World Mission Society Church of God

2016 New Jerusalem Cultural Content Awards Ceremony

Nation | Korea
Date | December 04, 2016

The 2016 New Jerusalem Cultural Content Awards Ceremony was held at the New Jerusalem Bundang Temple on December 4. This is an integrated awards ceremony for the Melchizedek Literary Awards, the Elohim Video Festival Awards, and the Bible Seminar Presentation Awards. The Church of God accelerates the spread of the gospel, in keeping with the movement to preach to seven billion people. In order to help the rapidly increasing members grow in faith, the church continues to produce contents and train gospel workers by regularly holding educational gatherings, events, and contests.

This year’s awards ceremony was attended by over 1,000 people, including some of the pastoral staff and the members who had contributed to the gospel work in various fields—literary club members, scientific advisors, writers, editors, translators, and photo/video reporters as well as awards winners and finalists.

At the worship service, Mother expressed Her joy and gratitude to the members for having displayed the glory of God at workplace, school, and home, despite their busy and tough schedule, and prayed for them to receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit. Mother also appreciated their efforts to contribute their God-given talents fully to the gospel work, calling them “heavenly messengers who deliver the glad tidings of salvation.” Then She added, “On the base of thanksgiving and humility, let us work hard to fulfill the gospel mission, so that all people can have hope for heaven and awaken our brothers and sisters” (1 Th 2:4; Lk 22: 27–30).

General Pastor Kim Joo-cheol gave the attending members a sense of pride by saying, “You are creating global contents that convey love and emotions throughout the world.” He emphasized that faith is very important to those who are granted special talents by God, because when they have firm faith in God, who created the vast universe that cannot be measured by science, they are able to produce powerful instruments of the gospel. Then he asked them to create precious contents of the gospel, which will lead many people to salvation, by adding God-given talents to upright faith (1 Co 10: 5–6, Dt 8:2, 16).

The awards ceremony was held after the service. For the 17th Melchizedek Literary Awards Ceremony, there had been entries in seven categories—essay, short story, children’s story, column, etc.—in Korean, English, Chinese, Spanish, and some other languages, from May 15 to June 30. As a result, 31 entries were awarded.

During the 2nd Elohim Video Festival from June 20 to 30, there were 153 entries in semi-documentary, short film, New Song music video, UCC, advertisement, animation, and cartoon, and 35 entries were selected as award winners. A total of 427 entries were submitted for the 2nd Bible Seminar Presentation Awards for about a month from October 3, and 9 individuals and 6 teams stood at the podium to receive the wards.
It was not until the last awardee came down from the podium that applause and cheering stopped in the hall. After presenting the awards to the winners, Mother encouraged all the attendees by saying, “In the future, you will all be rewarded in heaven,” and asked them to diligently improve their talents and make more efforts to complete world evangelism. On the way back home after the awards ceremony, the attendees were already filled with enthusiasm for creation, thinking about what contents they would use to power up the gospel work. There is a keen interest in how the contents that contain their faith and sincerity will be used until the fulfillment of the prophecy, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Mt 24:14).