, James White, was to publish a little paper and people would send means and it was going to be small at first but as he was going to do it God was going to bless it so much that it was going to have a lot of success and it was seen in that vision or in that dream that it was going to be like streams of light that went clear around the world.

And we said yesterday, if you Google internet or internet logo or just search internet images, and you go to images on Google, you'll find the logo or the images that are identified with the word internet, images that look like this 1 on the screen, which is streams of light going around the world.

We saw something fascinating that light travels fast than anything else.

So that quotation fitted very well to internet.

Of course, in its context, it was talking about the publications, which are physical publications, which were from the printed press.

And we saw how our pioneers took advantage of the printing press to be able to utilize it for the gospel.

We saw this quotation as well, that she said the printing press and the publications were the means that God gave us to carry the world, to carry the message to the world swiftly.

And if you look at it today, that in those days, they used to print the books from the printing press, they put them on the ships, and they shipped them through the ocean, And these books, they went to the other side of the world, and when they got to the places they wanted them to be distributed, they would be taken by horses and carts and be delivered inland, which was a process that would take months and months before the gospel could reach the people.

And we saw that God has given us a message which is a global message.

It says in Matthew chapter 24, verse 14, and this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for witness unto all nations, and then the end will come.

So we saw that in order for us to come to the place where we are saying we are going to see Christ in the clouds and all the pain and the suffering and the sorrow and pandemics and disasters are going to come to an end, we need to take the gospel to all the world and to the ends of the world as well.

And we saw yesterday in the afternoon as well that people are hungering and thirsting for the gospel and we saw that people are searching for simple things like what is love?

And this afternoon I would like to share with you 1 of the testimonies from here from Michigan.

It's not far away of someone who came into our denomination or who came into the truth because of finding something online.

I drank every night to the point where I didn't really care if I lived or not.

I'll go to work and be sober, but then when's my next drink?

It just got to the point where I just want to get a divorce or I just want to die.

Most of my life I didn't realize it, but I think God really had a plan for me all along.

Before I was born, my mom was 15 when she got pregnant and she had me and had to go into a home for moms and she almost gave me up, but my grandma decided, you know, I wanna keep her and I'll help you raise her.

Throughout my teenage years, life was a little rough.

My dad was an alcoholic, and then I eventually got saved and baptized in the Baptist church, but then I met my husband-to-be and we got married and he was from a family that liked to party a lot and So I just got sucked into that, and that's what we did.

I became a pretty bad alcoholic, and my kids suffered as a result of it.

I was on the verge of divorce so many times, but then something, probably my mom's prayers, just kept me going.

And I started doing some searching online, reading the Bible, and googling some different questions I had about the Bible and I found that there was people that worshipped on Saturday and I never heard of that before.

I checked it out and there were 2 churches in the area that worshipped on the Sabbath.

So I went to the 1 church, and it was actually in Edenville, Michigan.

And so then I started doing more research.

I did find a lot of negative things about Seventh-day Adventists on there, saying they worship Alan White and their cult and just some weird stuff and I thought you know I just don't know if I believe all that so I did some more researching and the people that I met they just didn't seem like that they didn't do those things that I saw on the internet.

I believe this is where God's leading me, this is what I want to do.

I wouldn't be here if I wouldn't have looked up and listened to the podcasts and did my research and not believed some of the stuff was out there.

I found out for myself whether it was true or not.

I highly encourage no matter how old you are to get involved.

My mom, she's almost 70 and she gets on Facebook and she posts verses and encouraging words, and people see that.

I encourage you, as a church member, or even a leader, to get your church online, get them the materials they need.

You don't have to know how to get online and how to do these things.

Center for Online has a ton of stuff that you can look at and you can get members of your church that know how to do these things already.

They may not want to get online and do things, but they'll help support either financially or they'll pray for your your ministry and if the churches don't get involved digitally we are missing millions of people and people that are going to be lost my children your children your grandchildren they're all online if you don't get involved online, you're missing all these people.

When I see, when I hear, and when I watch testimonies like these, They encourage me so much because there are millions and billions of people that are searching for the truth that we have, like this lady, Tina.

And If you heard her appeal, it was quite powerful.

If the Edenview Church had not put out something online, it was going to be hard for her to find a Seventh-day Adventist church close to her.

And you saw that she found a lot of negative information about us online.

This is 1 of the many reasons why we should be able to put out materials online.

Because when someone searches Seventh Day Adventists, they see or they get results that are negative because we are not putting enough content to be able to get high rankings on our search engines.

But today's topic, or today's presentation, or today's seminar is more practical.

As the platforms, we'll be looking at the platforms that we can be able to share these messages that we have.

Yesterday, it was more of inspiring you to do something.

We're going to be looking at different platforms that you're familiar with.

When I was looking at this image, I was thinking, this looks overwhelming.

You see Instagram, YouTube, Skype, different kinds of platforms.

But here's an encouraging message that I would like to give you.

Take the platform that serves you the best.

Take the platform that you know how to utilize the best.

And the other encouragement that I want to share with you is, take the platform that has a lot of people.

Jonathan Min

03 Design and Video Part 1

All right, good afternoon, or good morning to whoever you're watching and also to those who are present.

My name is Pastor Jonathan, and today we'll be looking at content creation, specifically graphic design and its principles.

And the past week, Pastor Michael has been guiding us through and showing us how we can use digital evangelism in terms of social media.

And the last presentation that he gave was showing us practical tools or platforms that we can use for digital evangelism.

And so my talk today is more tailored towards the question of, OK, we know what we should do.

But the question is, how do we actually get to the point of creating?

How do we create content for social media?

And I want to propose to you that you don't really have to be this amazing designer.

You don't have to be extremely skilled or talented.

Anyone can do this if you follow these simple principles.

And also, just to throw this in there, you don't have to use paid software as well.

Just a little disclaimer, I've designed this entire presentation in Keynote, which is a presentation software, a free presentation software from Apple.

And the question that I've had, or I wanna ask to all of you today as well is, Do the creative arts have a place in the church?

And the reason why we ask this is because, at least coming from my background, a lot of times we'll associate creativity with a lack or a desire to go away from the rules.

We don't like to be constrained or restricted.

And also, at the same times, many of the creative arts invoke feeling or emotion.

And there's this idea out there that emotions or feelings are bad things.

Obvious answer is no, but at the same time, feelings do have their proper place, but not in priority in our relationship with God.

So meaning they're not to be the highest priority of our standing with God.

We know that Ellen White talks about how reason and good judgment are to rule and guide us.

So do the creative arts have a place in the church?

And the reason why I had this question, again, just to reiterate, was because oftentimes, you'll notice there's a divide between media people, or so-called creatives, and conservatives.

And I don't wanna get political, I'm just showing what I've observed personally, even in my own life.

But you'll go, or you'll observe that in churches, you'll find there's often a division, Not usually in a bad way, but there's there's a clear division between the media or a V team and the rest of the church congregation and I can say that because I myself we've been working up there in AV with our team and so this is not me against you, this is me trying to, having both sides, trying to bridge the gap.

And so we see this divide, and the reason that we see this divide is because we have here a group of people who are behind the scenes and they're making everything work in the church, but there's not much involvement.

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Series

Digital Evangelism

01 Why Digital Evangelism

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Why Digital Evangelism

42m

02 Platforms and Demographics

44m

03 Design and Video Part 1

43m

04 Design and Video Part 2

49m

Sound Doctrine