Dallas, Texas—The week of June 21-25, members of the Beyond Today team traveled to the annual National Religious Broadcasters conference. Victor Kubik wrote the following:

The NRB Christian Media Convention is the premier conference for Christian broadcasters, media pastors, program producers, film producers, webmasters, social media managers, bloggers, podcasters, authors, publishers and other communications professionals.

As we all know, the Church faced a highly unusual year in 2020 and into 2021. For several months, our church services were largely changed from in-person attendance to streaming TV productions into members’ homes. Many outreach efforts for preaching the gospel took on different forms. Some of what we did with emergency workarounds in live streaming, for example, has given rise to new ways to preach the gospel to the public and feed our people through online sermons, Bible studies, discussion groups and new ways of communication. Forums and workshops here have addressed the technical aspects of connecting and various techniques of presentation.

At this conference we are gaining knowledge by talking to people who are successful in what they do, and who can give us good advice. For me, podcasting is of particular interest and I’ve gone from one podcast in progress to another to gain further insight into this medium.

Another interesting presentation was about the power of telling a story through your speaking and writing. After all, the Bible is a compendium of stories that tell the story of humanity.

One highlight for us was a luncheon with Phil Cooke who is a writer, television producer and media consultant based in Burbank, California, who gave a noon presentation on Tuesday. Afterwards, we were able to speak privately with him about the trends and questions asked by the public, as he saw them. We live in a time like no other with divisions, anger, intolerance and indecency. Yet, in the midst of this darkness and morass there is hope—as not all are duped. A study has shown that 80 percent of people who don’t attend or belong to a church are well aware that “something is out of control” in the world and are looking for someone to give them answers. Can we be the ones to do this?

We in the United Church of God are blessed with superb media resources. We have well-trained ministers and writers. We have a state-of-the-art television studio that will soon also have the capacity to produce animated presentations.

Every day I pray to God for insight and direction. Are we effectively preaching the gospel? Are we focused on making disciples? We need a unified, zealous effort to renew our efforts to proclaim the glorious truth of God and Jesus Christ to all the world. As this world and its ways decay, we want to proclaim a message of joy and of a coming Kingdom. We want to bring hope, real hope. UN