With the close of its satellite evangelism series in Kiev, Ukraine, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has completed a satellite evangelism series throughout its 13 global church regions. Mark Finley, speaker/director emeritus of “It Is Written,” an Adventist television ministry, and director of the church’s Center for Global Evangelism, led the series in an area of the world that was once hostile to any kind of religion.
At the close of the meetings, 491 people at the local site committed their lives to Christ, signaling an end to that region’s anti-religious past. Some 4,000 others who had watched the meetings via satellite from around the world were also baptized.
Finley, who just last year led a month-long satellite series in Rwanda that resulted in 10,000 people joining the church, says, “The potential was just outstanding” for Kiev.
Finley emphasized that these numbers are possible partially because of the support of church members.
“I have no illusions that in three weeks my meetings did all the work. It was the spirit of God and relationships with lay people,” he says.
Church members gave Bible studies to their friends before the meetings started and during the meetings the It Is Written team organized a Bible study and baptismal class. At the end of the meetings nearly 300 finished the Bible studies.
Finley also notes that, “People today in the [former] Soviet Union are open to spiritual values.”
While this particular series garnered thousands of viewers each night, both at the local site and via satellite, it is less than the hundreds of thousands that used to flock to such meetings just after the fall of communism, Finley says.
He says back then “it was more of a novelty. Today it’s the more serious people—the thinkers who realize that Communism doesn’t have the answer and neither does Western materialism.”
Holding the series in other countries in the region could have caused political and religious conflicts. However, the Adventist Church in Euro-Asia, with headquarters in Russia, believed the former capital of the Communist empire, Kiev, was perfectly poised to handle the series. There are 5,000 Adventists worshiping in 25 churches there.
In addition to strong lay support, Finley credits church leaders in the region for putting their full resources behind the meetings. “We had such high outstanding spiritual leadership,” he says.
One example of that support is in the final number of downlinks that carried the series. The original goal was to provide a satellite downlink to 300 sites, but the church in Euro-Africa was so enthused, Finley says, that the meeting was carried to more than five times as many sites. The meetings were viewed in homes, churches, public television channels, in public government buildings and 10 prisons.
In one of those prisons on the Siberian border, Michael Kulakov, who in time became president of the Adventist Church in Euro-Asia, was imprisoned for his religious beliefs.
In some areas of the world believers can still face jail time for holding public evangelism meetings. Finley says the It Is Written team heard from one country where government officials were surprised that a religious group had the technological expertise to broadcast evangelistic meetings via satellite. “We did not know it was possible to do this—If we had known this was possible we would have passed a law against it,” Finley quotes the man as saying.
Finley and his wife, Ernestine, who have conducted more than 100 evangelistic series, continue to experience spiritually exciting moments. “Probably the most touching moment for me spiritually,” says Finley, came out of a visit to a prison.
“I have preached in prisons all over the world and those were the hardest, coldest prisoners I’ve ever spoken to,” he says of the Bucema prison, just outside of Kiev. “I made a little appeal to the prisoners and one hand went up. I thought, ‘I didn’t reach these people,’” he says.
On the last night of the Kiev meetings a representative of the prison attended the meeting. He told Finley that prisoners were so impressed that they presented him with a painting of a dish that represents the satellite as the door through which they met Jesus.
The Kiev meetings were translated into Russian, Ukranian, Romanian and English, although there were multiple languages used at local sites. The It Is Written team has received reports from 32 countries on the impact that the meetings have had on attendees.
There were 30 satellite downlink sites in Kyrgyzstan, which is in the middle of a political upheaval. Despite the instability following the overthrow of President Askar Akayev, there were 25 baptisms in that country.
A new church was established in Kiev before Finley left. He says it is better for new believers to start their own churches with a new pastor instead of integrating them into an already existing church.
In his role as director for Global Evangelism for the Adventist Church, Finley helps facilitate evangelistic meetings. Major meetings like Kiev, he says, become a training ground for those who want to get involved in evangelism.