Adventist Review Podcasts

3 billion people on Earth have never heard the name of Jesus — and most of them live in cities the Adventist Church has been quietly leaving for decades.

Gary Krause, Director of Adventist Mission at the General Conference, sat down with Shawn Boonstra to explain what's actually being done, where it's working, and the 4-word principle that changed how both of them think about mission.

A minister who's raised his kids and an editor still in the trenches sit down over one question: what do you do when the most addictive thing your child will ever hold fits in their pocket? No easy answers — just honesty about the fear, the failures, and the grace that carries parents through.

Shawn Boonstra and Justin Kim talk screens, dopamine, the anxious generation, the "bubble" trap, and why every parent they know has "gone nuclear" and regretted it — plus the stranger's words that changed Shawn's life at 16.

Three churches. Three continents. One thing they all figured out that most Adventist congregations still haven't.

Shawn Boonstra opens the mission reports that reach the General Conference building — the ones most members never get to see. A district in the Scottish 
Highlands that filled a Gospel Fest with people who'd never set foot in an Adventist church. A youth ministry in wartime Ukraine that sorts every person 
they meet into five levels — starting with "haters." And a congregation in Seoul's professional district that stopped waiting for growth to happen organically.

The pattern connecting all three isn't budget, location, or talent. Listen to the end.

She once heard voices telling her she was about to hurt someone. Now she hosts one of Hope Channel's most-watched shows. This episode asks the question most Christian parents are afraid to say out loud: is it ever loving to let someone hit bottom?

Years ago Shawn Boonstra signed the guest book at a church that wasn't his own, just to see what would happen. They called him back in 32 hours. Meanwhile, interest cards from his own television broadcast were sitting in a filing cabinet for three months.

Tim McTernan spent 30 years in marketing before he brought it into the church — supermarket brands, telecommunications, a million pieces of direct mail a week. Now he leads innovation and marketing for the South Pacific Division, and he says the Adventist Church is leaving people on the table who already raised their hand.

This one gets uncomfortable: what a baptism costs, whether it's obscene to measure it, why 46% of Gen Z open TikTok looking for spiritual truth, and what $200 can actually do for a local church. And at the very end, the story of a 45-minute car ride in Sydney that no marketing budget could have bought.

Shawn joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church six weeks before Waco burned. Justin comes from a country whose own society files Adventism as an official cult. So they took the actual checklist — the warning signs people use to identify a cult — and ran the church through it, line by line, including the ones it doesn't pass.
Filmed at the General Conference world headquarters. No script, no talking points, no PR department in the room.

Imagine sitting in biology class, staring at a diagram presented as settled fact—when a quiet voice whispers, what if they're right? For one pastor's kid, keeping faith in a public school meant missing Homecoming, sitting out the band parade where scouts handed out scholarships, and wondering whether her beliefs were costing more than they gave. This is an honest account of doubt, sacrifice, and the surprising things her parents said that changed everything. What does it really take to stay "fully, unapologetically blue" in a world pulling you toward purple? Listen to her story.

Of all the stories Jesus told, this one is our favorite.

An arrogant, entitled son demands his inheritance from his father, but wastes it in riotous living. When the money and the morals are lost, he remembers his father’s house, and begins the awkward journey home, offering to be a servant, not a son. But the father runs to meet him, sweeps him up in his arms, and completely reinstates him in the family. Scroll the closing credits on “The Prodigal Son.”

But that’s not the end of the story Jesus told, even though we prefer to stop there. An older brother, the “good son” who stayed home and worked the farm, refuses to accept his brother’s re-inclusion. He will not dance; he will not join the party. Unforgiveness runs deep in him—deeper than any furrow he has plowed.

Jesus’ story is unfinished. One brother isn’t reconciled.

If you are eager for the Father’s welcome but will not welcome other prodigals, you may not find your home within the Father’s house. The Father has one rule for all: “You must be both forgiven and forgiving.”

The grace shown you is meant for others too.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Does God need a perfect generation of humans to prove His critics wrong? In 1947 one Adventist theologian argued exactly that—launching a debate that still divides believers today. If God's character is on trial before the universe, who actually clears His name? Us, through flawless obedience? Or someone else entirely? This piece digs into what Ellen White actually wrote, and the answer is bigger and more surprising than either side of the argument tends to admit. It reaches from the cross to the final destruction of evil. Who really vindicates the character of God? Listen and find out.

Two red cars came screaming around a mountain curve at over 70 miles per hour—headed straight at Michelle and her friends, with a rock wall on one side and a hundred-foot drop to the river on the other. There was nowhere to go. "This is it," she told her friend. "We're gonna die." Then came a deafening snap, the smell of sulfur, and silence. When Michelle opened her eyes, the car that should have killed her was somehow on the other side of the road. And nine teenagers in two black trucks had seen exactly what happened. Listen.