Media & Adventist Benefits – The Record Keeper in Production

The Record Keeper, an 11-part web-series just finished filming in Portland, OR. Walla Walla University alumnus Jason Satterlund was hired by the General Conference to product a web-series to be released in conjunction with The Great Hope project. This 11-episode production follows the story of two angels asked to give an account of what is happening on Earth to the Record Keeper, an angel tasked with recording Earth’s history. A cast and crew of more than 60 people had been filming for five weeks in the Portland area. The GLEANER has been on set to prepare for an upcoming feature and NewsPoints, from the North American Division, recently filmed a report. The church will be producing small group discussion guides and other study materials to support the series. Follow the production process on Facebook and watch the pilot episode shot last summer.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Visual Technology in Worship

Visual Technology and the Local Church

Technology is rapidly shaping society. From iPhones to iPads to complicated lighting boards and powerful projectors, society is influenced by the best gadgets and electronics this age has to offer. But how are cellphones, computers, projectors-you name it-influencing your local church? Read more

Older Folks Like Visuals Too As technology has worked its way into our sanctuaries over the last two decades, generation gaps have grown into chasms. Any church over 30 years old is having to traverse the balance between their young adult and senior members by finding relevant ways to teach their congregation while staying grounded in biblical principles and tradition. For many this balance has been the cause of frustration and conflict. Churches with largely older members have often decided that avoiding change is the best course of action, resulting in a loss of dynamic energy that can lead to decreased membership and effectiveness. However the gap can be bridged with good communication. Read more

Downey Church uses SongShow

Like many churches we started our media experience with PowerPoint. When we needed more features, we started by listing the features that we thought were important that were missing from PowerPoint.

We read every review and article we could find. One of the great features of worship presentation software is they all allow some type of trial. We installed them all and evaluated them as well.  This is an important step that everyone who is thinking about changing systems should do. Nothing says more about the software than actually trying it on your own system. There were some software packages that were highly rated, that just didn’t feel right to us. That’s an important item to consider as you will be using this software every week. Read more

Prezi Can Be Stunning

If you’re looking for a way to spice things up a bit from the same old PowerPoint slides, or if you’d like to pre sent your worship graphics in a more linear way, you might give Prezi a try.

Prezi, much like PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote, is a computer-based presentation program that works on PC, Mac, iPhone and iPad. It differs from the other presentation software options because, instead of being slide-based, Prezi uses one large canvas where all of your text, graphics, and even videos are placed. This can be really helpful when you need your audience to grasp concepts and how they are connected in a more visually spatial method. Read more

Spartanburg Uses ProPresenter

ProPresenter is a very dynamic worship software application suitable for the simplest of needs to more complex integrations. There are many features you can read about on renewedvision.com, but I will cover some here that I find very appealing. We utilize the site license and find it very convenient to have it on multiple computers. The software is also cross-platform so we can all get along. Read more…

Media & Adventist Benefits – Stream Your Whole Worship Service

Stream Your Whole Worship Service

Have you wanted to live-stream your whole worship service? Previously it was not legal to live-stream or podcast the music portions of your service but Church Copyright Licensing International has recently announced a new license that allows for streaming or podcasting of live or recorded worship service music. The license, called a Church Streaming & Podcast License is available on their website.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Updated NPUC Website

The North Pacific Union Conference online presence has recently been updated. Find links to resources around the union and the current calendar of union events. In addition to an updated look, the site has been designed to make resources easier to find. Take a look at the new site at NPUC.org.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Using Social Media to Build Your Church

In this video Vicente Lopez, member of the YG church in Arlington Texas, shares how he uses social media to build an awareness and appreciation of his congregation in his social media world.  This is just one example of how media can be used to strengthen adventist congregations in North America. Using  media is one of the building blocks that the NAD would like to use to help build up local churches in North America.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Hell and Mr. Fudge

BY JENNIFER JILL SCHWIRZER

Are you guessing that Hell and Mr. Fudge is a story of a quaint old candymaker trapped in a burning kitchen? Well, you’re . . . warm. Actually, it’s about how the fires of controversy raged around a kind, unassuming Southern preacher—who just happens to be named Edward Fudge. And what a story it is! But actually this article will recount two stories: the story of Edward Fudge, a Southern preacher turned controversial author on the subject of hell, and the story of how Pat Arrabito and her Seventh-day Adventist production team turned Fudge’s story into an award-winning feature film, soon to be released (and, we hope, watched by you).

The Day Hell Broke Loose

Rewind. Edward Fudge, now a Houston-based lawyer and internationally known theologian and author, began his preaching career at the tender age of 16 for the Church of Christ. Like most other evangelical churches, Fudge’s denomination taught the twofold doctrines of natural immortality and eternal hell. Young Edward accepted these teachings unquestioningly, because that’s what good Christians did in those days. Interestingly, he devoured a set of Voice of Prophecy study guides at age 14. Apparently the force of his training kept him from accepting the biblical teaching of annihilation of the wicked. But he would revisit the issue later in life.

Fast-forward 15 years. Edward has married a schoolteacher named Sarah Faye Locke and fathered two children. Plans for an academic career loomed before him until his father’s death at only 57 years of age led him to assume the directorship of the family publishing business in Athens, Alabama.

When a hostile takeover led to his firing, he found a job as a typesetter in a printshop while serving as volunteer pastor of a small nondenominational church that met in a renovated barn. It was during these days of barn preaching that hell quite literally broke loose.

Keep rolling. Fudge published an article in Christianity Today (CT) that simply observed that the Bible most often described the end of the lost with such words as “die,” “perish,” or “destroy.” Ever the scholar, he gathered and shared biblical data as naturally as a farmer sowed a field. A renegade Adventist named Robert Brinsmead read the article. Brinsmead, once a preacher, had restudied most of Adventism’s distinctive teachings and rejected them. Now he wanted to restudy the doctrine of hell to decide whether he wanted to also reject the Adventist view that it entails annihilation rather than an Continue Reading

Media & Adventist Benefits – Top 10 Predictions No Matter Who Wins the Election

1. The Bible will still have all the answers.
2. Prayer will still work.
3. The Holy Spirit will still move.
4. God will still guide His people.
5. There will still be God-anointed preaching.
6. There will still be singing of praise to God.
7. God will still pour out blessings upon His people.
8. There will still be room at the Cross.
9. Jesus will still love you.
10. Jesus will still save the lost when they come to Him.

ISN’T IT GREAT TO KNOW WHO IS REALLY IN CONTROL?!!

Media & Adventist Benefits – Adventist Filmmaker Debuts Pilot for Web Series

Here’s something entirely new. Jason Satterlund, Adventist filmmaker based in Portland, Ore., has produced the pilot episode for “The Record Keeper.” He describes it as a steam-punk web-series about the politics of angels as they observe the downfall of mankind. The main character, “Raina” writes down the events of history and interviews angels on both sides to get their version of events. Satterlund collaborated with Garrett Caldwell, General Conference assistant communication director, on the script. Watch the eight-minute pilot episode for yourself on YouTube HERE.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Top Articles of the Last 12 Months

If you missed them you might want to read them now. Here are the top 5 most viewed stories in the Media & Adventist Benefits category during the past year. Please add your additional comments at the end of any of these posts–

1. Media & Adventist Benefits- The Dark Day of May 19, 1780
2. Media & Adventist Benefits – What About Ark-eology?
3. Media & Adventist Benefits- Joel Osteen and Biblical Health Principles
4. Media & Adventist Benefits – Summers coming. Beware of soft drinks.
5. Media & Adventist Benefits – Free Adventist Apps

Media & Adventist Benefits – Momentum Impact

In 2006, the North Pacific Union began filming our evangelistic series for the Hope Channel and in 2011 Todd Gessele put these series online in 2011 at: 
http://www.npuc.org/article/388/resources/video-productions-north-pacific-union-conference

Below is a summary of our web traffic since 2011!

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• Secrets of Hope with Dan Serns 2010 – 1208 Views!
• Breakthough 2010 with Jose Rojas- 1707 Online views!
• Radical Teachings of Jesus – 2009 with Derek Morris- 669 Online views!
• God Said, So What! – 2009  325 Views!
• Check Him Out 2008 – 3057 Views!
• Revelation Now-2007 Jac Colon 3000
• Snap Shot of the Savior with Ron Halverson 2006- 2308 views!

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This is a total of 12,274 views! And remember, most of these series were posted online for the first time in 2011!

So in just our first year of having this material on the net, we’ve had 12 times our original largest single physical audience, which was 1000 people, watch and hear our evangelistic messages “on demand.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Guide Magazine Issues Review of The Hunger Games Movie

Do you know any teens absorbed with the new blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games? Guide magazine has released a statement about the movie to help readers respond to the countless conversations about the movie happening in their schools. The review, written by columnist Melanie Bockmann, outlines the positive and negative themes in the motion picture. “I did not choose to write about The Hunger Games because I thought it would be great for Guide readers to know about it,” explains Bockmann. “I wrote about it because it has swept the scene so powerfully. Rather than ignore it, I decided to enter the conversation and address it with information that will help you make good decisions.” Access Bockmann’s full review HERE.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Bishop: Christians Don’t go to Heaven

A bishop described as “one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought” challenged the widely held belief that Christians go to heaven when they die.

N.T. “Tom” Wright, the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England who has been praised for his staunch defense of the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, published a book in which he says people do not ascend to God’s dwelling place. Instead, deceased believers are in a sleep-like state until God comes back to Earth.

“Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven,” Wright told Time Magazine. “I’ve often heard people say, ‘I’m going to heaven soon, and I won’t need this stupid body there, thank goodness.’ That’s a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.”

When asked to explain why he rejects that typical sentiment, he said, “There are several important respects in which it’s unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. [The Apostle] Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a

Media & Adventist Benefits – Northwest Adventist Schools in the News

Two Adventist schools were recently featured in a local television news report about the exodus of public school students to private schools. Tri-City Junior Academy and Hermiston Junior Academy were portrayed on the report broadcast on KVEW which serves Tri-Cities and Walla Walla, Wash. Watch the video report HERE.

Media & Adventist Benefits – Paul Harvey on Ellen White and Nutrition

Once upon a time, a hundred years ago, there lived a young lady named Ellen White. She was frail as a child, completed only grammar school, and had no technical training, yet she lived to write scores of articles and many books on the subject of healthful living.

Remember, this was in the days when doctors were still blood-letting and performing surgery with unwashed hands. This was in an era of medical ignorance bordering on barbarism. Yet Ellen White wrote with such profound understanding on the subject of nutrition that all but two of the many principles she espoused have been scientifically established.

Professor of Nutrition, Dr. Clive McCay of Cornell said, How much better health the average American might enjoy if he but followed the teachings of Mrs. White.

Perhaps we should reread what she has taught: The oil, as eaten in the olive, is far preferable to animal oil or fat. Today we know about cholesterol.

She knew: Fine flour white bread is lacking in nutritive elements to be found in bread made from whole wheat. Today we have re-enriched our bread.

She wrote: Do not eat largely of salt. Now we know we should keep the sodium intake low.

She wrote whole articles on the importance of not overeating; of not becoming overweight; of eating at each meal two or three kinds of simple food; and eat not more than is required to satisfy hunger.

We have come to accept the wisdom of such advice so completely that it is difficult for us to realize how revolutionary her theories were almost a century ago. (Seventh-day Adventists consider her knowledge divinely inspired.)

A long time before we learned about TV snacks, Mrs. White wrote: After irregular eating, when children come to the table, they do not relish wholesome food; their appetites crave that which is hurtful to them.

She urged: Pure air, sunlight, abstemiousness, rest, exercise.

She wrote: Tobacco is a slow, insidious, but most malignant poison. It is all the more dangerous because its effects are slow and at first hardly perceptible. Divinely inspired or not, Ellen White was, indeed, ahead of her time.

Are there additional recommendations which this remarkable woman urged upon us which we have, so far, ignored?

Two of her teachings haunt the more progressive nutritionists because if she is right about these also, most of us are wrong and have yet to catch up to her advanced knowledge of nutrition.

Mrs. White wrote: All-wheat flour is not best for continuous diet. A mixture of wheat, oatmeal and rye would be more nutritious.

Also, Mrs. White was essentially a vegetarian. She wrote: The life that was in the grains and vegetables passes into the eater.

We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct. Do you suppose we’ll discover she was right about these things, too?

Source: The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Students’ Source Book; The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Volume 9. 1962; 2002. Review and Herald Publishing Association

Media & Adventist Benefits – Undercooked Pork

This newscast is very eye opening. It touches on a few of the things that are important to Seventh-day Adventists; family values and healthy eating habbits. Click HERE to watch the newscast.