Allegheny West Conference's First Virtual Camp Meeting Experience

Story by William T. Cox Sr.

We began the process of planning camp meeting just three weeks before going live. Prior to that, we made the decision to cancel camp meeting because of COVID-19, and decided to hunker down until the pandemic was over. However, God had another thought: I’ve got a captive audience. We quickly brought the idea to our staff, and decided to have a 10-day virtual camp meeting on social media. In recent years, we held camp meeting for just two days, but God reminded us that we are living in the end times and this was our opportunity to share His message with the Allegheny West Conference (AWC) and the world.

During the 10 days, each morning we began with corporate prayer at 5 a.m. on the prayer line. Keeping in mind we are blessed to be a multicultural conference, we gave our Korean churches the opportunity to share the good news every morning at 7 a.m., and their services streamed live across North America and even into other countries.

We also accommodated our Haitian community by rebroadcasting sermons by Pastor Jacky George of the Philadelphie church in Columbus, Ohio.

In our planning meetings, we acknowledged that many individuals comment negatively about the Spirit of Prophecy, despite having never read it. We concluded that if there was one thing that needed to be preached, it was the prophecy found in God’s Word. Prophecy enables us to have a sense of hope, so we had a special prophecy series during these 10 days. We also highlighted Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings and our essential health message.

We included a series in doctrine because it is what God uses to help protect us from the deception that will take place in the last days. We also shared why it is necessary to have family worship in the home. At the end of each sermon on Revelation, we interviewed our pastors so that viewers could relate to stories of their everyday struggles.

One of the most important decisions we made was to spend time in daily worship with all of our pastors and teachers reminding them that the times we are living in are an indication that Jesus is soon to come.

Although the virtual part of camp meeting has concluded, the “camp meeting” itself is not over. Our conference has made it our mission to continue to share God’s last day message with the world. We have come to realize that the Lord truly works in mysterious ways. Though camp meeting was almost canceled altogether, we were able to reach more than 700 thousand viewers on social media.

We believe that Jesus is soon to come, and it is high time for us to fulfill the calling of God upon AWC. We have experienced a renewed purpose in ministry by sharing the three angels’ messages; valuing the prophecies and doctrines of Scriptures; and promoting the Spirit of Prophecy, our health message and family worship. This virtual camp meeting has shown us that all things are possible when we agree to be led by the Spirit of God.