11 September 2018 | Hagegården, Sweden [Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission with Victor Hulbert]
Three hundred guests celebrated the miracle story at the opening of LifeStyleTV’s new headquarters at Hagegården, Sweden on 8 September 2018.
Seventh-day Adventist leaders joined the guests in rural Sweden for the opening of a new headquarters for LifeStyleTV, a supporting media ministry, and to celebrate the remarkable story of how its Adventist founder turned an opera singer’s mansion into a television studio to proclaim Jesus’ soon coming to Scandinavia.
LifeStyleTV founder Claus Nybo described the new media centre as a miracle from God in a stirring Sabbath morning presentation in a concert hall-turned-television studio in Brunskog, a Swedish town located about 110 miles (180 kilometres) east of Norway’s capital, Oslo.
“God has done something that we couldn’t even imagine,” Nybo told about 300 gathered guests, including Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson, division and union leaders, Hope Channel and 3ABN executives, and donors. “We thought we would build a new studio where we were.”
Instead, he said, LifeStyleTV received a mansion worth seven times more than its construction budget.
Church leaders, many of whom spent Friday night in the mansion’s luxury guestrooms, voiced astonishment at the story and offered praise to God.
“I’m so impressed with what you have here, what God has done here,” Wilson said during his Sabbath sermon. “God had His eye on this the whole time.”
“We have a God of miracles,” said Raafat Kamal, president of the Trans-European Division, whose territory includes Sweden.
Union presidents from Denmark, Norway and Sweden all expressed how they saw this as an opportunity to expand media opportunities and outreach across Scandinavia. Tor Tjeransen, Communication director for the Norwegian Union, stated, “What is taking place here at LifeStyleTV should not be humanly possible. There are far too few members to be able to pull this off. Thanks be to God that he makes wonders, and Lifestyle television is the only channel that transmits the Adventist message 24/7 in Scandinavia.”
Origins of a Miracle
The miracle began when Nybo and his team began praying in 2011. They asked God to give LifeStyleTV a bigger studio to replace its cramped makeshift studio in the southern Swedish town of Hörby, where it had been airing lifestyle-focused and Bible-based programming around the clock on satellite for five years.
By 2015, LifeStyleTV managed to obtain half the funds needed to construct a larger building. Then nothing progressed further.
Blueprints for the new building were drafted and redrafted. The amount of money on hand required a studio that was too small for the equipment. But plans for a larger studio cost too much.
Finally, Nybo received a building permit and decided to step out in faith. He organized a ground-breaking ceremony for the new building on November 5, 2017. The plan was to open the new building in early September 2018. [See Ground-breaking expansion for new LifeStyleTV studio.]
It rained heavily on Nov. 5, and the ceremony was held in rubber boots and under umbrellas.
Unexpectedly, the ceremony resulted in a surge of donations.
“That step in faith inspired other people, and we raised the rest of the money to build in one month,” Nybo said.
But the rain continued throughout the rest of the month and December, making it impossible to start work on the foundation.
While waiting, the LifeStyleTV team looked online for other options and found a music-retreat centre built by an opera singer on sale. Several team members wanted to inspect the property in Brunskog, located about 310 miles (500 kilometres) to the north. But others argued that there was no need to visit because all plans were in place to construct at the current location.
At last, Nybo and his wife, Theresa, called the estate agent and arranged a visit to the mansion. When they arrived, however, the agent called to say that the owner was in Spain and couldn’t provide a tour. The couple walked around the property but couldn’t see much. Even the curtains were drawn. As they got back into the car to leave, the phone rang. The agent said the owner had unexpectedly returned a day early from his trip and would arrive at the property in a few minutes.
Unexpected Encounter
Moments later, the owner pulled up in his car, took one look at Theresa Nybo, and exclaimed, “Where have I met you?”
The two had never met.
It turned out that the owner had been watching LifeStyleTV and recognized her from a cooking programme that she hosts.
“This meeting has to be providential!” the owner said.
Nybo prayed about what to do. He sought the advice of Wilson, Kamal, and Robert Sjölander, president of the Swedish Union of Churches Conference. He asked major donors whether they would mind if he bought the centre instead of constructing the new studio.
“The response was beyond anything we could imagine,” he said. “The excitement in their eyes and [people] saying, ‘We will help. We are going to secure this together.’”
LifeStyleTV opened its new headquarters on Sabbath, 8 September, fulfilling Nybo’s prediction at the ground-breaking ceremony in November 2017. But instead of moving into a new building, it moved into an acoustically perfect structure with facilities that far exceeded everyone’s dreams.
“If there is anything that I have learned from LifeStyleTV, it is that God wants us to dream big but start with what we have,” Nybo concluded. [tedNEWS]
First published in Adventist Mission. To find out more about LifeStyleTV visit their website: http://lifestyletv.se/
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Sajitha Forde-Ralph, associate editor
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Website: www.ted.adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division. Readers are free to republish or share this article with appropriate credit including an active hyperlink to the original article.
