Southern California Conference
Pastors Reach Out to the World from Los Angeles
BETTY COONEY
Tim Chan and Lana Lui are the Bible-story team for the Cantonese podcasts. Cecil Ma, producer-director of the Cantonese podcasts, is on the left.
over a Vietnamese radio network, reaching 13 area,” he said, “so I am excited about podcasting Vietnamese stations in the U.S. to share the good news with them.” Being able Podcasts and other resources posted online to do this outreach has been challenging for Dok can be heard globally, but more than 200 and others in the podcast group: some needed languages are spoken in the Los Angeles area. to invest in better computers; others were “We are delighted that the podcasts extend engaged in major church projects, so podcasting the reach of local SCC churches to a global temporarily was placed on hold. audience,” acknowledged Betty Cooney, SCC A major challenge for some has been finding communication director and project manager. technicians to assist in recording and editing, “However, SCC’s primary goal is to reach the but with diligent searching and praying, some local language communities targeted by each have overcome this hurdle. “I have someone church.” to help whom I recently baptized,” announced To accomplish this, Linguaspirit.net offers Denillson Reis, pastor of the L.A. Portuguese hosting for podcasts in Tagalog, Samoan, church, with a smile. Tongan, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin dialects), Indonesian, Iranian, Japanese, Russian, Betty Cooney and Daryl Gungadoo Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean and Spanish from SCC churches. Promotional business cards in the group’s various languages feature the podcasts and the website, plus any other media programming offered by the churches. In addition to the cards and optional flyers churches can distribute in their local communities, Pastor Anatoly Gurduiala and volunteeer cohost Luchia Molla produce conversational startup advertising podcasts in Russian, as well as a television program airing twice weekly on funds enable podcast- International Christian Family Network TV in the Glendale-Burbank area. ers to begin directly reaching out to their publics in L.A. A number of the churches plan to continue the initial advertising. Pastor James Dok, assistant pastor of the Temple City church, is a native of Cambodia. “Approximately 166,000 Cambodian people live in the (L. to r.) Peter Young, D.D.S., Rosana Yung, a pharmacist; and Maria Poon, a public health nurse, prepare health segments for the L.A. Cantonese Fellowship podcasts. Greater Los Angeles BETTY COONEY
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bout a dozen Los Angeles-area pastors who preach in languages other than English have begun podcasting in their language or dialect. The group, under the direction of the SCC communication department, is affiliated with Adventist World Radio. “Adventist World Radio has provided two training sessions for the podcast groups in the Southern California Conference,” said Daryl Gungadoo, AWR global distribution manager, who served as the instructor for both sessions. A grant from the Pacific Union has covered project costs. Cecil Ma, a member of the L.A. Cantonese Adventist Fellowship, is the producer-editor of the Cantonese podcasts, which feature weekly presentations by health and Bible-story teams. According to team members, they share information as conversations. “We tried scripting,” laughed Lui, “but it sounded boring, so we just talk from notes, and it is working very well.” The teams meet periodically on Sabbath afternoons and tape five or six segments each. “Before I went on a recent European vacation,” said Ma, “I completed the editing for three programs and then posted them while I was away.” The program had nearly 700 subscribers before local promotion began, and airs on Adventist radio stations in Guam and Saipan in addition to being listed on the AWR website. Pastor Vinh Nguyen, El Monte Vietnamese church pastor, prepares a 30-minute program for non-Christians. His programming also airs
July 2014
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