Nadezhda Media Holding: Ministry for the Euro-Asia Division

In September 2021, the 7^th Congress of the West Russian Union Conference was held.¹ Among other important issues, the delegates adopted a key resolution to merge the Golos Nadezhdy (The Voice of Hope) Media Center (VOHMC) and the Nadezhda TV Channel into a unified media holding.² The idea was that Adventist radio and television, under joint management and control, could revitalize its original purpose of reaching new people and leading them to Bible study. The new organization, Nadezhda Media Holding, was organized in the summer of 2022. Its mission is to be a modern evangelistic tool for Adventist congregations throughout the Euro-Asia Division of Seventh-day Adventists.

The creation of the Nadezhda Media Holding made it possible to answer several pressing questions the Adventist media were confronted with: development of broadband and high-speed internet, gradual loss of purpose and mission, decline of the Bible Correspondence School,

Development of Broadband and High-Speed Internet 

If radio and TV could work quietly, without interfering with each other, in non-overlapping areas in previous years, then with the emergence of new technologies, their spheres of influence have expanded so much that they began to compete, often duplicating each other's work. For example, radio became not only “talk” but also “show”, and the YouTube platform equalized the opportunities of both media. The struggle for viewers and listeners began in the same media space.

In 2019-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the development of the Internet to such an extent that the largest advertising agencies in the West stopped investing in linear TV advertising and reoriented financial flows to online advertising as the “viewer” began to embrace the use of gadgets massively. 

Gradual Loss of Purpose and Mission

While establishing the Golos Nadezhdy Media Center and later the Nadezhda TV Channel, the Euro-Asia Division had a very specific, missionary goal in mind - to be a 24/7 evangelistic information program. The result of those efforts was intended to have people receiving an invitation to Bible study, which would open them to the Church. And that’s how it worked at first. Over time, however, the vector of development shifted, and many of the radio and television programs produced were no longer clearly oriented toward an outside audience. This situation needed to be changed.

Decline of the Bible Correspondence School

In the early 1990s, the correspondence coming to the Bible Correspondence School (BCS) could be measured in bags full of letters. Thirty years later, it narrowed to a modest stream of 10-15 letters per month. Therefore, creating new conditions and opportunities for BCS work in the modern world was extremely important.

The factors mentioned above radically influenced the decision to create a unified media holding and upgrade the Adventist Radio and TV structure, which today looks like this: Administrative Office, TV Broadcasting Department, Radio Broadcasting Department, Media Production Department, School of the Bible Department and Call Center, and Design and Marketing Department.

Guiding Principles

The work of all departments of the Nadezhda Media Holding is guided by the basic principles and united in a single plan. These principles are as follows:

а. Audience. All people to be reached by the Adventist message can be roughly divided into five groups: devoted Adventists, Adventists not involved in church ministry, interested non-Adventists, Christians from other denominations, and all others.

The Nadezhda Media Holding’s mission (like Hope Channel International’s) is to create and broadcast content for Groups 4 and 5. Thus, it is not focused on the Adventist members.

b. Age. Children and young people, as active Internet users, who make critical decisions more quickly, are the most prioritized audience for whom modern content should be created.

c. School of the Bible. Along with the Call Center, it is the starting point for the Nadezhda Media Holding programs. All the efforts of this media holding are aimed at involving people in the School of the Bible courses. To meet modern demands, Nadezhda Media Holding has created and operated a large portal, kniga-knig.info, for online Bible studies. This work quickly became a logical modern continuation of the Bible Correspondence School.  

d. Cooperation. Although the Nadezhda Media Holding’s activities are not focused on Adventists, its work is closely associated with the SDA Church. The final stage of the School of the Bible efforts can only be the “transfer” of those trained into the fold of the local church. For this reason, the portal kniga-knig.info contains information about all congregations in western Russia. The Nadezhda Media Holding supervises all the School of the Bible lines of work, organizes Bible courses, provides legal protection, systematically trains pastors and teachers, and places students under the care of local pastors who have received special training.

e. Competence. The contemporary Media Ministry requires up-to-date education, accurate calculations, and the mastery of advanced technologies. Therefore, at every stage, from the conception of projects to their development and promotion, targeted advertising customization and study of viewing data, specialists from the design and marketing department are involved.

Taken as a whole, the work of the Nadezhda Media Holding can be represented by the following chart:

Sources

“Telekanal Nadezhda: 10 Let v Efire.” [Nadezhda TV Channel: Ten Years on the Air] Day by Day (Online), October 10, 2024. Accessed October 15, 2024.

https://esd.adventist.org/wp-content/uploads/magazines/dzd/2024/dzd880.pdf.

“Zhizn’ Tserkvi.” [The Life of the Church] Teper’ Vremya Blagodatnoye, no. 3 (2021).

Notes

1. “Zhizn’ Tserkvi,” Teper’ Vremya Blagodatnoye, no. 3 (2021):16.↩

2. This article was translated from Russian by Vladimir Ievenko.↩