Baptizing 250 new Seventh-day Adventist church members anywhere is, of course, good news.  But, in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, with a population of around 3 million, church leaders say it’s especially good news.

The baptisms, local church leaders say, come as a result of dedicated outreach planning and a series of events earlier this year which resulted in the first 186 new members. Another 64 joined the ranks after a final, citywide series of meetings, called “Life at Its Best,” conducted by Pastor G.T. Ng, executive secretary of the Adventist Church’s Southern Asia-Pacific region. The July 10 to 15 meetings averaged an attendance of 500 people nightly.

According to local Adventist leaders, a societal move from rural areas to big cities such as Surabaya may work to the church’s advantage in reaching new people. As people leave their rural communities to find better jobs in urban areas, the church aims to reach out to them with the gospel message. Church leaders say they hope that, by reaching out to new urbanites, they can reach people who otherwise may not leave their ancestral faith for Christianity.

The Surabaya city evangelism project is funded by local Adventist churches in Western Indonesia as part of the larger Hope for Big Cities initiative started last year. Hope for Big Cities offerings were taken worldwide to promote the planting of churches in 55 of the world’s largest cities over the next four years. In the Southern Asia-Pacific Adventist church region, those cities include Bangkok, Thailand and Jakarta, Indonesia.

More than 191,000 Seventh-day Adventist Christians worship weekly in 1,234 congregations throughout Indonesia.