October 2026 | Silver Spring, USA [Jounghan “Justin” Kim]
A life-sized dinosaur fossil stands in front of Google’s headquarters in California. Of all things—a dinosaur, greeting the people of a tech giant.
For a long time, I wondered about it until an Adventist friend who works at Google explained: The fossil is part of new employee orientation. The message is simple: dinosaurs are gone because they failed to adapt to a changing environment. Google reminds its employees that, as powerful as they may be today, if they fail to adapt, they too will disappear.
What about us? The truth of the Bible cannot be changed. It is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That is our message. But the way we share that unchanging truth can adapt to each new environment.
The World Is Searching
What do people talk about most in the digital world? According to a Statista survey, politics ranks number one and celebrities number two. But the third may surprise you: religion.1
Look at Google Trends. For many years, online searches for ‘second coming’ remained relatively modest. In recent years, however, search interest has increased steadily, reaching its highest level during the period examined.2 When the world trembles, it types its questions into a search bar—and it is searching for the distinct Adventist message of the Second Coming. The digital world is our new mission field.
Ellen White wrote, “Let every worker . . . study, plan, devise methods, to reach the people where they are. We must do something out of the common course of things. We must arrest the attention.”3 She wrote that a century before the smartphone. If she stood in our pulpits today, she would point at the device in your pocket.
The Most Powerful Way to Reach the Digital World
A few years ago, the General Conference brought together a digital evangelism team with one simple mission: find the best way to reach people online. In 2019, we ran a global digital marketing campaign to present the gospel in ways we know best: Bible studies and health seminars. Each came with a clear invitation, and each bore fruit—about four responses per dollar spent for Bible studies, six responses per dollar for the health message. Encouraging numbers.
Then we presented one more thing, and it changed everything. Out of a sample of more than a million people, this single invitation drew thirty-three responses per dollar—almost eight times the interest of our traditional approaches.
It involved prayer. “We are your neighbour. We want to pray for you. Send us a message.”
Three lessons emerged from the experience. First, people need your prayers. Second, we can reach our communities not only with Bible studies and health seminars but also powerfully with prayer. Third, prayer opens the door to follow-up conversations. When someone asks, “May I pray for you?”—who says no?
The reason this works especially well online is that researchers have found that people open their hearts more in digital communication than in person—and prayer is precisely the act of opening the heart. Online, prayer becomes the most natural bridge of all.
When someone shares a prayer request with you, it is more than a request. It is a golden moment—the beginning of a spiritual relationship. So do not just say, “I’ll pray for you,” and then pray quietly on your own. Actually send your prayer through your digital device: a short, personal, written prayer with a verse of Scripture, one they can read with their own eyes. As they read it, the Holy Spirit speaks. Within three days, reach out again: “I’m still praying for you. How are you today?” As you share something sacred, a spiritual friendship is born. In this way, you deliver a personal message of blessing in prayer—and you become a digital missionary.
Everyone Can Be a Digital Missionary
Why do so many assume digital ministry belongs to the younger generation? Because when we hear digital ministry, we think of content creation—filming, editing, designing. While content is a big part of digital mission, there is something even more important that we often ignore: engagement. The digital world is built for two-way conversation, and without engagement, our content rarely travels from the digital world to the local church.
Digital ministry is not the responsibility of just the young. It is the work of the willing. Although not everyone can be a content creator, everyone can be an engager—a prayer warrior who sends prayers continuously and leads a soul toward the Lord—a friend who reflects God’s love in every message.
Some years ago, I preached about digital evangelism to a small country congregation. Most heads in the pews were white-haired, and the church’s media system was, to put it kindly, vintage—the projector still ran on an old VGA cable. At the end of the service, a senior in a wheelchair approached me. “Pastor,” he said. “You are the answer to my prayer. Because of my health, I cannot go out. I cannot visit anyone. But I have a phone—and I know how to pray. I can send my prayers to others.”
He may never film a video. He may never send a Tweet. But he is an engager—connecting hearts, click by click, to one another and God. The member who cannot leave her home can still pray, write, and knock on the door of a heart around the world every day.
The Bridge From the Local Church to Online Engagement
I have helped implement digital prayer ministry in about 50 local churches and followed up with each one. The results fell into three groups. Some congregations saw wonderful fruit—new people, new energy, real excitement. Some saw modest results. And some said, “It did not work.” Same method, similar communities, similar settings. Why the difference?
Two observations—and they are connected. First, leadership. Where the pastor and head elder were highly motivated, it flowed to the members. Their ownership was full—and it worked. Second, that motivated leadership opened the door to something more. The fruitful churches never treated this as one department’s initiative. It was a whole-church initiative, naturally combined with the ministries they already had—community services, prayer ministry, Bible study groups—and it was far more effective as a result. I call this the hybrid approach.
A single mother sent a prayer request: she was discouraged, unable to find an affordable plumber. The church prayed and sent her a written prayer. Then they did more—the church’s volunteer service team offered to help her for free. She said yes. Online engagement became in-person engagement.
A Buddhist woman kept sending the same request: “Please pray for my faith.” Months later, she wrote, “I want to read the Bible. Where can I buy one?” The member who had been praying for her asked for her address, bought a Bible, and delivered it in person. “This is my first Bible in my life,” the woman said. Later, she came to church.
If someone writes, “Tomorrow I have surgery. I’m scared. Please pray for me,” not only send the prayer but also offer more: an anointing service, a visit, or prayer in person.
Because a critical broken link often exists between online engagement and the local church, the hybrid approach is the bridge. When you combine digital prayer with in-person care—visitation, service, presence—people do not just receive our messages. They walk through our doors. And that is the purpose of digital ministry.
Your First Digital Prayer
Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33, NKJV). If we are honest, most of our prayer time goes to “all these things”—family, health, jobs. But Jesus asks for something prior: evangelistic prayer. Prayer that asks God for souls before it requests anything else.
So, choose one name right now: a friend, a neighbour, a coworker, whoever the Holy Spirit just brought to your mind. Then send something like this:
Hi, [name]. I thought of you today, and I want you to know I just prayed for you: “Dear Father, thank You for my friend [name]. You promised, ‘I am with you always’ (Matt. 28:20). Please stay close to [name] today and strengthen [his/her] faith. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
That is the whole ministry: a greeting with their name, a prayer of just a couple of sentences with one short verse. Short and sincere is more powerful than eloquent.
Now three things. Send it today, while the name is still warm on your heart. Make it continuous, not a one-time gesture. Within two or three days, write again: “I’m still praying for you. How are you?” The harvest is not in the first message. It is in the faithful, day-after-day knocks on the door of a heart.
OneVoice27: Mission for All
In September 2027, the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church will mark the 2,000th anniversary of the moment Jesus began His public ministry at the Jordan River. The church has set aside that month for one of the largest unified gospel proclamations we have ever attempted: OneVoice27. The theme is “All things new: hope starts here” (Rev. 21:5). The vision: Mission for All.
How does a worldwide church speak with one voice? Through every method. Carried by every member. Personal visits. Family Bible studies. Health ministry. Literature. Public evangelism. Radio and television. And now the screen is already in our pockets. Five billion people currently live part of every day on a screen, and we cannot leave that field untouched—not if we are the people of Revelation 14:6, sent “to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people.”
The months before September 2027 are a runway for takeoff, and the engine underneath every method is prayer. Imagine more than 24 million Adventists and 185,000 churches and companies sending one message: “We are your neighbour. We want to pray for you.” Imagine our neighbours knowing the Adventist Church as a house of prayer—and Adventists as men and women of prayer. If that happens, I believe Jesus will return sooner.
The Last Words Never Written
Today, when young people lose hope, they do not write their last words on paper. They record their last words on social media.
A young man in California had lost all hope. He was about to end his life. As he opened his social media, he felt completely alone—as though no one cared. But the advertisement he saw on his device was clear: “We care about you. The Seventh-day Adventist Church wants to pray for you. Send us a message.”
Instead of writing his final words, he clicked on the ad and sent us his prayer request. We received it, and we prayed together. But here is the key lesson: we not only prayed—we sent our prayers back to him through social media. When he read them, the Holy Spirit touched his heart. He survived.
When one of the most traditional practices of our faith meets the newest technology in human history, God saves His precious souls.
A church prayed—and served—and reached a single mother. A member prayed, and a Buddhist woman held her first Bible. A man in a wheelchair is praying right now from a home he cannot leave. Somewhere tonight, someone is typing what they believe are their last words—and your prayer may be the message that reaches them first.
OneVoice27 does not begin in September 2027. It starts with one prayer, sent today, in Jesus’ name. And the question we cannot avoid is:
Are you in?
1 Statista Research Department, “Topics on Which Internet Users Have Seen Trolling Online According to Internet Users in the United States as of August 2017,” Statista, August 2017, https://www.statista.com/statistics/380051/topics-witness-trolling-behavior-internet/.
2 Google Trends, “Second Coming,” worldwide search interest, accessed August 4, 2026, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=second%20coming.
3 Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1946), 122, 123.
[Photos: Nastyaofly / Envato]
The original version of this article was posted on the Ministry Magazine website.
