In 2024 under the leadership of Pr Victor Kulakov, Ministerial Secretary at the New Zealand and Pacific Union (NZPUC), the MD Portal was expanded to the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, bringing a new emphasis on ministry leadership and development, and granting unprecedented access to resources for the pastors in these territories.
The Portal is also being translated into French to allow pastors in French-speaking territories to use MD in their own language from mid 2025. The translation project is a joint partnership between AdTec and the NZPUC, and will open doors for other French-speaking nations to also engage with MD.
Following the success of the pilot in North New South Wales, the South Queensland Conference will roll out Thrive in 2025. As one of largest Conferences, South Queensland hosts large Summer Camps, Big Camp, and over Easter 2025 will host a large Pathfinder Camporee at Samford, North West of Brisbane. The move to Thrive will put an end to relying on email alone to send contacts through to the churches for followup. Instead, now the Youth Department will simply upload their decisions list to Thrive and assign each name to the relevant church for followup. Thrive will handle all consent processed, screen Bible Mentors, and ensure that church members are reminded to followup their contacts in a timely manner.
As Thrive is integrated with other tools (event software, membership Database etc) these process will be further automated, cutting effort and costs required to see that our young people are nurtured on their Journey with Jesus. In time and as more Conferences engage with Thrive, Union and Division wide contact-generators (like Faith FM, Websites, Hope VA etc) will also feed their contacts directly into Thrive for local church followup.
In a desire to manage spiritual journeys with greater care, North New South Wales Conference in February became the first Conference to soft launch the new Thrive app.. Working with its pastors, chaplains and Bible workers, President Cristian Copaceanu and his team have been working with Adventist Technology to embed Thrive, establishing a new level of diligence when it comes to contact follow up.
The Thrive app is designed to scaffold the discipleship journey, solving a number of historical challenges that the church has faced in seeking to nurture every person who desires to grow in their relationship with Jesus, toward baptism and beyond.
Starting with contacts coming through from Summer camps over the year end, the NNSW Conference Youth Department was able to import all decisions for Bible study directly into Thrive, instantly assigning them to the correct Pastors and their churches for followup. A similar process is in place with the Arise Bible school, and in time, it is envisaged that this opportunity will be available to all entities, churches, schools, camps and Big Camps where decisions are made for Christ - around the Conferences, Union and Division.
In cases where contacts were also attending Adventist schools, Thrive facilitates the sharing of contacts, enabling Pastors and Chaplains to combine their efforts to work together seamlessly.
Further supporting the discipleship journey, Thrive also reminds leaders and church members responsible for follow up to continue with regular contact with each person at regular intervals, escalating a contact if no activity is logged within a reasonable timeframe.
In the words of Pr Matt Atcheson of Adventist Technology, who is also the technical lead on Thrive, “We hope that in time, Pastors, Conferences, Unions and the Division will be able to see the discipleship movement at each level of the church in real time, leading to better planning, resourcing and decisions.”
At the GAiN Conference in Thailand in 2024, AdTec staff met with the team from the South East Asian Division to explore how Hope VA could help them take the gospel deeper into unreached people groups and territories. Following further discussions in subsequent months, Hope VA will be rolled out in SSD from 2025, beginning with an English version on WhatsApp and Messenger in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.
Translation into Tagalog and Bahasa will also commence, in order that people living in the Philippines and Indonesia (two of the largest WhatsApp users in the world) will have access to Hope VA in their own language.
To keep costs to a minimum and mission at its best, all learnings, content and IP for Hope VA is shared freely with new countries, including social media advertising samples, landing pages, technology and lessons. We are excited to see what difference Hope VA will make when as she is released onto social media platforms in these countries in 2025.
The Northern Conference, part of the Southern-Indian African Division (SID) is based in Johannesburg South Africa recently explored the potential of the Ministry Development Portal to help their pastors better lead, develop and resource their leadership from internship to Retirement. Training sessions took place at the Northern Conference Minister's meetings in Sedaven in October, with continuing training and support being provided as the team transitions from activity-based reporting to leadership-style Ministry Mapping tools designed to help pastors more fully engage their local church leaders. "This is just what we have been looking for!" said Pr Reece Anderson when he discovered the MD Portal. It is hoped that other Conferences in SID will benefit from the pilot in Northern Conference.;
The North American Division have been researching the best solution for their needs as they look for software to rollout across their 7000 churches in 2025. Their search led them to the team at AdTec, and to the Thrive app which fulfilled their key requirements around integration, contact management, consent, privacy, adaptability, ease of use, and price point. The team at AdTec are excited to be partnering in Mission with the team from AIM at NAD, and installing Thrive to help AIM channel all contacts from a range of online and analogue sources through to the relevant local churches and leaders. We are looking forward to a full and successful rollout by mid-2025 in time for Pentecost 2025.
In 2024 AdTec and Adventist Media teamed up to take Hope VA to the next level within the South Pacific Division. When early testing showed the potential for Hope VA to reach thousands online in ways that post or web-based Bible studies were unable to do, it made sense for Hope VA to become Adventist Media's new digital Bible school. This new collaboration leverages the media skills of AM with the technical skills of AdTec. At the Mission and Union levels, Pr Wayne Boehm has been working with Bible school staff across Papua New Guinea to realign processes, structures and ministry positions to maximise online reach through Hope VA. Together AdTec and AM have also been streamlining the flow of data from advertising to landing page to Hope VA so that realtime data can be used to improve social media advertising and drive missional decision-making. Similar efforts are planned for the Missions of the TPUM.
We are pleased to report that the Adventist Church Accounting System (ACAS) is now live, replacing the old Tithes and Offerings system! Commencing development in May 2021, the new system, went live after 18 months of development in November 2022. During that time Adventist Technology supplied between 4 and 7 of our own team fully engaged in the project at any given time, including roles from product ownership, development, testing, and project management. We also used software developers from an external company that helped to guide us in architectural matters and provide us with flexible development capacity.
What was really exciting during the project was the level of support and engagement from Conference staff in testing and in managing their church treasurers to make the changes as seamlessly as possible. The results of this effort ensured that the most churches continued working in the system with minimal disruption during the changeover. Huge thanks go to Conference support staff for their efforts in managing, training and supporting their churches during migration. We also appreciated the significant investment of their time in the months leading up to go live to make sure all data was migrating appropriately and helping us test various elements of the new system. This has a long project thus far, but it’s important to note that it is not yet complete. The initial go live was the direct replacement of T&O, phase 1. We are not in a cycle of bug fix and minor enhancements, expecting early to mid 2023 to proceed to phase 2 for more significant improvements.
"Hope VA" is a virtual assistant who offers a range of Bible studies to any student who sends her a message with the words 'Bible study". Hope VA is promoted online by Adventist Media, and supported behind the scenes by AdTec. The exciting part of this project is the ability to see connections being made in real time, as we are now able to track attendees from their first connection through to their studies with Hope VA. Already she has become the most active evangelist in PNG already, with around 1000 students engaging with her on WhatsApp at any one time.
Recently Hope VA was expanded to the Messenger platform which is being trialled by across the TPUM in 2025. In recent months we have begun a collaboration with the South East Asian Division (SSD) and are planning a rollout (in English) across the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, with local translations to follow soon after.
Want to know more about this project? Let us know at [email protected].
Remember Adhub? Designed to support members and leaders with discipleship journeys from first contact and before, through to baptism and beyond, adhub was designed and created to meet a vital need - helping the church disciple others in a way that made sure people didn't fall through the cracks!
The concept was powerful, and the technology was being used effectively in a number of locations, but the project itself encountered several and varied challenges which ultimately overcame its progress - much to the disappointment of those who had designed it, and those who were using it.. So... we are currently working on a new solution that overcomes those same challenges! Late in 2022, a project charter was mapped out together with the AUC, and together we are now building version 2 - using cheaper and more agile technology. Once built and tested, the plan is to first trial and prove the concept in the South New South Wales Conference (thanks team!), before reviewing the next steps. Those next steps will either be to further strengthen the project as built, rebuild it for higher capacity and wider rollout, or retire the project if it's not proving fruitful.
For more information on this project, or to send us your naming suggestion, reach out to us at [email protected].
