Moving Forward
Staying
the
Course
Pursuing Evangelism in 2020 The year began with high hopes. We had 20/20 vision for 2020! The Shreveport South Seventh-day Adventist Church was planning their strategy to blanket their area with fliers and invitations for an evangelistic campaign planned for the fall. Tony Cash, Arkansas-Louisiana Conference Planned Giving and Trust Services director and elder at Shreveport South, began to spearhead the movement, trying to find the best methods of reaching his community. Southwestern Adventist University (SWAU) School of Evangelism announced it planned to host an evangelism series in the area in late May and early June. The Shreveport South leaders and members were excited, and their first goal was to step up plans to prepare and invite the community. The Shreveport South, Shreveport First, and Texarkana Seventh-day Adventist Church district joined together, pooling their resources, for a big evangelism push. Cash hoped to reach the community as quickly and affordably as Terrie and Eddie Nugent possible. OrderShreveport South Seventh-day Adventist Church ing fliers would normally set them back one to two months. “That’s how we found SermonView Evangelism Marketing,” says Cash. SermonView is an Adventist-based media ministry focused on helping churches reach their communities to grow their congregations. By the first week of February, SermonView had set up a Facebook advertising campaign offering Bible studies to various age groups and demographics in the Arkansas-Louisiana area. Within the first month, they had generated so many Bible study requests that they had to pause the campaign until
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they could catch up with them all. Each of the three churches were overwhelmed with the response. “All of the volunteers from the congregations were thinking they’d get maybe one to two requests a week. But we actually had so many in the first month that it was overwhelming,” said Cash. “After a week, we decided to pause the campaign so the interests wouldn’t go cold before we could respond to them, but a week later our volunteers and congregations were so excited about the responses they were getting, they said to keep going!” “There were too many requests for one person to do,” says Loretta Johnson, Texarkana Seventh-day Adventist Church member. “I sent a message to the church board to update them on what we were doing and asked for help. The whole church board volunteered and even some who are not on the board pitched in. I was really moved by this.” Eddie and Terri Nugent are first generation Adventists who volunRodney and Peggy Dyke teered to follow up Shreveport South Seventh-day Adventist Church on interest leads by going door-todoor. “Not all visits are positive. We have some who still don’t know what Adventists are, so they turn the studies away. But that doesn’t discourage us. We’re just happy to share the truth and get people interested in the Bible. We want to get them interested in seeking out the truth,” says Eddie Nugent. Sometimes, God leads you to visit the wrong house on purpose! The Nugents didn’t realize they were knocking on the wrong door until they began talking with the woman who had answered. But in happy coincidence, through their conversa-
