This Article is printed in the January 2012 edition of the Adventist Messenger.
I recently spoke with Dan Wilson, pastor at the Halifax Seventh-day Adventist Church, regarding some exciting ways they are using technology to connect with the community. It all started approximately two years ago when the Halifax church approached the Voice of Prophecy about purchasing some airtime on a local Christian radio station in Halifax called CJLU. For the past two years, that VOP broadcast has been heard every evening for 25 minutes and Sabbath morning for 30 minutes.It is not only heard throughout Halifax but across repeater stations to the Annapolis Valley and on to PEI.
At the end of the broadcast, there is a tag line that says,“This program was brought to you by your friends at the Halifax Seventh-day Adventist Church. Visit us on the web at http://www.halifaxadventist.org and keep looking up to Jesus, the only Hope we have and the only Hope we need!” Wilson says this radio spot has greatly increased the traffic to their church website,and listeners occasionally send him emails with questions about the Bible or something they heard on the program.
The radio station provides some free advertising for the church including an ad about Sandy Lake Academy and their citrus program. “It has been great to build a friendship with the radio station,” Wilson says, “We’ve had five families come to Sandy Lake Academy because of the free advertising on the Radio.” Wilson is also very excited that VOP has given the Halifax church their Saturday morning airtime, and in a few weeks they will start broadcasting the Sabbath sermon.
Another exciting use of technology occurred in October of this year. In response to Harold Camping’s October 21 end-of-the-world prediction, the two local pastors and four churches decided to hold a three-night evangelistic series at Dalhousie University. A new website, http://thecoming.ca, was created for the event, too. Wilson says that approximately 20,000 people have visited the website since it went online.
Besides the website advertising, they purchased space on four large billboards, 220 signs inside buses and delivered 10,000 door hangers. All the advertising clearly identified the website address and drove people to it for more information. The biggest technological part of this event was that the whole thing was streamed live on the website’s front page. Pedro Graca, pastor of the Tantallon and Fox Point churches, says that there were approximately 50 people each night watching the live video stream.
Wilson said from doing these things he learned that many people today want to check things out but don’t necessarily want to come out to a meeting. “We make a mistake by assuming that when people don’t come to a live event that they are not interested” says Wilson, “there could he all kinds of reasons why they don’t go. I love hockey and I only get to about one hockey game a year. Not because I don’t want to, because I don’t have time.”
The final technology tool I want to share with you that the Halifax church regularly uses is the social media giant called Facebook. Joining the 800 million other users, Wilson regularly sends out announcements about upcoming events or Bible-related information. “It works very well,” says Wilson, “I get more people coming to events now than I did before.”
The Halifax Adventist Youth have their own Facebook page and post information about their own events there. Wilson describes Facebook as a great tool to reach out to the youth because they are on Facebook a lot of the time. “It becomes a great way to reach out to them and let them know about what’s happening,” he says.
Wilson tells me that they are currently working on a live video stream of their church service and planning to do another live video stream for an event scheduled at Easter time next year. There has also been talk about setting up a web studio for broadcasting more live events but that’s just an idea right now waiting to blossom.
