Responding to Alabama’s high diabetes rates, Huntsville First Church drew 326 in-person attendees and about 400 online viewers to a Defeating Diabetes Transformative Seminar in August 2025. Organizers scheduled the event to allow daylight travel for those who prefer not to drive after dark.
Though billed as a citywide event, participants came from across north Alabama, Tennessee Valley, and beyond — some traveling up to six hours. Attendees arrived 30 minutes before the event began.
Organizers credited the strong response to concerted prayer, careful planning, and teamwork. The church’s Public Relations Department produced promotional materials; guest services welcomed attendees; ushers distributed folders containing worksheets, recipes, and resources from Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN); and the audiovisual team provided the livestream. Members of Sabbath School Class 14 offered special prayers. Earlier that day, William Lee Sr., lead pastor, addressed stress during the morning service.
Promotion included social media, three radio interviews, a local TV interview, email and text notices to past seminar participants, announcements in local churches, and word of mouth. AdventSource supported registration by collecting attendees’ contact information and church affiliations, and by hosting a basic registration page.
Dawna Baker, general manager of WJOU Oakwood University Radio and host of Morning Joy, served as emcee. Tommy Battle, Huntsville mayor, and Michelle Watkins, city councilwoman, offered greetings and expressed support.
The seminar covered diabetes risk factors and symptoms; medications and botanicals, including overlooked side effects and the role of herbal therapies; and nutrition therapy, examining carbohydrates — the good, the bad, and the harmful. QR codes linked attendees to additional content from a special Defeating Diabetes telecast and culinary program on 3ABN, as well as to the Amazing Facts Study Guide 13, “God’s Free Health Plan.”
Follow-up was prioritized. Within a week, Bessie White and her team contacted those who are not Adventist attendees with invitations to an upcoming evangelistic series. The Defeating Diabetes presentation is available on YouTube and has garnered more than 4,000 views. For the link and a four-page worksheet to host a seminar at your church, email ceakins@scc-sda.org.
Curtis and Paula Eakins plan to present the Healthy Heart Transformative Seminar in August 2026, to help the community explore drug-free strategies to lower high blood pressure, address heart disease, understand cholesterol, and more.
“Lifestyle medicine gives opportunity for carrying forward successful evangelistic work. It is as these lines of efforts are united [with preaching], that we may expect to gather the most precious fruit for the Lord,” Ellen G. White, Evangelism, p. 516.
South Central | March 2026
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