Institutions designed for big-city evangelism through multiple methods. The program of a center includes youth meetings, welfare activities, cooking schools, and other health education programs, regular weekly public evangelistic services, Bible classes, and usually a reading room. Often a church organization is connected with an evangelistic center, and regular Sabbath services are conducted. The supreme object of evangelistic centers is soul winning. Goodwill and pleasing public relations are maintained while every possible method and program in approaching the minds of men with the gospel of Jesus Christ are being employed.
Limited availability and high rentals of halls in large metropolitan areas, as well as the need for multiphase programs reaching mind, body, and spirit, led to the evangelistic center concept. After visiting such an evangelistic center developed by another denomination—the People’s Church, in Toronto, Canada—H.M.S. Richards, of the Voice of Prophecy broadcast, suggested the incorporation of this idea in the Seventh-day Adventist program.
In 1952 the General Conference Spring Meeting allocated accumulated funds of the China Division for 1952, 1953, and 1954, which could no longer be used in China, for the establishment of evangelistic centers in London, New York, and Chicago. Centers also were established in other cities, such as Cairo, Egypt; Beirut, Lebanon; Osaka, Japan; Manila and Cebu, Philippines; and Djakarta, Indonesia. Most of the major centers had been sold by 1994, but a few continue to operate.