We know that today, the most powerful tool for sharing information is the media. It has rallied governments, protests, revolutions, laws, wars, and perhaps most importantly, it has the power to dramatically influence people’s personal beliefs. That’s the core of these issues, after all: knowledge is power, right? As is having a community. Nowadays, we use social media to reach the masses - as I’m doing right now. We have more access than ever to all the corners of the earth and, with it, bigger communities of whatever you subscribe to. But how did people spread newfound knowledge or create communities before this era? That’s right: the newsletters.
While the Adventists began by simply spreading God’s word throughout their own communities, they soon realized that this wasn’t all that God had prepared for them. In fact, their mission was quite the opposite – to spread the good news to all the world (Mark 16:15)!
Tell the World
How a Movement Became a Global Faith. Same roots - growing understanding.
This is the final blog in a series discussing the movie The Hopeful. If you haven't read those, we encourage you to read them now here.
There was an obvious way forward: harness the media and begin sharing what they knew in the way that people would read and learn: a newsletter. This had been done before, with Miller, although not at the scale that the White’s were attempting. Rather than making pamphlets on one issue, they created a recurring newsletter on a range of topics. Although this seemed to be an area of contention in the movie, the newsletter was actually a uniting factor for both James and Ellen White - she was shown in a vision that they should carry it out, and he was eager to do so. Although struggling for money at the time, the Whites began this mission in 1848, spending their meager savings on the few copies they could and promising the publisher that the message would carry, the copies would sell and they would be able to pay for the rest. And they did. Those who received copies sent money for the continuation of the work, even going to lengths such as selling assets and properties to help the printing continue. This was the beginning of the movement’s rapid spread and the start of the missionary work. As the church grew in America, they became able to fulfill a bigger request - to send missionaries overseas. This is where Andrews comes in - in The Hopeful, Andrews is the father telling the children the story. He and his family traveled all the way from the USA to Europe - one of the church’s first missionaries. Equipped with a solid understanding of languages and a passion for the mission at hand, he and his family were instrumental in the beginning of the mission work - a feat which aided in the rapid growth of the church from less than two hundred members in 1850 to over 2000 members in 1852 and over 21 million members today¹.
However, we know that often with rapid growth comes great disorganization. We’ve all been in a waiting line where the shop has been overrun, completely unprepared - staff bustle and try their best but the lines grow and so does the dissatisfaction. Confusion and misinformation runs rampant - and many end up walking away. This is and was a situation that happened far too often in the Christian environment - and one that the early Adventists were determined would not overtake their greater cause.
Often without the funds to hire a venue with sufficient space, early Adventists took on the originally Scottish idea of having ‘camp meetings’, where the members and visitors could unite in one place. The open-air environment also allowed for the incorporation of the holistic health mindset, where Adventists understood that physical health (such as being in nature, exercise and fresh air) was helpful in creating a space for spiritual health. These outdoor meetings are still held today, all over the world. They are known simply as ‘Camp Meetings’ in places such as the USA, Columbia, the UK and Europe, or ‘Big Camp’ in Australia. As seen in the movie, this was a place where ideas could be shared, such as Ellen White’s health message.
Although only briefly covered in the movie, the health message is a major part of the Adventist mission. It is a means to share the gospel as Jesus did, by ministering to a person’s physical needs before ministering to spiritual needs. This holistic health message aims to use what God has given us to aid in healing, where all elements of a person’s life influence total wellbeing, rather than just physical wellness. Modern research has shown that the diet suggested by White has been proven the most healthy - now knowing that limiting artificial sugar-filled foods is important, that smoking causes serious health complications and that having a balanced diet filled mostly with fruit and vegetables improves overall health. Education was another focus of Adventist mission. With one of the largest Christian education networks in the world, Adventist schools are a way of ministering to communities by improving opportunities for children.
Today, these same messages are still being spread. There are still missionaries like Andrews and his family, camp meetings, a focus on holistic health and education, multiple newsletters and magazines and more modern forms of communication that are focused on both encouraging those within the community and reaching out to those outside of it. But it hasn’t stopped there - no, the mission of Seventh-Day Adventism wasn’t just to get a certain level of knowledge and stop. Instead, we are meant to constantly be studying and improving our understanding of all factors of biblical inspiration and other knowledge alike. The roots are the same as they have always been - strong in God’s leading and in always using the Bible as the guide. No matter where we are in our individual faith journeys or in our lives - whether older and educated such as Miller or young and passionate as the Whites - we each are encouraged to look into the Bible and develop a deeper understanding for ourselves - an understanding that we may even be called to share with others. So let’s keep searching. Let’s breathe new life into old understandings. Let’s welcome God’s inspiration for us - both old and new.
Are you searching?
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¹Adventist.org Seventh-day Adventist World Church Statistics 2021
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