Global Voices

Encounters is a global cooperative project that offers a blueprint of thinking together about mission in a secular world. Here are some of these global voices representing some of the international partners of Hope Media Europe.—Editors.

“Since 2017 we have been experimenting here in South America with the use of audiovisual productions such as series, films, and animations to dialogue with new generations of Adventists and other Christian denominations. For this reason we created the video streaming platform Feliz7Play.com. Encounters was dubbed into Portuguese and will be featured on the streaming platform. We believe that it will be very important, especially for dialoguing with young undergraduates. We imagine that this audience will identify with the story, the characters, and the dilemmas experienced by the characters.” —Carlos Magalhaes, digital strategy manager, South American Division 

“Encounters is an historic project for Adventist media. In the North American Division, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was always at the forefront of using media to engage society, to carry out evangelism. In the 1970s Faith for Today developed its first scripted drama series, a regular TV series about the fictional Westbrook Hospital. This series was broadcast on the networks, through syndication, available to a mass audience. We are excited that after more than 40 years we will have a scripted drama to share with a broad audience. For our initial distribution phase we are promoting the online version of Encounters on the show’s website, as well as streaming it on Sonscreen.com, the website for the NAD-sponsored Sonscreen Film Festival. As partners with Hope Media Europe, we want to help build viewership on the online platform they have developed for the series.” —Julio Muñoz, associate director, communication department, North American Division 

“Best results happen when the whole church is involved, not only a union. Hope Channel France has started to work with the communication and personal ministries departments of the Franco-Belgium Union so that every church member becomes aware of the existence, and, most of all, the quality of the series that has been produced. We don’t want to rush to communicate. We’d rather communicate in depth in a concerted action plan to generate organic growth that would inspire in local church members involvement in the project. It takes more time than just communicating about it, but Encounters is worth the effort. Our union is also going to translate the Bible study guides that are provided by Hope Media Europe, and as we believe in small groups, we will encourage families to watch with their friends, then discuss around the topic of the study guides. Encounters delivers a vision of spirituality that is very relevant.” 

—Jéthro Camille, director, Hope Channel France, Franco-Belgian Union 

“For Hope Channel Inter-America it’s a great opportunity to be able to participate as one of the partners of the Encounters project, because by having the series as part of our programming, we offer messages of hope through different formats than those we have used before, both from its series layout, as well as its quality, and of course the contents structured in a drama that includes different important topics for our audiences. We decided to caption the series in Spanish, because most of the audiences in our territory prefer to hear the original language and sound effects and read the second language on screen. We are working on translating the Bible study guides into Spanish so that they can become part of our course offerings at Hope Bible School. We hope that the first season will capture the attention of many people who have questions in life and who have not found answers in television programs of other formats.” —Abel Márquez, director, communication department, Inter-American Division 

To watch Encounters online, visit www.encounters.show