Should Some Things Change?

Increasing numbers of the members of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination are coming to understand the perils of our traditional governance structure.  The 19^th century model for managing our denomination has no chance of sustaining our global network. What got us to where we are today is not what will move us to where God intends for us to be in the future.  For too many decades we have treaded water with some kind of wishful thinking that everything will self sort because it is God’s work.

Our God is the creative God who has endowed his creation, humans, with the power to think and innovate, to will and to do. He not only equipped us with these gifts but he placed responsibility on us initially to have dominion and to rule. When here in person he commissioned us with a mandate that is a moral imperative to—go—make disciples—baptize them—and teach those disciples to observe all of what he commanded.

While obedience to this commission has been given voice, and even action in our denomination, today, in a 21^st century world, the system of governance meant to expedite the gospel commission is hampering mission fulfillment, and is at risk of killing it altogether.  The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s utilization of resources in today’s world is immoral if the gospel commission is a moral imperative.

The following data was gathered from the 2013 Annual Statistical Report, which was reporting the statistics as of Dec 31, 2011, prepared by General Conference Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research.  According to their global data there are 26,859 “Evangelistic and Pastoral Employees” and 27,788 “Administrative, Promotional, Office and Miscellaneous Employees”.   These are Full Time Equivalent employees. 

There is the ever continuing call from denominational leadership for greater financial faithfulness from the membership as the primary answer to church economics. There is no doubt that across our denomination members should continually be challenged to honor God with their money.  Also, there is little doubt that almost all of us could be more generous.

But with that said, a system that has a bureaucratic structure with these office to field ratios is not only unsustainable but should be unsustainable.  It would be unimaginable to visit any business anywhere in the world and have a manager standing behind every online worker.

A simple, and I realize it isn’t so simple, change of those ratios could serve as a means for becoming more faithful stewards of the resources we manage on God’s behalf.

Consider the possibilities based on the following assumptions:

• ·      An annual average cost of $50,000 per FTE
• ·      Office to field ratios shift from approximately 1:1 to 1:10
• ·      Give each office FTE 2 FTE assistants
• ·      New office to field is then  3:10

This would mean an annual savings of  $941,750,000.00!

If we only gave each office FTE 1 full time assistant the savings jump to  $1,090,950,000.00 in annual savings!!  Yes, that is one billion! And remember this isn’t a one time savings but an annual opportunity for reinvestment in fulfilling the Great Commission.

The amazing miracle of God’s blessing is that even with our current supervision ratios we are still managing to grow and somewhat maintain the denomination. But the clock is ticking!

May God inspire, give vision and courage that we might be faithful in making the tough decisions necessary now to be able to look back from a future vantage point and know that God’s work is stronger, healthier, and more just because we did the hard work necessary to be a God honoring Seventh-day Adventist Denomination.

Andy McDonald

A Last Day Message With No Last Day Music: The Great Musical Disappointment of the SDA General Conference Session of 2015

I recently tried to look up what song writing events might be available for the upcoming world church gathering of Seventh-day Adventists in Houston in 2015. Upon finding nothing I wrote to a very nice gentleman for some more information, the response is as follows:

Dear (Name Withheld),

Could you please tell me what music writing events for the church are being organized for the 2015 G.C. session? I don’t see anything on the website but find it difficult to believe that our church is not encouraging any type of new songwriting for the body of faith at large.

In Christ,

Richard Hickam

The response:

Brother Hickam,

I regret to inform you that I have not been informed of any music writing events that have been organized for the 2015 GC Session.  I am copying my response to you to our GC Session Music Coordinator, (Name Withheld), so that he can respond to you in the event that I have overlooked the detail to which you are referring.  I thank you, at any rate, for your interest in our Growth and Development.  Blessings to you and Yours!

As of this date, (months later) I have heard no response and that’s sad but okay; I will grow where I am planted.

There is the old story of Isaac Watts complaining to his father about the quality of songs and singing in the church of his day. Watts’ father, growing tired of listening to his son’s whining challenged him to do something about it.

We have the blessing today of celebrating with the scores of generations before us great songs of faith that have inspired through the centuries, but what about today’s struggles and victories? Who is writing those songs? Who is writing those songs in the language of the church in 2014? Hillsong United? Chris Tomlin? Anyone in our denomination?

We have a number of talented musicians in our local church with varying degrees of musicality. As a former music educator by trade I thought, if I can get them all in the same room together, cast a vision with a timeline and a destination, we could do some great things together. I could help with some music fundamentals and pairing the lyricists with the tune writers. We are a little ways into our journey, and it’s been fascinating. Here are a few comments from some of our musicians regarding this process:

“It’s good for a church to sing songs that are being written within the church, while having a universal application it has a certain resonance in the local congregation.”

“We are the new generation; we are adding to the collective history of the saints.”

“I have learned organizational skills, how my thoughts work, and about the process to create something new.”

“After I pray, I feel like God is speaking back to me. I write the words down and then comes the difficult part of finding the right music.”

“It is a process, a long process with many layers—the words, the music, the arrangement, the instruments, the recording.”

“I felt like I had a gift, and now I have a purpose to use it for God’s glory.”

We’ll keep you posted about our continuing journey . . . and also about some new songs!

Richard Hickam 

and the songwriting team at the Florida Hospital Church

What I Learned About Puerto Rico While in Israel by Andy McDonald

Florida Hospital Church is wading into justice ministry.  We aren’t sure exactly what to do or how to do it, but we know there is much injustice in human trafficking and a whole host of injustice in spin off areas related to it.  Of course, like all Christians, we are horrified when one group of people exploit another group. When people are forced into modern day slavery of any kind it should cause us to rise up and resist and seek justice for all. 

My mind has been more focused on seeing the injustice in our world and how we can help.  So on my recent trip to Israel, touring with other Adventist pastors, I had the opportunity for conversations with some new friends.  One of these had formerly served in Puerto Rico, and what I learned from him was a story of unbelievable injustice.

Whenever we manage resources to unduly benefit some while neglecting, depriving or exploiting others, injustice has occurred, and the picture of injustice occurring in Puerto Rico in the Seventh-day Adventist Church exposes a model of resource management causing injustice across much of our denomination.

If the gospel commission is a moral imperative, then our current resource management is immoral and an egregious injustice. “This is what the LORD says: ‘Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed.’” Isaiah 56:1.

The responsibility of the denomination is to manage resources for the growth of the kingdom of God, and that growth takes place at local churches.  As former North American Division President, Charles Bradford, put it so well, “There is no church but the local church.” And yet the very critical, frontline, where-the-rubber-meets-the-road, local church is being continually stripped of resources to fund a system of duplication of services and inefficiencies that are creating a system of injustice.

What I learned about Puerto Rico is that it is a tiny territory.  You could literally put 18.7 Puerto Ricos into the State of Florida! Yet in this tiny territory you will discover North Puerto Rico Conference, South Puerto Rico Conference, East Puerto Rico Conference, and West Puerto Rico Conference, and overseeing those four conferences is the Puerto Rican Union Conference!!!

When I heard this, I found it hard to believe, so just this week I researched it in the Seventh-day Adventist Year Book, and it is true! The pastor who shared this with me also shared something I haven’t been able to verify: the Puerto Rican Union Conference recently built a new office for $5million while the college in that union still goes without a church building.

To eat up these kinds of resources, to drain away from the local church funds needed to do ministry, care for widows and orphans, and to serve the people we want to know the love of God is an injustice continued by a system which has created “unjust laws” and continues to “issue oppressive decrees.”

It is not too late to stop the injustice.  Let’s heed Isaiah’s warning and write new just laws, and new decrees that free resources and enable churches to fulfill mission.

Isaiah 10:1 says, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees.”

Andy McDonald

The Curse of Denominations by Andy McDonald

Richard Niebuhr opens his book, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, with these words: “The Christian Church has often achieved apparent success by denying the precepts of its founder.”   Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is a blatant call to the Father for his followers to be one:  

20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

With every other Christ follower on the planet who is clear that, regardless of theological nuance, our salvation is by and through and because of Jesus only and completely, we share a oneness that was Jesus’ hope.

When we allow other important doctrines, true and valuable as they may be, to divide the Christians within a single denomination, to vilify one another, or to demonize those of other denominations who interpret scripture differently regarding other beliefs, we are not fulfilling Jesus’ prayer. Usually each denomination takes hard, specific, demanding stances on issues to, in their best moments, avoid or counter what they have determined to be heresy.

When we seek, with any group of people, to “be brought into complete unity,” this is more likely to occur when the list of what we must be in “complete unity” about is very short.   A dumb illustration is that nutritionists would all be in “complete unity” that every human being needs to eat a healthy diet.  However, put ten nutritionists in the same room and begin to attempt to create rules about what makes up a “healthy diet,” and the unity becomes disrupted. 

Unity calls for humility and vulnerability:  a humble loose grip on our individual or collective “rightness” and the corresponding vulnerability of acknowledging our potential “wrongness.” The origins of our own Seventh-day Adventist denomination should have better equipped us for a more humble and vulnerable denominationalism.  Our denominational birth pains were very related to an unhealthy sureness of our rightness about the return of Jesus on October 22, 1844, and our potential growth in vulnerability of acknowledging our wrongness, which was muted some by our reinterpretations of meanings.

My point is that our unity as Christians is in Christ. Even our unity within our own denomination must be at this point. Our ability to lay down our interminable need to be right, to admit the limits of our own scope of understanding and to admit that our only hope for life and eternity is in Jesus brings us into a more complete unity with all who share that understanding, even when we disagree on other points of Biblical interpretation.

May you grow in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and may part of that growing make you gracious to all those who might see things a little differently.

Andy McDonald