Acting on its belief in traditional evangelism, in 2022, Cloverdale Adventist Church held one such event with a speaker from Washington Conference. Though the experience was positive overall, toward the end of the meetings they struggled to find volunteers to fill all the necessary positions.
This year, the church was excited to partner in evangelism with It Is Written, and wanted to find an easier way for volunteers to engage. To this end, they decided to start the meetings with an intensive week-long effort, meeting every night for nine days.
After the first week, the church transitioned to meeting as a smaller group, which will continue to meet every Tuesday night until they cover all the topics from The Great ReSet.
Currently, Cloverdale Church has about 40 people attending these meetings, 10 of whom are not members. During the intensive week, they also had children's programming matching the topics the adults were studying, and several children expressed a desire to be baptized.
The Great ReSet meetings have also served as a revival for existing Cloverdale members. April, who is currently studying theology and doing her internship at the church, organized a visitation team including members who were baptized during last year's evangelistic meetings. They were so excited to receive training and go door-to-door inviting others to come to the meetings. This experience caused their faith to grow.
Another family, who had been baptized as a result of an evangelistic series before COVID-19, brought their mother from California to stay with them and attended the meetings for one week. Their mother flew back to California but took the remaining studies with her, and church members are following up via FaceTime.
Some of the small group meeting on Tuesday nights came last year for Cloverdale's evangelistic meetings but did not make a decision then. These individuals have indicated that this time they came to stay.
