Two weeks ago, I attended the 2022 “Called” convention for the North American Seventh-day Adventist ministers and families in Lexington, Kentucky. Many pastors came from all across North America and the Pacific Islands to worship together and to hasten the Lord’s return.
The Good Things
Overall (besides a couple things I’ll address below), the convention went well and was well attended; it included multiple informative break-out lectures to educate us pastors to be better equipped. Lexington, KY was centrally located for most pastors to be able to travel to with our wives and children; who also had their own respective meetings. My wife enjoyed Laurie Snyman’s presentations especially and her husband, Elder Royce Snyman did a great job in helping me and others. I heard many great sermons on faith, vision and the Lord’s soon coming! The vegetarian food was wonderful and information booths educational. As in Austin last time, I was overjoyed this time to reunite with so many of my fellow pastor friends from across the NAD.
Women’ Ordination Issue Remains
Now, what areas of the convention were contentious? About the “Called” Convention Mr. Peinado, a reporter for Spectrum Magazine states,
“At the North American Division’s (NAD) CALLED Convention this past week, a special luncheon was held to encourage women in ministry. Here, women in ministry came together to support and meet with one another. One of the speakers stated, ‘You need to ask no one for permission to answer God’s call. No one.’ It was also announced that the number of women pastors has increased from 101 to nearly 200 in the NAD.” (Spectrum, 6/24/2022)
It was clear to me from the abundance of female speakers, song leaders and people on the stage that this abundance of female pastors was intentionally on display. The convention’s theme song included the following lyrics, “I’m just here because I’m called.” They played this song so that women and men pastors would sing it together. Knowing the two positions on women’s ordination, I wondered, “Are these tactics to reverse the General Conference’s voted position against the ordination of women?” In hiring more women pastors; even an SDA female conference president and another conference has a female ministerial director; many conferences have placed unordained women into conference leadership over/above their ordained pastors. Many readers may remember watching the NAD meetings a while back when Elder Dan Jackson, the NAD president at the time, announced the plan at the NAD is to “Agitate, Agitate, Agitate” until the world church changes its theology to allow women’s ordination.
Music Without Melody
The biggest surprise however was not the NAD support for women’s ordination. Rather, it was the choice of music which someone brought to this holy convocation. I and many other pastors felt sick and refused to stand up and participate; neither did our wives in this bedlam which these song leaders tried to portray as worship. It was not necessarily the instruments which caused a problem: namely a keyboard, 3 electric guitars and a jazz drum set. Rather, it was the low-quality performance of the musicians, the song leaders and the P.A. mixing department. The drums were beaten so hard that it sounded at times like a rock concert. The guitars distorted each other and didn’t produce nice melodies or harmonies. The songs chosen were not known to the majority of us pastors and no song books with the notes were provided so that we could sight read the songs to learn them. The instruments were overplayed; way too loud and overtook the volume of those singing.
In America, the majority of the SDA churches have piano and organs each week accompanying the hymnal. Yet, these song leaders seemed oblivious to this. Nor was any explanation given as to why these worship leaders were making this change in the face of us Ordained Ministers. The praise team sounded unrehearsed; they didn’t use any music or stands with sheet music or follow notes. Their acoustics in the large convention center sounded muddy and cringe worthy. Furthermore, they conflated the “exercise time” with instrumental accompaniment which questioned the appearance of dancing. And during worship, they used “disco lights” to flash sparkles and strobe light effects throughout the auditorium with the music pulsating, shouting and clapping. I was awaiting any minute for fireworks to explode on the stage and Gene Simmons to walk out!
Time of Revival Hymn Singing & Prayer
I can’t speak for every pastor in North America, but I can tell the shock of many. As a result, this following text message went out. “There is a group of pastors gathering at the Lexington SDA Church tonight at 7 p.m. to ‘worship the Lord in beauty of holiness’ (Ps. 96:9). We are inviting you and your family to join us for a time of revival hymn singing, united prayer for our church, and the spoken word. Feel free to share this invitation.” This is exactly what happened. We met in the Lexington SDA church with the pastor’s blessing and sang beautiful hymns with a wonderful piano player; we prayed in groups and a collective prayer; I had a Bible reading of the 3 Angels messages and another pastor of 40 years gave a short homily. To be clear, we were not self-righteous, nor did we gather to organize anything; just to sing out of our hymnal and pray. Then, after about an hour, we asked people to go back to the convention center to continue to support their program.
On the next and final day, I was told that word had gotten out to the church leaders over the need to change worship to become more reverent. One person told me, “God answered our prayer!’ For on the next final morning at the convention, many hymns from our hymnal were sung without drums and those distorted guitars. Then, a Brother Pastor from Alabama preached a wonderful sermon about the “snake” and “proclaiming a warning”; it was so powerful that it has changed my whole outlook on preaching for the better! (Ye must watch it!) I was wiping tears from my eyes as my wife held my hand and I said “Amen” to the gospel truths presented. Thank you to my faithful fellow NAD pastors for all the work you do to lead God’s remnant church at this time. Thank you for having this convention so that we Seventh-day Adventist ministers could gather and be blessed. To the praise team, if you did get out of hand on the music, please try to get it right for next time. I love you all, you know!
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Ryan Counsell is Pastor of Belgreen, Ionia & Portland MI churches.
