Building a Multicultural Community for Jesus
Practicing the ministry of reconciliation in a post-Christian world.
June 14, 2026 | Portland, Oregon, United States | Kevin Wilson for Adventist Review
வணக்கம்! இது உங்களுக்குப் புரியவில்லை என்றால், நீங்கள்தான் பிரச்சனை..
It would be rather awkward if I continued the rest of this article in my native tongue of Tamil. But I’d be impressed if you could understand the above sentence, which loosely translates to: “Hi! If you don’t understand this, you’re the problem.”
And yet, that assumption—that misunderstandings are the listener’s fault—quietly undergirds much of how well-meaning Christians communicate the gospel today.
Too often we expect non-Christians, or even non-Adventists, to accept the gospel simply because we have shared the “plain reading” of God’s Word, without serious concern for how that truth is being heard, interpreted, or emotionally received. It is akin to me explaining the central tenets of Hinduism in Tamil and then feeling disappointed when you do not immediately become a devotee of Vishnu.
[Photo: Unsplash.com]
Journalist and bestselling author William H. Whyte once observed, “The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.”[1] His words feel increasingly prophetic in our polarized, post-Christian, digitally saturated age.
An Audience I Didn’t Expect
Ever since I can remember, I’ve enjoyed the art and science of digital content creation. In late 2019, gently pressured by a few youth in my local student ministry, I began posting Christian devotional content on TikTok—a short-form video social media app that was rapidly growing in popularity. My recent analytics suggest that about 75 percent of those who engage with my content might be non-Adventist, and a significant portion of them likely identify as non-Christian altogether. Through countless comments and direct messages, I’ve learned that many of them would feel deeply uncomfortable stepping into a local Adventist church. Some carry wounds from past church experiences. Others are unfamiliar with Adventism. Still others are skeptical of organized religion as a whole.
And yet they continue to engage. They listen. They ask questions. They share stories. They wrestle with ideas. This unexpected community has forced me to reexamine my assumptions about evangelism, ministry, and what it truly means to care for the “other.”
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Writing to a politically, theologically, and culturally diverse community, Paul offers a radical vision of Christian vocation:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:17-21).
What does it mean to be a “minister of reconciliation” in an age when we can no longer assume that our Adventist beliefs are normative? How can we better position ourselves as ambassadors of Christ, in online and offline spaces? In my journey of sharing short vignettes of the gospel to a diverse audience, I’ve met other faith-driven creators who, too, have cultivated healthy multi-faith online communities without compromising their convictions.
Here are three paradigm shifts we try to make in our content strategy that can hopefully benefit you in your attempts to reach others with the gospel, especially with those who do not share your beliefs or worldview.
Prioritize Connection Over Conversion
My content strategy is optimized for trust rather than virality. I am less concerned about going viral and more interested in building rapport and trust with my community. To do that, I share personal narratives from my life, ministry, and culture, to simulate a “living room” atmosphere for sharing ideas. I structure my videos as parables that contain kernels of biblical encouragement embedded in them—less as “truth bombs” that directly communicate theological views through logic and reasoning, and more as “time bombs” that eventually “implode” in the form of quiet realizations in the mind of the listener. This approach has already been stress-tested by Jesus centuries ago as He packaged kingdom principles through parables, indirectly and subversively communicating the gospel while directly building trust and connection with His listeners.
Much of our current evangelism philosophy is premised on the assumption that conveying the right information will naturally lead to the right transformation. According to this model, relational connection is often relegated as a supplement or a catalyst for doctrinal reception instead of being the primary mode of theological communication. In a secular age that is marked by the contestability of belief, the minister of reconciliation would do well to prioritize building bridges of trust and connection over merely instrumentalizing the gospel for proselytization.
In fact, we run the risk of distorting “evangelism” when we conflate it with “proselytization” or “conversion.” The former is a particular, contextual communication of the good news by an ambassador of Christ, while the latter is fully and undoubtedly the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of one being drawn toward Christ (1 Cor. 3:6-8). Much anxiety and insecurity can be avoided when we choose to do only what we can do—connect, love, and relate well—while prayerfully inviting God to do only what God can do: transform lives.
Too many Adventists are so “Christian” that they forget to be “human.” We tend to focus too much on saying the “Adventist” words and doing the “Adventist” works; we often forget that we share a common humanity with the people we are trying to reach. When we recognize, in the context of friendship, that we share more similarities than differences, it frees us to focus on bridge-building rather than viewing “others” as enemies or “projects” who need to be saved into our ways of thinking and living.
“The Savior mingled with [people] as one who desired their good,” Ellen G. White writes. “He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, ‘Follow me.’ ”[2] Genuine, no-strings-attached ministry—indexed toward meeting felt needs—preceded gospel invitation.
That’s why I believe a core value of any digital evangelism strategy aimed at reaching the non-Christian, secular “other” must first prioritize meeting the immediate, obvious, felt needs of the audience. This builds trust and creates the internal receptivity necessary for the gospel.
I earn the right to speak about Jesus when I earn trust by serving people from my area of expertise. But if I frame my service as a prerequisite for evangelistic communication, my non-Christian followers may perceive that as being disingenuous or “scammy,” which more often than not impedes ministry.
Christians, in general—and Adventist Christians in particular—should be the people who connect most deeply and authentically with others, precisely because we recognize that we, too, were once far from God and have been drawn near by His grace.
Prioritize Creation Over Consumption
Commenting on the use of art in evangelism, Japanese artist and theologian Makoto Fujimura distinguishes between what he calls “plumbing theology” and a theology of “making”—the former a utilitarian, and often exploitative, use of media for the sake of communicating the gospel, and the latter a craftsmanship-oriented approach to art that honors both the medium and the message. This posture, Fujimura suggests, is consistent with the Christian identity as a “new creation” in Christ (see 2 Cor. 5:17).[3] For Adventist ministers of reconciliation, when intentional creativity meets a gospel-oriented mindset, excellence becomes evangelism.
Yet the time and energy that could be spent on creation are overwhelmingly spent on consumption. According to recent data, almost 65 percent of the world population accesses social media, with a global average usage of 143 minutes per day.[4] Out of roughly 5.2 billion social media users worldwide, only 200-250 million actively create content—roughly 4-5 percent of users.[5] This is both significant and alarming, especially when we consider that the creator economy—currently valued at $250-300 billion and expected to double over the next decade—is driven by less than 1 percent of creators who shape platform culture at scale.[6] This means that nearly 95 percent of people primarily consume content produced by a tiny fraction of users. I wonder what might happen if more followers of Christ adopted a craftsmanship mindset toward gospel communication rather than a passive, consumptive posture.
American author James Baldwin once wrote that “the true purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that are hidden by the answers.”[7] When I take a craftsmanship approach to online ministry, carefully contextualizing the gospel in ways relevant to my audience, it invites intrigue, opening doors for dialogue and constructive conversation. Gospel-oriented, hope-filled content creation is the art and science of befriending one’s story in Christ. When I embrace my dual identity as both human and minister of reconciliation, I like to believe that every piece of content that I create carries the aroma of Christ, mingling with the story God is writing in my life and creating a fresh atmosphere for others to encounter His love.
When you prioritize creation over consumption, your creativity expands your theology and your theology, in turn, deepens your creativity. An exploratory posture toward faith can inspire new ways of thinking about God and lead to more compelling ways of expressing familiar truths.
Prioritize Curiosity Over Condemnation
Many well-meaning Christian content creators, in their zeal to defend biblical truth, forget that correction is not a religious right but a relational privilege. A common content strategy today involves publicly reacting to so-called false Christians and condemning them. This type of content often performs well, garnering attention, likes, and shares, and reinforcing the creator’s influence.
What some Christians perceive as defending the truth is, however, often experienced by the watching world as performative, “cringe,” or deeply inconsistent with the way of Christ. Many Christian creators fail to recognize that the fastest path to irrelevance in a rapidly changing world is to obsessively answer questions the world is not asking. A central challenge for the minister of reconciliation, then, is to find fresh and creative ways to help others care about the things that we care about.
One approach that has proven effective in bridge-building is to treat every person who engages with my content as an image-bearer of God—a person created with dignity, value, and the capacity for love, regardless of their beliefs. When I view the “other” as someone to explore rather than to exploit, it reinforces the truth that people cannot be reduced to statistics on baptismal tallies, numbers on outreach reports, or checkmarks on prayer lists. No—people are complex beings with complex stories that shape their beliefs and behaviors. They require curiosity, not control, as the primary relational posture.
If Christ Himself reconciled “the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Cor. 5:19), and thus there is now “no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), how much more should Adventist Christians prioritize curiosity over condemnation in our gospel communication?
If Jesus truly is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and if we are serious about making kingdom impact, we cannot afford to be experts in the “truth” while failing to embody the “way.”
The Gospel in a Language People Can Hear
According to current estimates, there are approximately 24 million Seventh-day Adventists worldwide.[8] In a global population of about 8.27 billion, that represents roughly 0.29 percent.
If 98.7 percent of the world spoke Tamil, why would I insist on communicating exclusively in English? Why would I expect them to respond back to me in English? If the overwhelming majority of the world has not meaningfully heard the Adventist message—or has heard it but been turned away by the way it was communicated—then practicing the ministry of reconciliation requires us to revisit and revise how we contextualize the gospel so that it is comprehensible, coherent, and winsome. Perhaps a better litmus test for gospel communicators is not merely its impact on believers, but its usefulness to nonbelievers. If your expression of the gospel makes sense only to people who already think like you, look like you, act like you, believe like you, or vote like you, then that gospel may be too small, or too culturally constrained, to fulfill its mission.
When I share stories from my lived experience as a husband, a pastor, and a follower of Christ, without the pressure to “convert” my hearers, perhaps that, too, is ministry. Maybe evangelism is simply showing up where God has already shown up through the Holy Spirit.
So what is in your “cup”? What experiences, struggles, wisdom, and lessons can you share without attaching conditions for your compassion? How might you contextualize the gospel so that it emanates within your circles of influence as the “sweet aroma of Christ” (see 2 Cor. 2:15)?
I long for the day when we gather in the new earth around Christ’s table, sharing fellowship with people we never met on this side of eternity—yet who are there, in part, because of your faithful ministry of reconciliation, marked by connection, creation, and curiosity, all rooted in the love of God found in Jesus Christ.
[1] William H. Whyte, “Is Anybody Listening?” Fortune, 1950.
[2] Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1905), p. 143.
[3] Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2021), p. 29.
[4] Broadband Search, “2025 Social Media Facts & Stats,” last modified October 2025, https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/social-media-facts-statistics.
[5] DataReportal, Digital 2026: Global Overview Report, October 2025, https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2026-global-overview-report.
[6] Ibid.
[7] James Baldwin, “The Creative Process,” in Creative America (Ridge Press, 1962).
[8] North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists, Press Inquiries, https://www.nadadventist.org/press/.
Kevin Wilson is an associate pastor at the Sunnyside Seventh-day Adventist Church in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder of Digital Story Academy, Cross Culture Chai, Cross Culture Tours, and the author of The Way of Chai, a reflection on faith, culture, and the art of living well. You can find him at www.crossculturekev.com.