COVID-19 has been an unwelcomed guest in many countries around the world and we Victorians have just faced another challenge as it returned again to invade our suburbs, homes and churches. The freedoms we all had just months ago are a distant memory and we have learnt live and worship in new ways.
Mission Unchanged
While so much of our lives have been changed by Covid, there’s one thing that remains the same: our mission. The call to share Jesus with others and make disciples isn’t impacted by pandemics. We just need to adapt HOW we do it.
It is Written’s Offer
When It is Written was preparing an online evangelism program for churches in Florida, because of John Bradshaw’s presence here in Melbourne last year and his affiliation with New Zealand, he offered the program to Victoria and NZ in early April.
“We recognised the opportunity to explore new methods of evangelism in a time when good news and hope was needed, and felt this was too good to keep to ourselves,” says Harvest Victoria coordinator, Fraser Catton. “So, we invited other conferences to join in.” And the collaboration began! Meanwhile IIW decided to take their program globally and it was translated to other languages.
The Pressure’s On
The effects of the pandemic came upon us abruptly, but the Lord had already foreseen this challenge and had in advance, prepared skilled individuals to form a new media team which came together after the initial invitation from IIW, to meet this new mission opportunity. Within two weeks of receiving the initial invitation from IIW, the media taskforce was formed with representatives from the Victorian, Tasmanian, North New Zealand and Australian Union Conferences and the Division’s Media Centre. The brief given to the Hope2020 team was to create an online evangelistic experience that engaged the community, seekers and church members using technology previously untried in evangelism. It was essential to work collaboratively and the team met daily to plan, solve problems and get the job done. The pressure was on, as the programs were scheduled to commence early May.
The Three-part Program
The IIW program was to be presented on a browser-based platform making participation and interaction as simple as possible. IIW had also offered webinars to train volunteers in digital follow up with the contacts provided by IIW.
But as the Hope2020 taskforce started dialoguing, the initial plan morphed considerably to become a three-part virtual series offering a message of hope in Christ Jesus, relevant for this time in which we live and the current global climate of fear and suffering.
Gary Webster and Robbie Berghan from the Tasmanian Conference had 
already begun preparation for an online evangelistic program. This program became the first part of the series, Predictions of Hope, which specifically looked at issues relevant to the developing pandemic and commenced in May.
As the presentations concluded, viewers were encouraged to register for Revelation Today: Hope Awakens which ran four nights per week for four weeks. A change was made to the format of the program from IIW, so that the Predictions of Hope team could continue on with the viewers, introducing and hosting each of the Hope Awakens episodes.
While the timeframe was very short, the gospel message in Hope Awakens was broadcast over four online platforms and people were urged to respond to the message and request offers via TXT message – this was untried technology was a slight shift away from what had initially been offered to us by IIW but more tailor made for Australian and New Zealand.
The final phase of the three-part series were the online Masterclasses, conducted by local pastors and offering various topics to further engage and disciple the viewing audience.
This segment of the program was coordinated by Pr. David Maxwell, who looks after Benalla and Wangaratta churches and proved to be no small feat as people signed up from across the South Pacific! Offered to allow people to continue their spiritual journey or be involved in other areas of interest, the Masterclasses covered topics such as Secrets of the Future, the Livemore Project, Forgive to Live, [truth]Link, Ancient Mysteries, Depression Recovery an innovative children’s prophecy event, God’s Detectives.
Digital Bible Workers
The Hope Online Series also incorporated a new feature in evangelism with the introduction of Digital Bible Workers. Rather than using the webinars offered by IIW, our Personal Ministries director, Andrew Jasper chose to organise the training, having worked closely with the IIW team in the lead up to 2019’s Revelation Today campaign. Trained church members followed up online interests that either asked a question, requested prayer support or responded to an appeal during the series. Nearly 100 Adventists across Australia and New Zealand registered to be a part of the initiative. They took a brief training at
Australian Conference’s website, disciple.org.au, attended weekly catch-up sessions and then waited to hear from attendants.
The purpose of the digital Bible workers was to make genuine connections with people so that a virtual contact would have a real person to interact with.
The impact?
We know that many seeds were sown. In the lead up to all the programs over 39,000 emails were sent out. 3209 people registered to participate (496 from Victoria) and over the two-week period Predictions of Hope aired, 212,499 people were reached via social media.
Just think about that for a moment. On any given week, we have around 6000 members attending church in Victoria. In just two weeks, over 200,000 people were given a glimpse of the gospel story. The programs have been viewed over 62,400 times and the number is still increasing daily. The viewing audience attracted more males than females, but the age of the viewing audience was split into two main groups – 18-34 and 65+.
Across Australia & New Zealand, a total of over 340 people signed up for the masterclasses, with over 500 from the Pacific Island’s and other world regions who had not been specifically targeted in the lead up to Predictions of Hope and Hope Awakens but is a testament to the reach of social media.
Although the Masterclasses were not as well attended as expected, there are still over 120 people actually participating and enjoying these courses.
One of the great successes is God’s Detectives, being run by Sven Ostring and his wife. This course has more children attending now than were originally enrolled!
Another success was the ability to record professionally and then offer an “On-Demand” viewing option for the Secrets Of The Future course, with over 30 people still working their way through that course with Robbie Berghan, co-presenter of Predictions of Hope.
The Future
This initiative has certainly broken new ground in evangelism and many lessons have been learned which will guide future efforts. It has shown that evangelism can still take place while socially distancing. Our mission to reach our neighbours, friends and communities with the good news of Jesus isn’t on hold, it’s just packaged and delivered differently. With the future of large gatherings still unknown at this point, this is an important thing to hang onto – large scale sharing the Gospel can be done, with even larger scale – with immeasurable – reach.
We want to thank God for providing this opportunity and allowing us to stretch ourselves beyond anything we had previously considered, to try something new in this challenging environment. God alone knows the full impact Hope Online 2020 will have – we will probably only know the full extent when we meet those people in Heaven.
May He continue to bless these efforts and others, as we seek to reach as many as possible with the Good News about Jesus, to offer healing and hope in troubled times.
Fraser Catton, David Maxwell, Andrew Jasper and Wayne Boehm with IntraVic