Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

J. Mercedes Espinosa

Second Advisor

Ricardo Norton

Abstract

Problem

The Northwest Adventist Church (IAN) in Tucson, Arizona, faces challenges in maintaining a meaningful missional presence within the local community. Despite the growing importance of digital platforms as communication tools, the church has neither developed nor implemented a comprehensive evangelism program that utilizes social media, nor has it provided a training program in this area. This lack of a digital program may be limiting its capacity to attract new members and to increase its relevance in today’s world. Without an appropriate intervention, the church risks continuing to miss opportunities to fulfill its evangelistic mission effectively.

Method

This project employed a mixed training methodology of a theoretical–practical and evaluative nature, adapted to real field conditions. It consisted of the technical training of youth in the use of digital tools, followed by the deployment of a marketing strategy known as a marketing funnel, aimed at attracting the local community to a series of conferences as the culminating event. The implementation was carried out at the IAN in Tucson, Arizona. -- The process began with the recruitment of young volunteers with basic skills in digital environments, who received a one-day intensive Boot Camp-style training. The participants were organized into two teams: content creators and content distributors, each receiving specialized instruction according to their roles. During this training session, they were introduced to the missional use of tools such as Canva, CapCut, Trello, and to the strategic use of social media to evangelize the local community. -- This training phase was followed by eight practical sessions to create content that was deployed on social media in a segmented radius around the church, with the goal of inviting the community to a series of conferences. Both the creation and deployment of the content, as well as the coverage of the series of conferences, were part of the practical training process. The evaluation consisted of applying pre- and post-training surveys, based on the Kirkpatrick model. This methodology made it possible to assess the impact both on the volunteers’ formative process and on the church’s missional connection with the community, demonstrating the viability of the strategic use of social media for evangelistic purposes.

Results

The implementation of the evangelism program through social media made it possible to observe significant progress both in the training of the participating young people and in the outreach of the church’s missionary plans toward the community. The results show that after the training, the volunteers increased their knowledge, skills, and motivation to use social media for evangelistic purposes. Likewise, the content produced during the practical training and distributed through the funnel helped generate interest and attendance at the series of conferences organized by the church. These findings confirm that social media, when used strategically, can be an effective tool to reach the local community.

Conclusion

The project demonstrated that a well-structured digital strategy can be an effective response to the church’s evangelistic stagnation and its disconnection from the local community. By integrating young people as missional agents through practical training, not only were their technical skills strengthened, but the congregation’s evangelistic commitment was also revitalized. This experience confirmed that the intentional use of social media can open new doors for the fulfillment of the mission in urban and digital contexts.

Subject Area

Evangelistic work; Social media--Religious aspects--Seventh-day Adventists; Tucson Northwest Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Church (Tucson, Ariz.)

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