Media Manager Calls Leaders to Rethink Adventist Video Content Production

October 29, 2026 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

“We are living through the most significant shift in religious media since the printing press,” said Kyle Warren, media manager at Adventist Review, in opening his presentation at the LEAD Conference in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States, October 8. “For 500 years the printing press decided how institutions reached people. Then radio, then television. Each one changed the reach but not the shape: one trusted source broadcasting outward to everyone. That shape is gone now.”

Addressing more than 300 members of the General Conference Executive Committee from around the world, Warren asked each one of them to picture who is watching their content right now and ask themselves a few questions. “Are they watching? Are they scrolling past? Are they engaged?”

Your Audience and the Medium

Warren explained that we might think that only young people watch videos, but that picture is wrong. And getting it wrong “is costing us the very people that we’re trying to introduce to Jesus,” he said.

At the same time, he called Adventist leaders to rearrange the way they think about media. “For as long as many of us have worked in the church, we have thought about ourselves in a fixed order,” he said. For example, “the Adventist Review is a magazine, the paper of record, that happens to make some videos.” In the case of many pastors, “it’s a church, which also happens to livestream a sermon. And the media is the flyer we hand out to get people to the ‘real thing.’ ”

Warren called leaders to think of media differently.

“The marketplace isn’t a town square anymore. It’s a feed; it’s a thumbnail. It’s the two seconds before someone decides whether you exist to them at all. And if you’re not there, it doesn’t matter how faithful your sermon is, you’re not present where the conversation is actually happening,” he told them. “So here’s the change in mindset. You are a media channel first. Not a replacement for the church—the front door. You are a media channel that happens to have a magazine, that happens to be a church, that happens to have a message worth following. And if that sounds uncomfortable to you, good. I used to think the old way too.”

Warren quoted a study from the Barna Group with National Religious Broadcasters that reported that six in 10 adults engage with Christian media and that more than half of them do so weekly. “Also, two in three trust what they watch,” he shared.

“Behind every one of those numbers there’s a person this week in your own territory. Someone who hasn’t been in the church in a year but watched a Sabbath video on their phone last Tuesday night alone, and they trusted it more than they’d like to admit,” Warren said. “So the marketplace isn’t a metaphor; it’s measurable. It’s specific. The only question is: Are you there?”

What People Are Already Talking About

Warren shared the experience in producing unScripted, a weekly show from Adventist Review launched in January 2026 that seeks to discuss “real questions,” and provide “honest answers about what’s actually happening in the Adventist Church.” He shared how for the first 18 episodes the team put their traditional programming online. “Whatever the magazine talked about, we ran a show about it.” Eighteen episodes, and not one cracked 10,000 views, he acknowledged.

But everything changed in June, Warren shared, when the hosts discussed the question “Is it permissible to have sex on Sabbath?” The video got 44,000 views, he reported.

The hosts got hundreds of comments. “Same host, same format, same budget. The only difference was the topic,” Warren said.

He explained, however, that the team didn’t pick what they wanted to say by accident. “We answered what people were already asking,” Warren shared. “Then we tried to do it on purpose.”

Other successful episodes followed, Warren shared. “ ‘Is the Seventh-day Adventist Church a cult?’: 56,000 views. ‘Should Adventists be preppers?’ ‘What happened in 1844?’ Every one of these episodes cleared 20,000 views,” he explained, noting that the breakout videos answered questions people were already asking. “So the lesson wasn’t to make better videos, but to stop broadcasting what we want to say and start answering” those questions.

Beyond Views Number

Warren also shared that according to research, video streaming reaches every generational line, including 61 percent of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964). “An 80-year-old in the pew who says he’s not a technology person is already streaming,” he revealed. “Connected TV has overtaken cable and broadcast combined. The only question is: ‘Is he finding you, or is he finding someone else?’ ” Warren asked.

At the same time, Warren reminded Adventist leaders that the number of views is not the end goal of producing videos. “The view isn’t the finish line. It’s the first step. And this is where most of us . . . stop too early.”

He explained how after their breakout episode in June, more than 200 people left a comment. “Many argued back with Scripture, verse by verse. And that’s not a problem. That’s a Bible study that started at 11:00 p.m. in the comments section with people we would have never gotten into the room,” Warren said. “So we made a follow-up episode answering them. . . . The watcher became a participant.”

When the unScripted team went through the comments on the five most-watched episodes, Warren reported that they found 29 questions people made still unanswered. “Twenty-nine people raised their hands in the back of the room, and nobody from the magazine called on them,” he illustrated. “That’s the real lesson I want us to take home. The comments section isn’t a side feature; it’s the lobby. It’s where someone says something out loud for the first time, and the most important thing that can happen next is that a real person from the church answers back.”

What to Do

In the last part of his presentation, Warren suggested four things that anyone can do in this regard. First, he suggested, stop waiting. “There’s almost no barrier to entering any longer. The phone in your pocket is enough. Treat it as an experiment,” he suggested.

Second, Warren suggested that those wanting to share videos “pick one platform and one question. . . . Start with a question people are already asking, not the one you wished they would ask.”

Warren also advised content creators to take their title and their thumbnail as seriously as the content their are producing. “Many of us were taught that curiosity is clickbait. But nobody is going to watch a video that they don’t click,” he acknowledged.

Finally, Warren called Adventist content creators to make sure every video gets one next step. “A question to send in, a study to join, a person to contact. Make the ask on camera. Make sure that someone is actually there to answer. And if someone comments, make sure someone . . . replies,” he said.

Moving People Toward Jesus

In closing, Warren summarized the change of mindset he suggests. “We are no longer a magazine that just makes videos. We are not longer a church that just livestreams. We need to become a media channel. One that happens to be a church with a message worth following all the way to Jesus,” he said.

Against that background, the key question, according to Warren, is simple. “Will you be there when people arrive, and will you have somewhere for them to go next?”