Lovin’ Life in Las Vegas Creates Innovative Approaches to Witnessing

As part of the 120-day witnessing condition that was launched on Sunday, March 4, 2012, Lovin’ Life Ministries is inviting families from around the nation to visit Las Vegas and participate in a local witnessing initiative.

“The reason we’re asking our families to come again to Las Vegas is because it’s the place closest to True Parents’ heart,” said Rev. Joshua Cotter, vice president of the Unification Church USA. “In the same way we had a campaign to give out 120,000 autobiographies last year, we want to invite members to come and fulfill their direction from True Parents, which is that each family brings 12 spiritual children to the movement. What a great opportunity it is to go where True Parents live and to find spiritual children there.

“Another reason is that True Parents know we’ve started to hold Lovin’ Life Sunday services in a beautiful theatre in Las Vegas. We want now to fill that theatre so that when True Parents come, they’ll be inspired by the new members. That’s why we’re inviting families from all 50 states to come as district teams and spend a week or so getting back into the spirit of witnessing, finding spiritual children who can help build the Las Vegas church, and inheriting the spirit of Lovin’ Life there so that they can take it back to their homes. We want to be proactive – we don’t want to wait for True Parents to give us direction. We want to be able to tell them that we have new brothers and sisters around the nation and that they are on fire.”

Anyone Can Witness

Demian Dunkley, the Las Vegas Lovin’ Life Pastor, explained that ever since ideas for the Las Vegas witnessing campaign were presented at the national leaders’ summit on April 14th, “It’s been a hot topic.”

As the first steps of the witnessing campaign, Pastor Dunkley created “Invite Tickets” with which members could hand out and welcome people to the Lovin’ Life Sunday service.

“We want to move beyond the idea of a witnessing team,” he said. “We don’t want people to think that it’s the witnessing team’s job to witness. The whole idea behind the Invite Ticket was to boil down the moment of witnessing to such a simple act that anyone could do it. The heart of Lovin’ Life is Sunday service and inviting people to it is key to growing our church. Therefore, inviting people should be something anybody can and wants to do. Who doesn’t like getting a ticket to go attend an awesome Sunday service in a theater?

“All I’m about is the business of inviting people to church. The Invite Ticket is my business card – why should my business card be anything other than an invitation to come to church? And people do eventually come when you invite them. The whole concept of natural witnessing is easier than we think. It can be as simple as a spontaneous, three-minute conversation with someone in Dunkin’ Donuts. In Las Vegas, there are numerous 24-hour locations for outreach opportunities such the airport or the Strip, where tens of thousands of people walk every day and every night.”

“We Want To Have Fun Together”

In the effort to help members visualize their experience as part of the witnessing campaign, Dunkley said the following:

“My desire is that a week of witnessing in Las Vegas would be viewed like a vacation. I want people to feel inspired and enjoy their time here. We want to have fun together. The vision I have is that members would show up on a Saturday, experience Lovin’ Life on Sunday, have orientation on Monday during which we’d get on a bus and visit places like Mount Charleston or the Hoover Dam to follow in True Father’s footsteps and learn about his providential course in Las Vegas. Tuesday and Wednesday we’d go out witnessing and participate in the local ministry, and on sometime Thursday or Friday we’d head out to Lake Mead for an afternoon of barbeque and recreation. We’d wrap up the week with Sunday service, during which we’ll hopefully be hosting guests we’ve invited.”

According to Dunkley, materials for the witnessing campaign, such as T-shirts and Invite Tickets, will be standardized and be made available to all who register online here. Invite Tickets will be sold for $1 and T-shirts for $20 in order to support the outreach activities and the Las Vegas providence. Copies of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, will be available in English for $5 each or $140 per box of 28. A limited store of autobiographies will be available in Spanish, Chinese and Korean as well.

Self-Sustaining Witnessing Teams

Dunkley stressed the importance of self-sustainability for the members traveling into Las Vegas. “I’m hoping that each district will assign someone to act as a coordinator in the district for the people who would like to come to Las Vegas to support this initiative,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of staff, vehicles or property here and if fifty people were to show up at once, it would be difficult for us to meet the individual needs of each. But if they come as a team organized by their District Pastors, they we could work much more effectively.

“We are currently searching for rental property to use as a hostel facility, so until that is available, please band together with other volunteers and rent an economy suite for a week at a local hotel or motel. The cost is about $250 a week, and divided by three or four people, it is extremely affordable. For young adults who are planning to stay for longer than a week, limited housing is available at the Chinhwa Church facility.

“As for transportation, there is a local bus network. You can use this opportunity to meet people on the bus. There is also a rental car center that has a free shuttle from the airport.”

Calendar of Events

The following is the calendar of weekly programs held at the Chinhwa Church at 3320 W Ford Ave., Las Vegas NV 89139:

Mon Daytime Tour 6:30 pm Internal Guidance with Rev. Pak, who regularly attends True Parents’ Hook Dok Hwe’s Tue 5:30 pm Lovin’ Life staff meeting Wed 6:30 pm International Culture Night Thu 6:00 pm Journey- and W.I.R.E.D. Small Groups Fri 7:00 pm Game Night/Open Mic Sat 5:00 am Og Mansei Service 9:00 am Tae Kwon Do 9:30 am Filmmaking Small Group 12:00 pm Internet Small Group Sun 9:00 am LLM Service at the Rave Theatre 12:00 pm LLM Korean Class (Chinwha Church) 2:00 pm Korean Ministry Daily 5:00 a.m. Hook Dok Hwe; Divine Principle presentation at 4:00 pm (except on Sunday), and 9:00-9:45 p.m. closing meeting

Sunday service takes place at 9:00 a.m. at Rave Motion Theater 18 at Town Square, 6587 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV 89119. Additional small groups take place at locations other than Chinhwa Church, such as the Sunday evening Lake Mead Fishing Small Group, and the Saturday 8:00 a.m. ACLC prayer breakfast.