More than 5 million young people from 132 countries participated in Global Youth Day last March, breaking all previous records. In another first, footage from the event was live-streamed online and on the Adventist Church-owned Hope Channel for 24 hours.
Read from last year: Records Broken as Young Adventists "Are the Sermon"
Bigger numbers are expected tomorrow!
Live footage will be uplinked via satellite from at least 24 locations to the Hope Studio in Germany.
For the first year, the church’s Middle East and North Africa Union will feature activities from its region for a full hour from Beirut, Lebanon. The activities will include painting a community mural, assisting refugees, free health checks, and cooking for an orphanage.
Ten cities from Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, North Cyprus, and Jordan will be part of Global Youth Day 2016.
Event organizers also noted that the Euro-Asia Division, which covers most of the former Soviet Union, will broadcast live from Kiev, Ukraine, while Adventist young people from Israel will get time during a Trans-European Division transmission from Oslo, Norway.
A Global Youth Day app that allows users to post pictures of their actions and geolocate it on a map is being updated for Android and iOS. Young people also are being encouraged to post on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. More information is available on the event website.
Most participants are aged 13 to 34, a critical age group that has disengaged from the church in large numbers in recent years.
“Global Youth Day is growing and will continue to grow, not because it is a clever idea backed up with the latest technology, but because it is the unfolding of a vision from God in direct response to fragmentation and disengagement", so the GYD Staff.
The excitement is tangible as the countdown commences on Global Youth Day. The event even has its own online countdown clock.
In South Africa, young Adventists kicked off 30 days of prayer for Global Youth Day on Feb. 18 in the church’s Kwa-Zulu Natal Free State Conference, according to Global Youth Day’s Facebook page.
“The beauty of Global Youth Day is that it is not prescriptive. We simply provide a time and space for mission,” Gilbert Cangy, World Youth Leader said. “We never cease to be amazed at the diversity and creativity expressed in service for God as young people express their giftedness.”