Thousands attended the Sabbath, June 26, culmination of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's week-long Youth and Laity "Evangeliving" Convocation held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. More than 12,000 people filled "El Palacio de los Deportes" Stadium
Thousands attended the Sabbath, June 26, culmination of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s week-long Youth and Laity “Evangeliving” Convocation held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. More than 12,000 people filled “El Palacio de los Deportes” Stadium (“The Sports Palace”), while an overflow of some 3,000 listened outside. “Evangeliving” means evangelism as a way of life, according to organizers.
Pastor Jan Paulsen, world president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was the featured speaker. Along with pastors and administrators from the Inter-American church region, Paulsen congratulated the hundreds of youth and laity for their tremendous accomplishments and encouraged and challenged his hearers to continue shining their personal light for others.
“Young people there have been sent a message: ‘You are a critical component of the church’s life,’ by being specifically identified there. And, whenever you have young people together, and you put them on stage, you will have enthusiasm, wanting to become creative participants of the church. So, I have looked at the event with wonder and amazement; there was a sense of jubilation experienced by the participants,” Paulsen says.
Paulsen’s participation centered on the convocation’s theme, “Living His Life,” and, he notes, “Christ defined the components of our lives, the minimum for us to have assurance of eternity.”
One of those components of a Christian belief is “living in anticipation of Christ’s coming,” he says.
A total 800 delegates made up of young people, laypeople, pastors, and leaders were united in demonstrating the gospel in their community, says Pastor Bernardo Rodriguez, youth director for the church in Inter-America.
“To do this we sat down and met in groups to study their vision for the contemporary church of today,” Rodriguez adds.
Youth and lay people studied a series of questions addressing their needs from spiritual and financial support for youth activities, to how to become a friendlier church in the surrounding community, to how best close the gap between young and elderly people in the church, to how to retain members.
“We set out to prove that the church as a whole can work together by bringing pastors, laypeople and youth for the first time ever, to sit, plan and discuss how to best do ‘Evangeliving,’ [which is] living the gospel,” says Pastor Israel Leito, president of the church in Inter-America. “We achieved that by bringing these different departments and encouraging the church to function as one and not a combination of segments,” he adds.
The church in Inter-America will address concerns and plan to implement new youth programs and events at the local church level according to each culture, says Dr. Carlos Archbold, education director for Inter-America.
The event was packed with seminars on evangelism, family life, personal ministry, youth leadership and witnessing. There were also seminars on Pathfinders, a club for Adventists age 10 to 16. Nightly presentations were given by delegates of each of the region’s 15 unions, or local church territories.
On June 24, delegates, along with Pathfinders and their “Master Guides,” distributed 20,000 bottles of water and literature in 15 communities in the island’s capital of Santo Domingo. They also performed puppet ministry presentations in the street, and performances by drama and musical groups.
“It was so wonderful to see all the different cultures represented in our division [territory] and how we can unite our forces to finish the work God has entrusted us by living the gospel,” says Rodriguez.
A portion of the concluding Sabbath activities involved special recognition of Maranatha Volunteers International for its dedicated work in building 50 churches and eight schools on the island. Completion of the project is scheduled for October.
