News and information from around the Ohio Conference
Kettering Adventist Church Welcomes New Lead Pastor
"Our prayers have been answered, we have a new Lead Pastor!" said Paul Hoover, interim lead pastor of the Kettering Adventist Church.

" We are so excited to have Pastor Jakobsons join our pastoral team here in the Ohio Conference," said Bob Cundiff, Ohio Conference president. "After a deep vetting process accompanied by a close collaboration with both the pastoral search committee and Kettering church board she clearly emerged as the candidate God was calling to fill the Kettering pulpit at this time. We look forward to her working with her as she leads the Kettering church into the next phase of growing God‘s kingdom in the Kettering community."

Pastor Jakobsons was born in the Czech Republic and learned English when her family moved to the United States after her freshman year in high school. She has earned three degrees from Andrews University. While finishing her MDiv, she taught Bible classes at Andrews Academy in Berrien Springs, Michigan. She has served as pastor for youth, collegiate and young adults at the Spencerville Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland since 2016. Pastor Jakobsons expects to begin her new responsibilities as lead pastor at Kettering in early August.

Pastor Jakobsons is married to Michael Jakobsons, who has had a long career as an educator, principal and superintendent. "He makes sure that life is not boring," she said. She "loves teaching the Bible and seeing people grow in their relationship with Jesus," while also taking time for friends, art, working out, hiking and biking.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Pastor Jakobsons shared the news with her Spencerville Church family via video . News of her selection was also shared by video in last week's Kettering K-LIFE online.

"Please join me in praying for Pastor Andrea and her husband Michael, as they transition to begin their ministry to our community. We look forward to becoming better acquainted with Pastor Andrea and Michael in the coming weeks," said Hoover.
NAD Day of Prayer for Racial Justice & Equality
This Sabbath, June 27, 2020, the leadership of the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is asking its members, churches, ministries, and services to join in a special day of prayer for the deep hurt and frustration that racial injustice and inequity have caused in North America.

As the conversations on racism in society and in the church continue to grow, the NAD is urging the 1.2 million church members in the territories of Bermuda, Canada, Guam/Micronesia, and the United States to come together and prayerfully seek God’s guidance and leading in our lives, especially in how we relate to one another, and how we can help stop injustice against people of color.
 
Online
By Michael Stough II, Pastor Delaware, New Carlisle, Springfield First District
By now, most of us are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Our church buildings are already open or soon will be. Finally, we can put all that online stuff behind us. If we never see a Zoom meeting again it will be too soon. But, are we missing something very vital about what was going on in our society before COVID-19 and the shutdown?

In one article I read, a quote from a 2017 Gallup poll surveying the state of the American workplace found 43% of employees were working online with some regularity. [1] With Coronavirus, the trend of working from home, which was growing, just outright exploded. Right now, trying to find equipment for being online can be exasperating, but is showing just how saturated the market is with those looking for the necessary tools to function from the home office. Logitech, one of the leaders in affordable quality webcams is sold out. What is still available has more than doubled in price.

Working at home isn’t the only thing to be considered either.

Do you know what is the second largest search engine in the world? If you answered YouTube, you’re correct. “YouTube receives more than 1.5 billion logged in users per month and feeds over 1 billion hours of video each day to users (that’s right
 billion).” [2] So okay, I pulled out the calculator for this one to put this into perspective, for one person to watch that much content it would take 114,155 years of 24/7 viewing. Now you may be thinking most of that content is pretty pointless to watch but take a look at what some of the most popular types of videos are and you’ll find people are using YouTube as a visual Google, the owner of YouTube by the way. I can’t begin to tell you just how many how-to-videos or reviews I’ve watched so I can get an idea about a product I want to buy or something I need to accomplish. Add to that all the quality religious content, and I can spend pretty much most of my viewing time on YouTube.

Now, finally consider the affects a more digitally driven culture is having on church and worship, and we begin finding more people engaging religion through their smart device screens. Now, I am not saying I love or even like this. God is very personal in the relationships He wants to develop with His children, and He wants us to be in personal face-to-face relationships with each other too. This is something a screen can never replace, yet at the same time, now that we are meeting again in person, is it time to flip the switch and cut the connections to the online world? The answer is no. It may be challenging at first, especially if your congregation is still struggling to get digital infrastructure up and running, but if we are to maintain even a semblance of relevance, our churches need to be online. There are those looking for the truth even as you read this, what do you want them to find, because where there is already content available which is truthful, there’s plenty which isn’t. Those searching may also be looking for truth which is close to where they live, and if you’re not online or have no content addressing today’s questions, they will find something, but it probably won’t be your church.

I want to challenge you today not to be looking too quickly at sidelining all the online work which has been done so far, but to look at improving and increasing your church’s online presence. God has already done some marvelous things through this pandemic, let’s trust Him and see what big things He will do tomorrow. 

[1] Lindsey Jacobson, “As coronavirus forces millions to work remotely, the US economy may have reached a ‘tipping point’ in favor of working from home,“  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/what-coronavirus-means-for-the-future-of-work-from-home.html .
[2] Dave Davies, “Meet the 7 Most Popular Search Engines in the World,”  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/meet-search-engines/ .
Adventist Churches Worldwide to Collect Special Offering for COVID-19 Response
By Sylva Keshishian, Office of Adventist Mission, General Conference of
ï»żSeventh-day Adventists
When we wake up each morning, we hear the latest news about the vast numbers of people who have died after contracting the COVID-19 virus. These are more than statistics, each one is a person who has a family that is mourning them, and/or is battling the impact of the disease themselves. And that fact alone connects each statistic to you and me, and suddenly we are challenged to do more than shake our heads as we read the sad headlines.

When crisis strikes, it’s a time for us as a church to step up and help others. At the time this article was written, more than 7 million people worldwide had contracted the COVID-19 virus, and more than 406,000 had died 1 . In the North American Division alone there were nearly 2,438,857 cases and 129,601 deaths (as of June 24, 2020).

Adventist churches around the world are being asked to collect a special COVID-19 offering July 11 to support communities devastated by the pandemic. Funds raised by local churches will be used to help respond within their region of the world.

This means that all COVID-19 Response offerings given by church members will go to their local division and local fields to fund initiatives to help those suffering from this pandemic. Masks. Essential supplies. Counseling . . . Whatever it takes.

Church members who are interested in helping to promote this special offering can contact their division office and ask for special resources. These include social media ads, a poster, and offering appeals, all of which they can send via email to their fellow members. 

Then, on July 11 church members can mark their tithe envelopes “ COVID-19 Response .” And if their local church is still unable to meet physically, they can still contribute by visiting AdventistMission.org/COVID to make a freewill donation.

Dashers Travel Over 15.57 Times Around Ohio's Buckeye Trail
by Joel Greve, Centerville Youth/Young Adult Pastor
After four weeks, 110 people traveled 9,374 miles; this averages out to about 85.2 miles for the first 27 days of the dash. If we average the same through all 264 dashers, we would have a total of 22,492.8 miles!

This means that we have walked around Ohio and the Buckeye trail 15.57 times. Since the state of Ohio is 220 miles wide, our Dashers have walked across Ohio 102.24 times. The USA is 2,800 miles in width; this equates to walking 8.03 times across America!
Young People Invited to Fall in Love with Jesus at Camp Mohaven
Hello Campers! We are SUPER excited for summer camp and we hope you are too. Camp Mohaven is the absolute BEST place to be this summer! With a large variety of activities, great food, awesome friends, inspiring worships, and twinkling stars overhead, you can just imagine GOD smiling down on you. Come make new friends, enjoy the outdoors, and fall in love with Jesus... come to CAMP MOHAVEN!

For more information regarding Sumer Camp 2020, including dates, costs, and activities, visit https://ohiosdayouth.org/summer-camp .

Photo of the Week
Cundiffs
Great news, Ohio Conference family!

Our conference president Elder Bob Cundiff and his lovely wife Tanique, a nurse anesthetist, both made it into our conference territory last Friday. They are residing temporarily in the Kettering area while they search for a home.

Join us as we welcome Tanique into the Ohio Conference!
Verse of the Week
Inspirational Quote of the Week
Read the Current Issue of Mission Ohio in the Columbia Union Visitor
Highlights of this issue include new Ohio Conference president, Bob Cundiff and his wife Tanique; Ohio Conference students excel in the third annual Geography Challenge and Art Auction.

Read these articles and more in the current issue of Mission Ohio in Visitor magazine.
Heidi A. Shoemaker, Communication Director
Ohio Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
1251 E Dorothy Ln, Dayton, OH 45419