Why does the Adventist Church need news?
Why does the Adventist Church need news
Intro: [00:00:00] Hi there, everyone. I'm Jarrod and I'm Zanita. Let's go live.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Here we are again with another week of Record Live and it's lovely to be joined by a special guest this morning. But first of all, Zanita, it was great to see you on the weekend at the Digital Discipleship Conference. We've talked about that on the show a couple of weeks back with Jared Madden, but also now it's actually happened and it was fantastic.
Jarrod Stackelroth: How was it Zanita? Did you enjoy it?
Zanita Fletcher: It was, I thought it was great. That was a bit of a kerfuffle beforehand with Jared Madden. change of venues from the cycle and everything, but it all came together and it was really fun, met all new people and , yeah, I felt really inspired.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Awesome. Very good. Just a little fun
Zanita Fletcher: fact.
Zanita Fletcher: I don't know if you know, there's actually a, a pig conference happening straight after us. A digital cycle [00:01:00] ship. So should have stayed.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Pig conference. If we'd stayed, we could have cast all the pigs into the ocean. Is that, there's quite a cliff on the beach at, , the Gold Coast at the moment. It could have been a biblical event.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Moving to our special guest now, . Enno is a colleague from the Adventist Review, , based in North America., the Adventist Review has been around in the Adventist Church since before the Adventist Church was officially called the Seventh day Adventist Church. And it's a, you would say it's a flagship publication of the church.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's been around for a very long time. Eno is the,, news. And communication director for Adventist Review. And he's been spending a couple of days down under you've come to the digital discipleship conference. You've spent some days in the office with us. And it's just really good to spend time with a communications news colleague from around the globe and hear about what, um, Adventist Review is doing, what records doing.
Jarrod Stackelroth: So [00:02:00] welcome to Australia. Welcome to the show. It's great to have you this week.
Enno Mueller: It's wonderful to be here. , I also had a wonderful time at the Discipleship, , Conference and, , oddly, not oddly enough, but like, I even took some notes and there's some great presentations that, I want to take back some of those suggestions back to the, to North America and see if we can implement some of the great presentations that were presented.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And that's the beauty of, I guess, cross pollination of ideas, having opportunity to work with colleagues from around the world because we don't always get it right in our own little area, but it's great to have that opportunity to learn and to grow. , today we're going to talk about news. Now, I've been in Adventist record for a very long time.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I may look youthful, but I'm getting on a bit. And the reality is sometimes I've come across this. impression, this attitude in the church that, , the church should stick to mission. News is a little bit [00:03:00] like, why, why do they do it? Why do they have people employed to do that? Wouldn't the budgets be better going to pastors and, and that's quite a big question to unpack today, but perhaps we can start having a think about it , and see where we get to, , Enno what do you think?
Enno Mueller: I think news is, , highly fascinating. . I mean, if you consider out of all of the Protestant denominations, we're the only one that's global. So you can, we might not be the largest in mere numbers, but we are the only one that's global left out of the Protestant movement. Now, I think there's multiple reasons for this, but I've wrestled with this question, what keeps us united as a church?
Enno Mueller: And I think, of course, I don't want to minimize the idea that we have the belief structure and , we have our 28 fundamental beliefs and we, , have, the idea of the, , Three angels message and the imminence of the second, the return of the second coming. So [00:04:00] I don't want to minimize that.
Enno Mueller: But on the other hand, I think one of the things that really unites us beyond the idea of our belief and our structure in that sense is the fact of being able to share stories.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I think
Enno Mueller: those of us that grew up in the church will have heard, , stories from the mission spotlight, for example. I remember when I grew up in Germany, like that was, and That dates me at this point, unfortunately.
Enno Mueller: , but I remember the carousels, the actual slides, before it actually went into the video production. But it was an idea that we had a window, , to be able to see Adventism outside of the smear, the mere, , small, narrow focus of our local congregation, and there's nothing wrong with our local congregation.
Enno Mueller: I don't want to minimize that either, because I think ministry happens there. But. It is, the beauty about Adventism is that we can go, , for example, like me right now, I have the opportunity to be here in Australia, and I'm here amongst brothers and sisters, , people that have the same faith, and it's a [00:05:00] beauty that we can actually travel and still have that extended faith family.
Enno Mueller: Uh
Jarrod Stackelroth: huh. Uh huh.
Enno Mueller: News stories help us.
Jarrod Stackelroth: The news helps to do that. Yeah.
Zanita Fletcher: Yeah. I think that story is often really overlooked and I think it's true what you're saying that you go to another country and you can just go to another church and all of a sudden it feels like you've still got family across the globe.
Zanita Fletcher: But I guess just to clarify, would you say that's like the main goal of these publications is to maintain this connectedness around the globe?
Enno Mueller: Yeah, I think, , publications in general., so for years I worked even with the Union publication, and I think even there the idea is how do we keep, , our church members informed, and how do we keep them engaged in the church. And I think even so, I used to work in a more smaller geographical territory.
Enno Mueller: Now, in the last couple of years, I've had the opportunity to work more on the global scale. , but again, I think the passion is and the drive is, , to help members understand and maybe not feel as isolated., even in the last place that I lived, [00:06:00] I used to be able to go on Sabbath to different churches and typically the churches I went to were more the smaller churches, where you have, , a pastor with multiple churches and then we would get, I would receive an invitation to preach or something of that nature.
Enno Mueller: And I feel sometimes when you're in a smaller church or if you are remotely, physically in a more remote location, you may not feel part of the overarching community. Church all together. And I think this is where stories this is where sharing news. Hey, you're not alone in this. You're not just the 10, 15 faithful followers here, but you're connected to a whole host of other people that have similar views and similar, , ideas and beliefs as you.
Enno Mueller: They may not be 100 percent the same because we have different cultures, we have different languages, so we express some things a little bit differently. But like, I think that's the beauty about being able to work in the idea , in publication, where, , , [00:07:00] and even in video dissemination, of news, like it doesn't just have to be in the print form, but that's the beauty of, I think, being able to pull our church a little bit closer.
Enno Mueller: And those people that feel a little bit marginalized could be, can be pulled in to the greater community of the Adventist church.
Zanita Fletcher: I think also what Jared shared at Digital Discipleship, he was talking about sharing our stories, not just the ones that we've overcome, but the ones that we're still in the middle of and are still struggling with and how we are.
Zanita Fletcher: kind of holding on to faith in those times. I know that, , our publications in Australia do share testimonies as well and they share people's struggles and so I think those stories can also, you can see someone the other side of the world struggling with the same thing and have that sense of I'm not alone even more.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Mm. It really builds up that community. , and I will smash some myths today. I reckon, , one of the, one of the things that I think holds people back. Sometimes Adventists have this interesting relationship with pride. We don't want to be proud. We don't want to necessarily [00:08:00] promote ourselves. And blow our own trumpet.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And that's potentially a healthy thing. If , we're looking at pride of self and lifting ourselves up about the other people. But I also find that sometimes churches, individuals don't like to share the news about what they're doing because they're like, Hey, it won't be significant enough to go to a higher level of the church in the publications, um, world or B.,
Jarrod Stackelroth: I shouldn't be proud , of that. I shouldn't promote myself over and above. It's just PR. It's just over and above everyone else. ,, what, what argument would you give to someone who said that? How would you explain to them that, perhaps the news purpose is a little different.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's a little more nuanced as to why they should share.
Enno Mueller: I think one, on the news side, if we, I know, , Zenita, you talked a little bit about profiles and testimonies, , but let me maybe veer a little bit more to like [00:09:00] covering an event or something that's maybe a little bit more newsy. If you do news as news, it's Not as, and you can add opinion into that by using quotes and quoting people, but you don't necessarily, you're not boastful in what you write.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yes.
Enno Mueller: , I actually have seen, and these are the stories that I, , in the past and even currently really like personally speaking that I know. Everybody has their personal preferences, but I like when I see a church doing something innovative, something that I haven't seen somewhere else, and all of a sudden, to me, what I find interesting about this is not just that it was done, but my mind, works then in how can I replicate that in my local congregation or in my contextual environment that I live in?
Enno Mueller: And I think that's where the news is more than just saying, Hey, look at what I've done. It's an ability to say, here's what we tried. , and I think, Zenita, you also mentioned what I appreciate, we can sometimes also talk about things that didn't go well, , or as well, and we can say, Hey, [00:10:00] we did something, we, we tried this, some of it worked, some of it may have, may not have worked, but it allows us to think more creatively, I think.
Enno Mueller: It's very easy for us to fall into patterns, in ministry even, and just repeat the same thing over and over again. And by being able to see, and news does this, and sharing stories about what other people do, it allows us to be creative in our approach to ministry in our local congregation.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I love that answer because that's a similar answer to the one I would give, like innovation, inspiration, actually giving people encouragement.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Like, Oh, I could do that in my local area. I've seen that happen with stories we've published in the record where churches have started whole ministries around what a story or an article they've read. And then it's actually transformed their community. So it's like multiplying the effect. It's passing on the effect and the impact.
Zanita Fletcher: I have a. A bit of a curious question, Enno. I'm sure [00:11:00] being the editor and the comms director, you are very passionate about this, you obviously are very passionate about news and stories and so on, but do you have any memories or experiences where, this really hit home and you were like, wow, this is so important, , whether it was a reaction someone had to something being printed or a response or just your own Experience with the magazine
Zanita Fletcher: throwing you on the spot.
Enno Mueller: You're putting me on the spot. And I'm wrestling a little bit with coming up with a really, really good example. I mean, it's always fascinating to me to read, letters that we receive. , and when you actually have people that, , that, , will respond to, some material, I think we all, those of us that are content creation and content creation is a.
Enno Mueller: I'm using that very intentional because that's much beyond just the written idea. Like that could be if you're a content creator on social media or if you create videos or whatever content you're creating, sometimes the challenge is you don't necessarily get feedback. So when you do, it's actually really.
Enno Mueller: And sometimes we do get also the feedback that is less [00:12:00] than pleasant, and sometimes that's very needed, right? Because sometimes we miss the mark on something, or we portrayed something, or we, we featured a story, or we wrote a story ourselves, and , we missed a perspective of an event, and somebody comes back and says, we missed the fact that you missed this opportunity to share X, Y, Z.
Enno Mueller: And I think, there's always validity in being able to, Get feedback like that as well. I'm trying to think, though, in the idea of what,
Enno Mueller: I don't have a concrete example. Unfortunately, right now, on top of my head of one particular event or a story that has happened. But I did. And just yesterday was thinking about an article that I read. , the way we do, news and the Adventist review We actually curate a lot of news, so we do some news generation ourselves, but it's a fraction compared to what we curate from the world church and for me, I get to read and I get to see, into the different countries and the different territories [00:13:00] and.
Enno Mueller: There are sometimes articles that stand out much more, , to me than others. And so yesterday, I think I was actually was mentioning Ashley, , one of the writers here at, , Adventist Record actually wrote a piece, a commentary piece,. This is several years back on being , an introvert and how to ministry.
Enno Mueller: And I remember this article still after reading hundreds and hundreds of articles every single year. Years later, this article still stands out in my mind that it actually deeply and touched me because it was something atypical and it was well written. It was well thought through and I deeply appreciated tackling a subject that was maybe not as common.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And so
Enno Mueller: there's some of those things that sometimes stand out. And I think for each one of us, that might be a little bit , different articles, different topics we reach out to us. But that's one over the years that actually really stood out in my mind.
Zanita Fletcher: I like that.
Jarrod Stackelroth: So, Enno, Adventist Review, tell [00:14:00] us a little bit about, the news at Adventist Review.
Jarrod Stackelroth: What does that involve? What are you doing? I know you've got some stats per year, how many stories you're getting out and where they're coming from , and how that sort of works. Just pull back the curtain a little bit and tell us what your job involves in, in the news space of gathering that information,
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah. , and obviously the Adventist world, we haven't really mentioned either, but that's one vehicle that they can go around the world, but there's also websites and things, but yeah, how do you gather
Enno Mueller: and spread the
Jarrod Stackelroth: news?
Enno Mueller: So maybe I'll just piggyback off of where you ended. In the Adventist review team, , we work on two publications, two primary publications, Adventist review, which is, The legacy ministry of sorts, , which was founded by James White.
Enno Mueller: It existed before the church formally was organized.
Enno Mueller: So that magazine, , used to be very instrumental in the church, and shared just, and was trying to bind the flock together is the terminology that was even used. [00:15:00] So that was the idea, like, Hey, how do we keep the church? together. And, , as we know, , Adventism comes from Battle Creek, Michigan, , from that geographical area.
Enno Mueller: So we, we find our heritage, even though I grew up in a different country and you're here in Australia. , the found, the formation and foundation of, , Adventism is , in America. And so Adventist Review grows from within North America and Adventist Review stays for many years. a little bit more of a North American centric publication.
Enno Mueller: And then in 2000, I believe it was 2006, John Paulson, the president of the General Conference at the time, had the vision of how do we communicate with the world church. And this is the birth of Adventist World, the magazine that goes around the globe. , it has a pretty good, , distribution, as of, last year, we had a monthly distribution of 1.
Enno Mueller: 4 million magazines a month. And so it has a pretty, , broad [00:16:00] reach and is translated into all kinds of different languages. That has advantages and it has disadvantages because we can't be as narrow, as specific, and as geographically relevant, perhaps, as sometimes the more than geographically locate, , narrow, , magazines like the Adventist Record or the Union magazines or the country magazines that we see in Europe and so on.
Enno Mueller: , but when it comes to what we do on the news side, you asked that question as well. , we try to be fairly engaged, , because there's great work that is being done in all of our divisions. , we try to regularly update our website. And so we, have in the past published 17 stories a week, , that we've curated from different parts of the world.
Enno Mueller: And where we share, , just the story about what's happening. And as you can imagine, because of language, culture and time zones and all of that, as sometimes it gets a little bit more tricky to get stories from other places of the world. But, , nevertheless, the intent is to be,, reflective of the world [00:17:00] church and to distribute, stories from across the world church.
Zanita Fletcher: I was going to be my next question was what's the deal with all these different magazines? So thank you for answering that. I feel like it's clarified that but , I guess something that we probably Jared can speak to this a little bit more is struggle with it with the record and sciences. Sometimes there's issues that are really important that people want to hear about and know about more but that are very controversial.
Zanita Fletcher: , How do you go with the because obviously especially Adventist world is going around various different cultures and countries And so that's probably even more difficult. How do you manage that? Like, do you still speak about them or are there things that you just avoid or what's your kind of rule of thumb there?
Enno Mueller: Well, it's not my problem because it's not in the news. So that's my editorial team. I can't speak on it. No, I'm happy to give you an insight. It is in our team. We have the more editorial focused team and we have the news team. So there's a little bit of a. Difference there., but your point is well taken.
Enno Mueller: , There [00:18:00] is an ability where we do listen to especially to division leaders. , so this would be, typically the three officers. They also come by our offices more frequently. just because there's regular meetings that they have in, at the general conference. So we take the opportunity at times to, listen to what feedback they give from us.
Enno Mueller: So that's very pivotal because as you can imagine, I'm trying to cover the globe and the nuances of all the different, issues that exist. is quite complex. And so sometimes there's an an idea of the traveling staff within the general conference that will give us feedback or our administration where they say hey we see this being a an acute topic that is being wrestled with in the church.
Enno Mueller: How can we address this? Now it becomes tricky. Because in some senses, we don't want to just, , approach it always from one angle or one culture. So, the especially so administrative view, because it's more [00:19:00] North America centric is in some senses a little bit. easier maybe to create content for, because it's for, I mean, even there, every country has its complexity and with the migration, world migration, that has to be considered as well.
Enno Mueller: But again, I would argue that our adventure view is a little bit easier to work with because you're dealing with a general. With a country or with a handful of countries that have a similar mindset when you go to the Adventist world publication on the editorial side, it becomes infinitely more complicated because The church is complicated.
Enno Mueller: It's not simple. The issues that exist in Nepal are different than in Germany. They are different in the UK than they are in Peru., the church is just facing different influences. And this is, I think, one of the things where we need to just be honest., I think as a church, we are influenced by the culture that we're around.
Enno Mueller: And I'm not saying that's necessarily a negative thing, but I think that's just a [00:20:00] reality. Of the challenges. So when we create content, how do we create content that's culturally relevant to the whole globe? That's a very difficult, , task to be able to. And I would mention, we try our best to be, , a curation of authors, you , to think broadly and to utilize, , the global network.
Enno Mueller: And so we intentionally go out of our way to, , acquire authors that are outside of the North American division. So because we're located in North American division, it's always easy to go into your own backyard and, you know, get, get the authors. So we intentionally, , look beyond North America to see who could actually contribute.
Enno Mueller: On a given topic, , on the theme that we're looking at doing, who could actually add some substance to this conversation that is maybe not just , the things that we have in within our backyard,
Jarrod Stackelroth: right? I feel like I know you've answered a difficult question. Carefully, which is good. Always good. , But it seems like in some ways you've [00:21:00] addressed the sort of any maybe theological controversies or maybe more the features side.
Jarrod Stackelroth: What about bad news? Reporting bad news? What's the responsibility of a church employee, especially a church organization that's official, that's employed by the church? To represent the church. How do we approach bad news? Because I think just not putting anything that's ever bad news in is not the way to go.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Maybe you think differently, but how do we approach bad news?
Enno Mueller: Feel like I'm going from one topic, difficult topic, to the next difficult topic. No, it's a very valid point. I mean, not everything is always sunny within the church. It's not always, , there's conflicts that happen. , I dealt with this much more when I was at the conference level. , there is the crisis.
Enno Mueller: There's a whole field that we in communication work on, which is called crisis communication. And that is when things don't go well in the church, be it the church. With our church members, be [00:22:00] it with conflicts within the church, be it even more egregious things where you have,, embezzlement, if you have, , other, when you have, , people that misstep and, abuse members, , be it, be it member to member, be it, employee to members, be it pastors or whoever you have, unfortunately that, those are stories that do exist, and I think there's a place to address Some of those things.
Enno Mueller: , when I've, I've reflected, , where is the place for the Adventist world magazine, for example, or for us to deal with this? , as much as on a personal professional level, I love crisis communication and it's something I miss engaging with. I'm not sure, , for the , for upholding our church member that it is necessarily helpful to deal with crisis.
Enno Mueller: If we would talk about all the crisis, I could fill every issue with just crisis with bad news. And I think what we've kind of determined in the Adventist Review and Adventist amongst the Adventist [00:23:00] Review staff, which then impacts the Adventist World magazine, is that we want to create a magazine that is uplifting and encouraging for church members.
Enno Mueller: And some of these challenges of the crisis , are very complex situations where we can't go into enough detail. , and sometimes we're even restricted. , I mean, from a communication perspective, we're sometimes restricted via through labor laws of the various regions of the world where we can disclose more or less.
Enno Mueller: And so sometimes we can't even completely disclose why we terminated an employee. And I know that creates angst and anxiety and sometimes that is the question, is the church doing the right thing? And we have sometimes gotten it wrong., and that, and I think this is why we have the governing structure of the church that is holding our leadership accountable.
Enno Mueller: So the executive committee on the various different levels of our church. We also have a process , , that we have, you know, the church, the conference, the union, the division, and then [00:24:00] the general conference, that there is some kind of way that administratively we can deal with discrepancies.
Enno Mueller: But when it comes to specifically the Adventist Review, we have made a conscious decision not to dive into so much the employment issues. If there is, for example, a termination of an employee, because one, In the global church , with the vast number of employees we have, we could be to the whole
Jarrod Stackelroth: issue with, I guess it was the general conference president that would be well newsworthy, but you're saying we don't go into all the nitty gritty around the place.
Enno Mueller: And I think there's been moments when even the Adventist review has ventured into this,, and even historically where it actually has taken a position when absolutely necessary.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yes.
Enno Mueller: , Case in point, , was, , during the Falkenberg era,, the Adventist Review did do an investigative journalism piece about trying to create some clarity amongst the confusion of the situation that [00:25:00] transpired at that time.
Enno Mueller: So I think there are moments, but we try to be very, , very specific when and where we cover that.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I Zenita's next question, but Zenita, take it away. I
Zanita Fletcher: don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure if you can, but, , I just wanted to touch on something. This was spoken about a digital discipleship a little bit, and it was the pressure that publications are under, not just because people trust publications less, , because people are typically trusting their peers.
Zanita Fletcher: Isn't people that have similar opinions more, but also just having to pump out more and more information and articles and stories and so on, because there's just so much out there and having to be present on all of these different social media platforms as well. , is that something that you're.
Zanita Fletcher: Experiencing Adventist Review, , and is this something that, , individuals and church members can, , get on board with, , is it, are they encouraged to submit things and send things, or do you just have a team of people who are working, doing that, getting the stories, writing the things?
Enno Mueller: Good [00:26:00] question. , So I'll, I'll start with the team, , team size. , on our team, , surprisingly enough, we are not, , that big on the new side. Even though we push out quite a bit of volume, , we have four of us and not all of us are full time. I'm actually the only full time employee. That works on news.
Enno Mueller: So we work with part time employees to be able to aggregate the news and then to collect some of that.
Enno Mueller: I think you're absolutely right.
Enno Mueller: , I think that's a challenge. I would urge,, maybe our Adventist readers to keep in mind. From what I have experienced and what I've seen within the Church, when it comes to our Adventist Church publications, and this is not just the Adventist Review, there's an actual editorial board, there's an actual process that goes through.
Enno Mueller: It's not so simple to just say, hey, I'm going to randomly put something up and it's just going to be my opinion, and so on. There's an actual process. There's, so in our case, we have, , Marcos Passaggi, who works on news aggregation, and he also writes some news. We have a copy editor. We have somebody that [00:27:00] uploads our content.
Enno Mueller: And then I work as a news editor, both more on the editorial , on the edit side, but also on the curation side , and determine , what news we might want to pick up or in, in building relationships with entities. But there's a process in all of this is what I want to, it's not just random.
Enno Mueller: It's not just, Hey, I feel frustrated with the church today. So I'm going to write something that is going to be negative towards the church. There's a process, and I think some of the other entities, and this is the challenge that we're facing as the church publications of sorts, where other entities are a little bit more agile, perhaps, and they write whatever they feel, , and it's this combination of news and commentary and their reflection.
Enno Mueller: And I would say they don't necessarily, at least my experience and what I've been able to observe is their process is a little bit different and maybe not as rigid as it is within the church. Now, one of the things you also, I think, ask the question of do, how do we, look , for, or, Deal with new submissions and that kind of [00:28:00] thing.
Enno Mueller: , we are always grateful to be able to get known stories to stories pitched to us. , but ultimately, I think the way this works really, really beautifully, , stories work really well. , on the local geographical area really well. So if you have a story and you have a union paper or if you have the paper like the Adventist Record, it's really, really great if you pitch that to that.
Enno Mueller: We, end up partnering with the publications and, sometimes scour their websites and sometimes I get stories pitched to us. And so , we have this, within the church, I think, this system where there's this, element of news can organically go to your local region and then like the other regions We pay attention to what's happening at the conference of at the union level and we are constantly looking like what?
Enno Mueller: Interesting news is happening And so we are always intrigued by the news That is created and that happens at the local church because again, like I said in the beginning, I think Where ministry [00:29:00] really happens. Yes, we had a wonderful conference at the Gold Coast just here over the weekend.
Enno Mueller: But where ministry happens day in, day out, week after week, is the local church. And that's where the stories, in my opinion, really are. The really wonderful, juicy, , good stories. They happen at the local church and those are the stories that I think all of us that work in Adventist publications I just sell us
Enno Mueller: Yearning to be able to get our hands on
Jarrod Stackelroth: hmm. Well, I'll take Zanita's question then since she didn't catch my handball We like to get practical here on Adventist Live, , and what can someone who's watching this, maybe they're not a news writer, maybe they found it interesting, the topics today, and they were a reader of Adventist Record, Adventist Review, different publications, but what can they do this week that can actually contribute to their faith, their church, , to God's work in the world?
Enno Mueller: I think there's two things. I encourage you to read what happens in [00:30:00] other churches, in other countries, because you may gain, as we mentioned earlier, you may gain some really creative, really cool ideas that you didn't think about before, and so don't hesitate to, to look beyond your community, look beyond what is happening outside of your union conference, , conference union, your country, your community.
Enno Mueller: and see what is happening and be inspired if even if it doesn't necessarily apply to you, see the faithfulness of our brothers and sisters that are faithfully living out their faith. And that I think that's one thing. There's a beauty of just engrossing yourself with the news that is happening worldwide.
Enno Mueller: And so I think there's beauty in being able to just, and then I think that also opens our eyes. , both from a personal perspective, but also from an Adventist perspective to, to realize, Hey, the world is bigger than my country. And especially in a culture, , in the Western cultures where popular populism, the political populism is at a rise and where [00:31:00] we're more, more nationalistic focused.
Enno Mueller: We are a global movement, and the stories, the global stories from our brothers and sisters across the globe can be uplifting to ourselves. But beyond that, I think there's the beauty of we're all we all many of us, at least. I mean, the smartphone adoption rate is incredibly high. You all have tools. , tools that journalists , were itching for 15 years ago, everyone now has in their pocket.
Enno Mueller: You have a device that can actually take phenomenal pictures. Take a few pictures of your next church event. That's a little bit creative. That is a little bit, , different , that , you're doing that is reaching the community. Take a few pictures, take some B roll footage, , or some video footage of like just, what actually is happening.
Enno Mueller: And all you have to do is write down two, three paragraphs, maybe get a quote by one person that attended the event and just ask them one question or a handful of questions that just ask, what did [00:32:00] you enjoy about this? What did you like? Write those things down. It's pretty simple. Submit it. And yes, we would be happy to get that.
Enno Mueller: And we're always happy to, I'm pretty sure you guys are happy to, , take that content, refine it a little bit, , edit it, maybe move a few pieces around. And all of a sudden we have a wonderful story from your local congregation.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Definitely, and I think the other thing we can all do is share content that we're reading.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I think we often read our content for our own edification, but you never know who's reading your social media channels. So with that, I'll just segue to say, if you've enjoyed today's conversation, please share it with your. Networks, please share it. , however you've watched it or listened to it, you can share it,, in many different places, but you're about to head back to the States. , we're hoping to, facilitate you getting to at least a couple of koala or something before you leave. But we just pray God's blessing on the Adventist review team and yourself and safe travels. [00:33:00] And for all of our regular record live family, we'll see you again next week.
Jarrod Stackelroth: God bless.
Zanita Fletcher: Thanks Enno. It's been good.
Enno Mueller: Thank you for having me.
