January 1, 2025 • 23 mins
Welcome to the first episode of Adventist Waves in 2025 - and the last for this season of Adventist Waves. Discover the inspiring journey of Kaleb Eisele, from his controversial Humans of Adventism project to spearheading the innovative Creator's Lab, as he shares his insights on connecting with the next generation
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Contact us at kahn@bluevineyard.com
Watch our video shorts on Youtube, And join the discussion on Facebook.
Quotes from Kaleb:
"I've been creating new intellectual properties in the Adventist ecosystem for the past seven years."
"Humans of Adventism included all of those people...we are a people group and you belong here whether you go to church or not."
"I never could have imagined this turning into work for me, like paying work."
"We were able to create something that I feel was one of the first really digital creator conferences in the US that's specific for us."
References:
Oregon Conference of Seventh Day Adventists (https://www.oregonadventist.org/)
Humans of Adventism (https://www.facebook.com/humansofadventism/)
Listen to his latest project, Bridges Over Walls - they are releasing another season this month! (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bridges-over-walls/id1536787595)
Need help with your Podcast? Book your discovery session today bluevineyard.com/audio
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Adventist Waves.
(00:14):
Have you ever wondered how does content and community connect?
What impact is it really having?
It's a question that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
To find out more, I decided to reach out to a few experts in the field.
Today, we begin the journey into how we can grow and engage our audiences using podcasts.
(00:41):
My name is Khan Elmas and you are listening to the Adventist Waves.
But when I think about building an audience, I think a lot of times people, if you, I don't know,
do you guys have those lights for bugs outside?
(01:03):
It's a bright light. It attracts bugs.
I see them.
Yeah. Okay.
So if you picture that, a lot of times when people start a project,
they just stick their light out in a field somewhere and then they just kind of like
wait for the audience to find them.
Right.
And so depending on where they put it, somewhere that a lot of people see it,
maybe there's a lot of people that show up,
(01:24):
but they just kind of make stuff and just post it and hope people find it.
Most people don't find things that way.
Most people find things through interacting with the people who work on it,
through interacting with guests, through interacting with some way that they were
told about it directly.
And so, you know, I think there was a time where you could put a billboard up or something
(01:46):
and rely on people to pay attention to it in this stationary place.
But really, I think where we're at now is that we're so bombarded with different projects and
media and options that it's the ones that take the time to connect with us where we are.
So, you know, this could be, you show up in someone's TikTok algorithm.
Great.
(02:07):
But it could also be, hey, I know you worked on audio engineering with me in college.
I would love to get your feedback on this project that I'm making.
And that person can show it to their friends and that person can show it to their friends
or even in how I choose guests.
And so, when you think about each person that's involved and each person that comes in contact
(02:28):
with your work as representing a whole pocket of humanity, then you can start to fold in those
pockets of people.
My approach is always going to be meaning.
How can somebody say, oh, that's me?
Oh, I'm wrestling with that.
Oh, that's a person talking about something that I care about.
(02:50):
Yeah.
So, my name is Caleb Isley.
I live in Portland, Oregon in the United States.
So, it's kind of the big upper left corner of the United States.
It's one of the most post-Christian, post-religious areas in the U.S. and cities in the U.S.
And I work here for the Oregon Conference of Seventh Day Adventists.
(03:11):
My very fancy title is Digital Content Specialist.
So, I help produce creative projects.
We have a podcast called Bridges Over Walls that I think will be relevant to your listeners.
The way that I started to really build community, I was in rural South Carolina.
(03:33):
So, for those who don't live in the United States, South Carolina is like the swampy
kind of state.
It's very rural in most of it.
There's a whole lot of land that's unoccupied and a lot of former farming towns that are
mostly becoming drying up, right?
So, I lived in one of these farming towns and I'm out there by myself.
(03:58):
There's no other Adventists my age in town, you know, and I'm kind of just got my phone.
And so, what do I start doing?
I start reaching out to people, you know, one by one and just saying, hey, you know,
I have this idea, what do you think of it?
I love what you're doing.
And the way that I kept doing that, it was one of those cumulative things where every
(04:22):
day I was like, okay, I'm going to find like five to ten people that I have not talked to
before.
And I'm just going to pay attention to something they're doing, leave a comment on it, or I
will review or follow their page and like some of their posts.
However it works, I'm just going to comb through the internet for people that I can have some
(04:46):
sort of connection with.
So it's like you're looking for a community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, there were a lot of people that just, you know, that kind of just they're like, oh,
you follow me, I'll follow you.
You know?
So, it wasn't this super complicated anything.
It was just this stubborn long-term investment that I did every day for years and still do.
(05:11):
Caleb has worked on a variety of projects over the years.
You're going to hear more about them in a second.
He has successfully grown the audiences and communities for them.
But it didn't happen overnight.
Here is expressing more about his background.
But for the past seven years, I've been creating new intellectual properties in the Adventist
(05:32):
ecosystem.
And so, some of those look like storytelling projects like humans of Adventism, which is
a non-theological approach to Adventist stories, including people who've really dealt with
harm in the church.
That was my original project.
It's really kind of turned into a lot of other things since then.
(05:52):
I partnered with the North American Division on a project called How the Church Works.
And so, that's questions of where your money goes when you pay tithe, how people get their
jobs, how the policy works, our history, how we've changed over the years, and where we
could go in the future.
(06:12):
And yeah, I've worked with a lot of other awesome digital creators in the Adventist spaces.
Worked with Justin Koo for a long time.
And others, Kevin Wilson, Garrison Hayes, some of these people were...
Well, I didn't directly work with them.
We were kind of all part of this boom of millennials who wanted to start digital projects without
(06:35):
the church's permission.
If you trace kind of our timelines, a lot of us started as kind of these rabble-rousing
rogue creatives.
And over the years, we've encouraged the church to change for the better, I hope.
(06:55):
And also have taken opportunities to work alongside the church where we can.
And so, that has led me from where I lived on the complete opposite end of the country
seven years ago to Oregon here.
And so, now I do a lot of written work for local church stories and that kind of thing
for our various publications.
(07:18):
But one of my important jobs is helping produce documentary videos and just resources.
And especially Bridges Over Walls for kind of our people who are having a lot of questions,
disagreements, hang-ups with the church, or people who have never encountered the Seventh
Day Adventist Church in their life.
(07:40):
What made you start podcasting in the first place, especially in the Seventh Day Adventist
community?
Yeah, I was invited.
So, back when I started my very first project, Humans of Adventism, it was very controversial
in some ways.
We included all kinds of stories, people who had been abused by pastors.
(08:01):
We had people who grew up in the Adventist Church that were LGBTQ and published those
stories.
And it was the range.
We also had very conservative people sharing, but we included this wide spectrum of people
in stories.
And so, my first exposure to podcasts really was as a guest, just like I'm doing here.
So I learned from you guys, from the hosts who, for whatever reason, allowed me to come
(08:26):
onto their shows and share about my life, what I was doing, what I thought.
A few years into that, a good friend of mine, Heather Moore, had this idea for a podcast
called How the Church Works.
And she and a really incredible audio editor and documentary filmmaker herself, Nina Volato,
(08:49):
they both lived in this area and they invited me to come on and help host.
So my primary value was just that I've interviewed a lot of people.
I've interviewed close to probably over a thousand people in seven years.
And so, while I didn't have the skill of the technical side, the audio engineering, none
of that, I was always the worst at all of that.
(09:12):
I had to have my audio cleaned up more than the rest.
I had to have some coaching just about every time, but they valued my voice and included
me in that project.
And that really is where I got my first experience on the back end of podcasting.
Yep.
Wow, that's a lot of people, a thousand people.
(09:35):
You just have a natural love for people.
Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting.
There are people who love people, but have a hard time with individuals.
And there are people who love individuals and have a hard time with people.
So what I mean by that is some people just like the energy of crowds.
(09:55):
Some people like to be around the life of things happening.
I do not like that at all.
What I like is individuals.
And so, always, I've been this way as long as I can remember, if I can find a corner somewhere
to talk to one person about their life, that's what I want to be doing.
So if I'm at a big event, a night of worship, a church event, whatever, you'll pretty much
(10:19):
always see me either speaking or working with the staff or off on the periphery with one
or two people that I've found something interesting to talk about.
And so just drawing things out is a skill that I've learned over the years.
I don't know that it came naturally to me.
I'm naturally very introverted and was a very shy kid.
(10:41):
And so what I've become through all of this practice is an outgoing introvert.
Somebody with social skills, conversational skills, but needs a long, long nap after
I spend the day talking to people.
So when I say a thousand people, you figure easily three or four people a week that I
interview for various projects.
(11:03):
Not all of them are podcast interviews.
I'm including everything for, if I interview two or three people for an event story that
just happened, I'm counting all of that.
So it really, you start talking to a lot of people really fast when you do it every week.
Coming up, Caleb and I talk about the Humans of Adventism project.
(11:26):
That's next on Adventist Waves.
Yeah, I think my proudest project has been Humans of Adventism because it's one of the
only things that I know of that includes the extended family.
So when we talk about Adventist projects, a lot of times we're talking about people who
(11:49):
are actively participating in church.
But you have people raised in Adventist families.
You have people who are somewhat interested in this or used to be involved or were a student
at an Adventist college or for whatever reason, they're not showing up in the spaces that
we're in.
Humans of Adventism included all of those people.
(12:11):
Humans of Adventism, it didn't have a litmus test of are you conservative enough?
Are you keeping the 28 fundamental beliefs or just 25 or 15?
This is one of those things where it's like we are a people group and you belong here
whether you go to church or not.
So this really touched on the fact that Adventism is also a culture, that when you stop going
(12:35):
to church, you still have things about your weekly life.
Friday night comes and there's something that happens in you whether you do anything
about it or not, there's still that feeling.
There's that pattern that's been established in you.
When you drive by a Seventh-day Adventist church, you have an impression of who's in
there and what's going on.
And sometimes maybe there's a hymn that you miss.
(12:57):
Sometimes maybe there's, man, I haven't had a haystack since I was 19.
And even though you won't go to church just for a haystack, there's pieces of this culture
that are ingrained in us if we've been in this environment, in this community, that
I kind of want to go back and just say, hey, I don't really need you to meet this whole
(13:19):
checklist of people.
I need you to know that we still care about you and that I want a relationship with you.
Humans of Adventism featured real life stories.
It began as a Facebook page in 2017, actually.
Several years later, they began producing videos.
A video series was produced by Caleb and Justin during 2020.
(13:41):
In 2021, it was released.
They shared stories from all around the United States.
It was like a buffet of sorts with various kinds of Adventist testimonies.
No doubt this came with its challenges.
I asked him, did the Humans of Adventism project come out the way you wanted it to be?
(14:02):
No.
First of all, I didn't plan on doing it myself.
When I first started putting things together, I had a team of about six or seven people
that were going to help me.
So I had different interviewers on Adventist college campuses and photographers that would
get pictures.
And all of these people who got really excited about the idea, helped once or twice, and
(14:26):
then said, hey, I'm really busy.
Sorry.
So that really fell apart.
And I was left with the choice of, do I continue this project on my own and just not make it
as flashy and as polished as I had hoped it would be?
(14:47):
Or do I let it fail because I'm not willing to put in that work myself?
And it can't live up to that standard.
So I would say early on, it was hard to stay going in some ways.
People didn't really understand what the project was.
It's a very unique style.
People's names aren't attached to it.
(15:07):
It's just kind of these vignettes of their life.
People were not used to seeing non theological Adventist stories.
There used to be very certain types of templates for testimonies, for example.
Testimonies when you go to an Adventist church are going to be, I was struggling with this
horrible thing.
Then this thing happened.
A person came to visit me in prison.
(15:28):
They gave me a Bible study.
They came to my house.
I heard an evangelistic series, whatever the catalyst was, there's always a turning point.
And then it ends with, and that's how I got saved from it.
It's over.
It's done.
I don't have a problem with that anymore.
Now I'm fixed.
Now I'm free.
That is not, what's that?
(15:48):
Now I'm free.
Yeah.
That is not humans of Adventism stories or its style.
It tells stories in the middle.
So no resolution sometimes.
Somebody is like, hey, I've been going to church for three and a half years and I have
a severe meth addiction and I still have it.
And here's how it's affecting my life and my family.
(16:10):
It was not clean.
It was not polished.
It was not theologically correct.
It was where people were when I talked to them and a whole lot of people out there,
I would say the majority of people are not in a place where they can tell a story that
says I'm completely done.
God fixed me.
I don't have any problems.
I'm not struggling with this issue anymore.
(16:32):
Most people struggle with something their whole life and it looks very different from
person to person.
But there's a whole lot of people that are listening to these testimonies and thinking,
wow, why didn't it change for me?
You know, why didn't it fix?
God fixed that in my life.
And so, you know, I would say even though there were a lot of things that didn't turn
(16:55):
out how I hoped, I never could have imagined this turning into work for me, like paying
work.
I never could have imagined the relationships that I would find and just how far that project
would carry.
It went nationally quickly and then internationally very quickly.
(17:16):
And I'm just a guy on my phone, really.
At the end of the day, I was just sitting there sending people messages on Facebook Messenger
or emailing them and talking to them about their life.
I didn't even start doing recorded audio or phone interviews or anything for like two
years.
I was just using Messenger for all of my interviews.
(17:37):
And so, to have that turn into something where my life is about creating media that addresses
our cultural shortfalls and tries to build a better future for this church and took me
all the way across the country, I never could have seen it turning into that.
(17:58):
And I'm so grateful that it did.
From this project, God opened up the way for Caleb to work for the Oregon Conference of
the Civdei Adventist Church.
He is now the digital content strategist.
He now plays a key role in empowering other creatives in his community.
One of the projects that Caleb has initiated is the Creators Lab.
(18:20):
Yeah, I'm so lucky to have been able to do Creators Lab.
So our team here at the Oregon Conference put that together, but it really started back
when I was a freelancer.
I was talking about kind of this boom of Adventist millennial kind of like rogue creators, right?
Where we didn't have permission from our church, we didn't have funding.
(18:43):
And I remember several times just kind of getting together with other people that were
like me in this space and saying, what if we had something where all of us could come
together?
What if we had something that wasn't so expensive, that wasn't, you know, our jobs don't fly
us out for this, so something that we could afford, but also something that was native
(19:04):
to the environment we were in.
Something that was hosted by people who understood the internet, understood internet culture,
understood just kind of the language and the nuances and the trends that were in all the
time.
And at the time, we really didn't have much in the way of that.
It was, you kind of had these kind of older mindset people hosting events that they hoped
(19:30):
would connect with us, but because they weren't super involved in it, they didn't have that
natural understanding of things that would connect with us, what we really needed, wanted
to talk about.
Even the speaker list would be kind of a range of people who might be relevant to us and
might be completely working in a different environment that doesn't cross over with us.
(19:53):
And so, yeah, I, Creator's Lab was an idea that we pitched five years ago.
Five years ago, I came to the Oregon Conference as a freelancer, partnered with the Oregon
Conference, producing stories for them and managing social media, but I was still working
for lots of other people as well.
(20:13):
And so, you know, there wasn't a lot of traction to the idea, but, you know, I joined this
team, we worked together through COVID, we worked together through all kinds of political
turmoil, all kinds of stuff.
And really, last year, we finally, finally got the chance to start putting things together
(20:35):
for real, pitch this idea, got a date set.
And so, yeah, I was able to have the trust of my community and this conference, and we
were able to create something that I feel was one of the first really digital creator
conferences in the US that's specific for us.
(20:57):
That's just for people who make things for the internet.
And you know, it wasn't a huge event.
We had around 100 people in attendance.
But as far as the impact, what we heard from person after person after person was, I didn't
know how badly I needed community like this.
We had people who grew up in the Adventist church, who came back for this, that haven't
(21:20):
come to a church service in a long, long time, years and years.
And they found community there and still show up.
We have a small group here that spawned off of that.
And they still come and show up here.
So they're not in church services, they're not listening sermons, but they will get
together with us.
(21:40):
That brings us to an end of this podcast.
Thank you so much for listening.
I've been on a quest to learn about the community side of podcasting.
And thanks to Caleb, I feel one step closer to the answer.
I don't think Caleb ever imagined that the success of the humans of Adventism project
would have landed him where he is today.
I can see he ties his project so closely to the people that he serves.
(22:04):
And I hope that this inspires you too.
Think how can you engage your audience?
Use stories and images that appeal to them.
Thank you for tuning in to Adventist Waves.
This podcast wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the support of BlueVenya and
Audio.
Need support with producing your podcast?
BlueVenya provides help from start to finish.
(22:25):
Visit the website today at bluevenya.com forward slash audio.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Your feedback helps us bring you more inspiring content.
This podcast was produced by Khan Elmans, special thanks to our guests for coming on
to the show.
You have been listening to Adventist Waves.
(22:53):
Can youkg?
Welcome to Adventist Waves.
(00:14):
Have you ever wondered how does content and community connect?
What impact is it really having?
It's a question that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
To find out more, I decided to reach out to a few experts in the field.
Today, we begin the journey into how we can grow and engage our audiences using podcasts.
(00:41):
My name is Khan Elmas and you are listening to the Adventist Waves.
But when I think about building an audience, I think a lot of times people, if you, I don't know,
do you guys have those lights for bugs outside?
(01:03):
It's a bright light. It attracts bugs.
I see them.
Yeah. Okay.
So if you picture that, a lot of times when people start a project,
they just stick their light out in a field somewhere and then they just kind of like
wait for the audience to find them.
Right.
And so depending on where they put it, somewhere that a lot of people see it,
maybe there's a lot of people that show up,
(01:24):
but they just kind of make stuff and just post it and hope people find it.
Most people don't find things that way.
Most people find things through interacting with the people who work on it,
through interacting with guests, through interacting with some way that they were
told about it directly.
And so, you know, I think there was a time where you could put a billboard up or something
(01:46):
and rely on people to pay attention to it in this stationary place.
But really, I think where we're at now is that we're so bombarded with different projects and
media and options that it's the ones that take the time to connect with us where we are.
So, you know, this could be, you show up in someone's TikTok algorithm.
Great.
(02:07):
But it could also be, hey, I know you worked on audio engineering with me in college.
I would love to get your feedback on this project that I'm making.
And that person can show it to their friends and that person can show it to their friends
or even in how I choose guests.
And so, when you think about each person that's involved and each person that comes in contact
(02:28):
with your work as representing a whole pocket of humanity, then you can start to fold in those
pockets of people.
My approach is always going to be meaning.
How can somebody say, oh, that's me?
Oh, I'm wrestling with that.
Oh, that's a person talking about something that I care about.
(02:50):
Yeah.
So, my name is Caleb Isley.
I live in Portland, Oregon in the United States.
So, it's kind of the big upper left corner of the United States.
It's one of the most post-Christian, post-religious areas in the U.S. and cities in the U.S.
And I work here for the Oregon Conference of Seventh Day Adventists.
(03:11):
My very fancy title is Digital Content Specialist.
So, I help produce creative projects.
We have a podcast called Bridges Over Walls that I think will be relevant to your listeners.
The way that I started to really build community, I was in rural South Carolina.
(03:33):
So, for those who don't live in the United States, South Carolina is like the swampy
kind of state.
It's very rural in most of it.
There's a whole lot of land that's unoccupied and a lot of former farming towns that are
mostly becoming drying up, right?
So, I lived in one of these farming towns and I'm out there by myself.
(03:58):
There's no other Adventists my age in town, you know, and I'm kind of just got my phone.
And so, what do I start doing?
I start reaching out to people, you know, one by one and just saying, hey, you know,
I have this idea, what do you think of it?
I love what you're doing.
And the way that I kept doing that, it was one of those cumulative things where every
(04:22):
day I was like, okay, I'm going to find like five to ten people that I have not talked to
before.
And I'm just going to pay attention to something they're doing, leave a comment on it, or I
will review or follow their page and like some of their posts.
However it works, I'm just going to comb through the internet for people that I can have some
(04:46):
sort of connection with.
So it's like you're looking for a community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, there were a lot of people that just, you know, that kind of just they're like, oh,
you follow me, I'll follow you.
You know?
So, it wasn't this super complicated anything.
It was just this stubborn long-term investment that I did every day for years and still do.
(05:11):
Caleb has worked on a variety of projects over the years.
You're going to hear more about them in a second.
He has successfully grown the audiences and communities for them.
But it didn't happen overnight.
Here is expressing more about his background.
But for the past seven years, I've been creating new intellectual properties in the Adventist
(05:32):
ecosystem.
And so, some of those look like storytelling projects like humans of Adventism, which is
a non-theological approach to Adventist stories, including people who've really dealt with
harm in the church.
That was my original project.
It's really kind of turned into a lot of other things since then.
(05:52):
I partnered with the North American Division on a project called How the Church Works.
And so, that's questions of where your money goes when you pay tithe, how people get their
jobs, how the policy works, our history, how we've changed over the years, and where we
could go in the future.
(06:12):
And yeah, I've worked with a lot of other awesome digital creators in the Adventist spaces.
Worked with Justin Koo for a long time.
And others, Kevin Wilson, Garrison Hayes, some of these people were...
Well, I didn't directly work with them.
We were kind of all part of this boom of millennials who wanted to start digital projects without
(06:35):
the church's permission.
If you trace kind of our timelines, a lot of us started as kind of these rabble-rousing
rogue creatives.
And over the years, we've encouraged the church to change for the better, I hope.
(06:55):
And also have taken opportunities to work alongside the church where we can.
And so, that has led me from where I lived on the complete opposite end of the country
seven years ago to Oregon here.
And so, now I do a lot of written work for local church stories and that kind of thing
for our various publications.
(07:18):
But one of my important jobs is helping produce documentary videos and just resources.
And especially Bridges Over Walls for kind of our people who are having a lot of questions,
disagreements, hang-ups with the church, or people who have never encountered the Seventh
Day Adventist Church in their life.
(07:40):
What made you start podcasting in the first place, especially in the Seventh Day Adventist
community?
Yeah, I was invited.
So, back when I started my very first project, Humans of Adventism, it was very controversial
in some ways.
We included all kinds of stories, people who had been abused by pastors.
(08:01):
We had people who grew up in the Adventist Church that were LGBTQ and published those
stories.
And it was the range.
We also had very conservative people sharing, but we included this wide spectrum of people
in stories.
And so, my first exposure to podcasts really was as a guest, just like I'm doing here.
So I learned from you guys, from the hosts who, for whatever reason, allowed me to come
(08:26):
onto their shows and share about my life, what I was doing, what I thought.
A few years into that, a good friend of mine, Heather Moore, had this idea for a podcast
called How the Church Works.
And she and a really incredible audio editor and documentary filmmaker herself, Nina Volato,
(08:49):
they both lived in this area and they invited me to come on and help host.
So my primary value was just that I've interviewed a lot of people.
I've interviewed close to probably over a thousand people in seven years.
And so, while I didn't have the skill of the technical side, the audio engineering, none
of that, I was always the worst at all of that.
(09:12):
I had to have my audio cleaned up more than the rest.
I had to have some coaching just about every time, but they valued my voice and included
me in that project.
And that really is where I got my first experience on the back end of podcasting.
Yep.
Wow, that's a lot of people, a thousand people.
(09:35):
You just have a natural love for people.
Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting.
There are people who love people, but have a hard time with individuals.
And there are people who love individuals and have a hard time with people.
So what I mean by that is some people just like the energy of crowds.
(09:55):
Some people like to be around the life of things happening.
I do not like that at all.
What I like is individuals.
And so, always, I've been this way as long as I can remember, if I can find a corner somewhere
to talk to one person about their life, that's what I want to be doing.
So if I'm at a big event, a night of worship, a church event, whatever, you'll pretty much
(10:19):
always see me either speaking or working with the staff or off on the periphery with one
or two people that I've found something interesting to talk about.
And so just drawing things out is a skill that I've learned over the years.
I don't know that it came naturally to me.
I'm naturally very introverted and was a very shy kid.
(10:41):
And so what I've become through all of this practice is an outgoing introvert.
Somebody with social skills, conversational skills, but needs a long, long nap after
I spend the day talking to people.
So when I say a thousand people, you figure easily three or four people a week that I
interview for various projects.
(11:03):
Not all of them are podcast interviews.
I'm including everything for, if I interview two or three people for an event story that
just happened, I'm counting all of that.
So it really, you start talking to a lot of people really fast when you do it every week.
Coming up, Caleb and I talk about the Humans of Adventism project.
(11:26):
That's next on Adventist Waves.
Yeah, I think my proudest project has been Humans of Adventism because it's one of the
only things that I know of that includes the extended family.
So when we talk about Adventist projects, a lot of times we're talking about people who
(11:49):
are actively participating in church.
But you have people raised in Adventist families.
You have people who are somewhat interested in this or used to be involved or were a student
at an Adventist college or for whatever reason, they're not showing up in the spaces that
we're in.
Humans of Adventism included all of those people.
(12:11):
Humans of Adventism, it didn't have a litmus test of are you conservative enough?
Are you keeping the 28 fundamental beliefs or just 25 or 15?
This is one of those things where it's like we are a people group and you belong here
whether you go to church or not.
So this really touched on the fact that Adventism is also a culture, that when you stop going
(12:35):
to church, you still have things about your weekly life.
Friday night comes and there's something that happens in you whether you do anything
about it or not, there's still that feeling.
There's that pattern that's been established in you.
When you drive by a Seventh-day Adventist church, you have an impression of who's in
there and what's going on.
And sometimes maybe there's a hymn that you miss.
(12:57):
Sometimes maybe there's, man, I haven't had a haystack since I was 19.
And even though you won't go to church just for a haystack, there's pieces of this culture
that are ingrained in us if we've been in this environment, in this community, that
I kind of want to go back and just say, hey, I don't really need you to meet this whole
(13:19):
checklist of people.
I need you to know that we still care about you and that I want a relationship with you.
Humans of Adventism featured real life stories.
It began as a Facebook page in 2017, actually.
Several years later, they began producing videos.
A video series was produced by Caleb and Justin during 2020.
(13:41):
In 2021, it was released.
They shared stories from all around the United States.
It was like a buffet of sorts with various kinds of Adventist testimonies.
No doubt this came with its challenges.
I asked him, did the Humans of Adventism project come out the way you wanted it to be?
(14:02):
No.
First of all, I didn't plan on doing it myself.
When I first started putting things together, I had a team of about six or seven people
that were going to help me.
So I had different interviewers on Adventist college campuses and photographers that would
get pictures.
And all of these people who got really excited about the idea, helped once or twice, and
(14:26):
then said, hey, I'm really busy.
Sorry.
So that really fell apart.
And I was left with the choice of, do I continue this project on my own and just not make it
as flashy and as polished as I had hoped it would be?
(14:47):
Or do I let it fail because I'm not willing to put in that work myself?
And it can't live up to that standard.
So I would say early on, it was hard to stay going in some ways.
People didn't really understand what the project was.
It's a very unique style.
People's names aren't attached to it.
(15:07):
It's just kind of these vignettes of their life.
People were not used to seeing non theological Adventist stories.
There used to be very certain types of templates for testimonies, for example.
Testimonies when you go to an Adventist church are going to be, I was struggling with this
horrible thing.
Then this thing happened.
A person came to visit me in prison.
(15:28):
They gave me a Bible study.
They came to my house.
I heard an evangelistic series, whatever the catalyst was, there's always a turning point.
And then it ends with, and that's how I got saved from it.
It's over.
It's done.
I don't have a problem with that anymore.
Now I'm fixed.
Now I'm free.
That is not, what's that?
(15:48):
Now I'm free.
Yeah.
That is not humans of Adventism stories or its style.
It tells stories in the middle.
So no resolution sometimes.
Somebody is like, hey, I've been going to church for three and a half years and I have
a severe meth addiction and I still have it.
And here's how it's affecting my life and my family.
(16:10):
It was not clean.
It was not polished.
It was not theologically correct.
It was where people were when I talked to them and a whole lot of people out there,
I would say the majority of people are not in a place where they can tell a story that
says I'm completely done.
God fixed me.
I don't have any problems.
I'm not struggling with this issue anymore.
(16:32):
Most people struggle with something their whole life and it looks very different from
person to person.
But there's a whole lot of people that are listening to these testimonies and thinking,
wow, why didn't it change for me?
You know, why didn't it fix?
God fixed that in my life.
And so, you know, I would say even though there were a lot of things that didn't turn
(16:55):
out how I hoped, I never could have imagined this turning into work for me, like paying
work.
I never could have imagined the relationships that I would find and just how far that project
would carry.
It went nationally quickly and then internationally very quickly.
(17:16):
And I'm just a guy on my phone, really.
At the end of the day, I was just sitting there sending people messages on Facebook Messenger
or emailing them and talking to them about their life.
I didn't even start doing recorded audio or phone interviews or anything for like two
years.
I was just using Messenger for all of my interviews.
(17:37):
And so, to have that turn into something where my life is about creating media that addresses
our cultural shortfalls and tries to build a better future for this church and took me
all the way across the country, I never could have seen it turning into that.
(17:58):
And I'm so grateful that it did.
From this project, God opened up the way for Caleb to work for the Oregon Conference of
the Civdei Adventist Church.
He is now the digital content strategist.
He now plays a key role in empowering other creatives in his community.
One of the projects that Caleb has initiated is the Creators Lab.
(18:20):
Yeah, I'm so lucky to have been able to do Creators Lab.
So our team here at the Oregon Conference put that together, but it really started back
when I was a freelancer.
I was talking about kind of this boom of Adventist millennial kind of like rogue creators, right?
Where we didn't have permission from our church, we didn't have funding.
(18:43):
And I remember several times just kind of getting together with other people that were
like me in this space and saying, what if we had something where all of us could come
together?
What if we had something that wasn't so expensive, that wasn't, you know, our jobs don't fly
us out for this, so something that we could afford, but also something that was native
(19:04):
to the environment we were in.
Something that was hosted by people who understood the internet, understood internet culture,
understood just kind of the language and the nuances and the trends that were in all the
time.
And at the time, we really didn't have much in the way of that.
It was, you kind of had these kind of older mindset people hosting events that they hoped
(19:30):
would connect with us, but because they weren't super involved in it, they didn't have that
natural understanding of things that would connect with us, what we really needed, wanted
to talk about.
Even the speaker list would be kind of a range of people who might be relevant to us and
might be completely working in a different environment that doesn't cross over with us.
(19:53):
And so, yeah, I, Creator's Lab was an idea that we pitched five years ago.
Five years ago, I came to the Oregon Conference as a freelancer, partnered with the Oregon
Conference, producing stories for them and managing social media, but I was still working
for lots of other people as well.
(20:13):
And so, you know, there wasn't a lot of traction to the idea, but, you know, I joined this
team, we worked together through COVID, we worked together through all kinds of political
turmoil, all kinds of stuff.
And really, last year, we finally, finally got the chance to start putting things together
(20:35):
for real, pitch this idea, got a date set.
And so, yeah, I was able to have the trust of my community and this conference, and we
were able to create something that I feel was one of the first really digital creator
conferences in the US that's specific for us.
(20:57):
That's just for people who make things for the internet.
And you know, it wasn't a huge event.
We had around 100 people in attendance.
But as far as the impact, what we heard from person after person after person was, I didn't
know how badly I needed community like this.
We had people who grew up in the Adventist church, who came back for this, that haven't
(21:20):
come to a church service in a long, long time, years and years.
And they found community there and still show up.
We have a small group here that spawned off of that.
And they still come and show up here.
So they're not in church services, they're not listening sermons, but they will get
together with us.
(21:40):
That brings us to an end of this podcast.
Thank you so much for listening.
I've been on a quest to learn about the community side of podcasting.
And thanks to Caleb, I feel one step closer to the answer.
I don't think Caleb ever imagined that the success of the humans of Adventism project
would have landed him where he is today.
I can see he ties his project so closely to the people that he serves.
(22:04):
And I hope that this inspires you too.
Think how can you engage your audience?
Use stories and images that appeal to them.
Thank you for tuning in to Adventist Waves.
This podcast wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the support of BlueVenya and
Audio.
Need support with producing your podcast?
BlueVenya provides help from start to finish.
(22:25):
Visit the website today at bluevenya.com forward slash audio.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Your feedback helps us bring you more inspiring content.
This podcast was produced by Khan Elmans, special thanks to our guests for coming on
to the show.
You have been listening to Adventist Waves.
(22:53):
Can youkg?
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