David and Sam interview Erton Köhler, the Executive Secretary of the General Conference, about his history in ministry, and about his vision for worldwide mission. In particular, they talk about the GC's "Mission Refocus" initiative, which aims to revitalize mission and involve more of the world Church in mission to difficult territories and people groups.

Sam and David interview Douglas Venn, who with his family served ten years as missionaries in Southeast Asia. Doug now serves as leader of "Adventist Possibility Ministries", which aims to minister to (and mobilize for mission) people with disabilities, health challenges, and their careers.

David and Sam tell the story of how Adventist church leaders, in the depths of World War II, when some might have retrenched, instead adopted a bold plan to prepare missionaries for the first moment that missionaries would be able to be sent out again. And they focused on mission to the Islamic Middle East and to China––preparing for mission to non-Christian peoples.

David and Sam are joined by the distinguished Adventist historian Alberto Timm to talk about the origins and early history of Adventist mission in South America. The work began with a dedicated self-supporting lay missionary.

Sam and David are joined by Mildred Castillo, who talks about working in foreign countries for eighteen years, living in seven different countries on three different continents, and about helping to the children of trainee missionaries to understand what mission service will mean for them.

David and Sam are joined again by Adventist Church world president Ted Wilson. In this episode, Elder Wilson shares his vision for the future of Adventist mission, inspired by 150 years of history.

Sam and David are joined by Ronald Kuhn, who has worked as a missionary in ten countries for many years. He shares how the best way to learn to adapt to a new culture is by humility and learning from mistakes; and his love for the people he worked among is obvious. He shares about his current job, training new missionaries for intercultural assignments.

Sam and David are joined by Elder Ted Wilson, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who talks about his and his family's experiences as missionaries in West Africa and the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s.

David and Sam are joined again by historian Michael Campbell to talk about early Adventist mission in the South Pacific islands, and especially in Fiji. They discuss not only early missionaries but also early indigenous converts, thanks to whom the preaching of the Adventist message really took off.

Sam and David are joined by historian Michael Campbell but this time not to talk history, instead to talk about Michael and his family's history of ministry, incliuding as missionaries for six years in Southeast Asia

David and Sam tell the stories of two missionary families: the Cotts, who served in the 1920a and 1930s among the indigenous people of Guyana; and the Haydens, who served for nearly four decades in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. For more information, read D. J. B. Trim, Living Sacrifices (Pacific Press, 2019).

Sam and David continue looking at the importance of the General Conference Secretariat in the mission advances of the early twentieth century, and how the Church, from an early stage, used data to help strategically plan for the Adventist Church's worldwide mission. For more information, read "We aim at nothing less than the whole world": The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s missionary enterprise and the General Conference Secretariat, 1863–2019 (General Conference Archives, 2021) available at Amazon.

A new Adventist motion picture is being released this April 2024, The Hopeful, which tells the story of the origins of the Adventist Church, from William Miller to John N. Andrews, and features Andrews and his children. In this episode, Sam and David talk with Kyle Portbury, director of The Hopeful about the movie and what Kyle hopes it will do.

David interviews Sam about his fascinating career that has taken him to serve mission in Brazil, Britain, and now the United States of America, where Sam serves the world Church.

This episode explores in more detail how the General Conference Secretariat established complex structures and proceesses that made it possible to greatly increase the numbers of missionaries sent out by the Seventh-day Adventist Church all around the world. Without the administrative infrastucture, frontline missionaries could not work.

People love to hear stories about missionaries' courage, self-sacrifice, and trust in God. What we don't want to hear is about bureaucracy. But without a strong administrative infrastructure, it would be impossible to recruit, dispatch, sustain and return missionaries--the stories we love to hear about missionaries on the front line are essentially only possible because the church established a bureaucracy to manage mission. That is the subject of this episode.

This episode focuses on two more missionary families, the Appels and Longways, who committed to nearly life-long service in the mission field, serving in the Far East (especially China) and the Middle East.

This episode focuses on Merritt and Wilma Warren, who spent 47 years as missionaries, most of them in China. Merritt is thought to have hiked 25,000 miles across China!

In this episode, David and Sam finish telling the story of George Keough, who is still a legend among Adventists in the Middle East for his incarnational ministry in the region for 33 years.

This episode tells the story of the most important Adventist missionary most people have never heard of: George D. Keough. It covers the first ten years of his and his family's mission experience in Egypt from 1908 to 1918, when he won extraordinary numbers of people to the Seventh-day Adventist message. It also examines how he achieved his remarkable success.

Sam and David are joined by a native of Kenya, Dr. Oscar Osindo, director of the Adventist Church's Institute of World Mission, to talk about his many years of experience as a foreign missionary for the Church, about his years of involvement in ministry to Muslims, and his current work with the Institute of World Mission, training, resourcing and supporting current Seventh-day Adventist missionaries.

In this episode, Sam and David talk about some of the early missionaries to the Middle East, about the sacrifices they made, about what historic photographs can tell us about Adventist history, and about the tendency to over-work among Adventist pastors and administrators. Some of the stories shared in this episode appear in D. J. B. Trim, A Living Sacrifice (Pacific Press, 2019).

This episode looks at how missionaries to China fell in love with the country and its people but had to face local diseases for which there were no cures, so that misssionaries took terrible risks in their service. For more about the stories shared in this episode, see D. J. B. Trim, A Living Sacrifice (Pacific Press, 2019)

This episode looks at how missionaries to China fell in love with the country and its people but had to face local diseases for which there were no cures, so that misssionaries took terrible risks in their service. For more about the stories shared in this episode, see D. J. B. Trim, A Living Sacrifice (Pacific Press, 2019)

The 1901 Reforms of the Adventist Church, discussed in Episode 24, were not an end. The work of reforming the church was completed att the 1903 General Conference Session, which laid the foundations for mission expansion in the following decades. To find out more, read chapter 4 of A. L. Chism, D. J. B. Trim, and M. F. Younker) "We aim at nothing less than the whole world": The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s missionary enterprise and the General Conference Secretariat, 1863–2019 (Silver Spring, MD: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, 2021), available from Amazon.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church got back on track after the problems of the 1890s by undertaking very major organizational reforms at the famous 1901 General Conference Session, where Ellen White urged that change was needed "right here ... right now". More information can be gained from A. L. Chism, D. J. B. Trim, and M. F. Younker) "We aim at nothing less than the whole world": The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s missionary enterprise and the General Conference Secretariat, 1863–2019 (Silver Spring, MD: Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, 2021), available from Amazon; and Barry David Oliver, SDA organizational structure: Past, present and future (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1989)

In the 1890s, the expansion of the Adventist Church slowed down as personal clashes, administrative difficulties, and a wrong-headed approach to managing what had become a worldwide movement, all took effect. This episode examines how and why Adventist mission growth stalled at the very end of the nineteenth century, and draws some comparisons to the digital world of the early twenty-first century.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a major force in the Inter-American region today, but it wasn't always so. In this episode, Sam Neves and David Trim explore the lives of the Baxter family, which provided two generations of missionaries to Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

In this episode, David Trim and Sam Neves tell more stories of missionaries who gave everything so that people could hear about Jesus; this time they focus on Southern and Eastern Africa. The stories come from David's book, A Living Sacrifice (Pacific Press, 2019) which is available at adventistbookcenter.com

In this episode, David and Sam share inspiring and humbling stories of young men and women who gave their lives to open up the Adventist Church's missionary work in the South Pacific. The stories come from David Trim's book, A Living Sacrifice (Pacific Press, 2019) which is available at adventistbookcenter.com

This week's episode features a a doctor, preparing to serve as a medical missionary in a country where only doctors and nurses can work, becasue of religious restrictions. She shares about her family heritage of mission, her experience as a student missionary, and where she feels God is leading in her life.

Dr. Gary Krause returns as our guest in this episode, and explains what the Office of Adventist Mission is doing to push forward the boundaries of Adventist mission.

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Gary Krause, Director of the Office of Adventist Mission.

Have you ever weondered what happened to Charles Andrews, John Andrews's son who went with him to Switzerand in 1874? He remained an Adventist and so havee his descendants. In this episode we interview John Andrews's great-great-great-great-gandson, Zachary Kirsten, who recently returned from an overseas missionary posting himself.

In this episode we talk with Fylvia Kline, who served as a missionary for several years in Nepal and now is director of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's online platform for finding and recruiting missionaries, VividFaith.com

This episode considers the beginnings of Adventist mission in the vast territory formerly known as Rhodesia, today's countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia. You will learn more about how Adventist related to colonial powers in the era of European imperialism. You will also hear the moving stories of the many who gave their lives to the cause of Adventist mission work, and how the famous mission station Solusi (now an Adventist university) and other institutions were founded.

Mission to South Africa began with diamonds! An Adventst layman moved from the USA to Southern Africa to prospect for diamonds––he shared his faith and those he influenced appealed to the GC for missionaries. The first party of Adventist missionaries to South Africa arrived in 1887. They soon founded institutions and began to work widely. And they worked for all the different ethnic groups, black and white.

This episode explores early Adventist mission to the Caribbean. While the early message spread thanks to the distribution of Adventist literature, a vital role was played both by missionaries and by their indigenous converts who took the message beyond what missionaries could. This was essential, because the prevalence of yellow fever in the Caribbean during these early years of Adventist mission meant missionaries suffered an appalling death toll - they offered themselves up as living sacrifices

In West Africa, the Adventist presence pre-dates the first missionaries sent by the Adventist Church. This episode explores how this came about and the early history of Seventh-day Adventist mission in West Africa. It brings out the importance of literature in spreading the Adventist message where missionaries had not yet gone, and the crucial role of indigenous believers in propagating the three angels' messages, but it also highlights the self-sacrificial commitment of missionaries to the region, who regularly suffered serious illnesses for which there was then no cure, and had a high death toll.

Starting in 1902, the Seventh-day Adventist Church committed to mission to China in a substantial way, sending large numbers of missionaries and committing sizeable funds to China. This episode considers some of the early missionaries, the strategies the church used, and why the early history of mission in China is worth remembering today.

This episode tells the remarkable story of Abram La Rue, self-supporting missionary first to Hawaii and then to Hong Kong - the first Adventist missionary to Asia. A simple man, but one of incredible faith, his example is an inspiring one for Seventh-day Adventists today.

In 1885, a large party of Adventist missionaries travelled from the United States to Australia. This episode tells the stories of that first group of missionaries and the early years of the Adventist mission in Australia and the South Pacific.

In episode 1 of Mission 150, we explained that Seventh-day Adventists initially were very cautious about mission beyond North America. This episode explores how and why that changed, and the young movement’s move to finally embrace the idea of mission to all the world.

Mission150 tells the exciting story of the 150 years of Adventist Mission to the world. Each week, the podcast explores the past and the present of the Adventist missionary enterprise. Join each episode to learn, to be challanged, and to be inspired, to be come part of the mission of the Seventh-Day Adventist church.