Truth-tellers are much needed today. Truth sets us free and protects us from lies.
But even truth tellers can suffer from partial vision at times. There are two ways not to be able to see something clearly. You can be too close to it, or too far away. Mistreatment can make something too close to us. We’ve all been there before.
There is a feeling that authoritarianism is sweeping through the Church. We want leaders to hit home runs every time they act. But this is unrealistic. During covid a relatively small number of leading workers made decisions built around incomplete data and a flawed trust in government and medical corporations. The fallout has been epic distrust.
There remain many godly pastors, elders and members in the North American church. It would be a distortion and oversimplification to highlight high-handed decisions in a few conferences. God’s Church faces enormous present challenges, few of which will be resolved by shouting loudly or projecting ecclesiastical absolutism onto the broader Church. We need a more brotherly spirit, education, and engagement.
The Church structure is more than a legal tool. It is neither disposable nor merely human. It is a global, mutually agreed upon approach to organization by which God-anointed workers carry forward soul-winning mission. Each conference is in effect an individual mission entity, yet connected to the whole. When a conference in California falters into cultural captivity and shows it by sustaining LGBTQ agendas, a non-California conference has no say about that conference worker’s employment status. Neither can a culturally-compromised school or conference outside of the conference where you or I hold membership affect the employment of a Jesus-faithful, present-truth preaching pastor in my conference.
Whether one is a church member or a conference president, he is not able to reach into General Conference headquarters and force them to issue the Church an apology about events in 2020-2023.
The United Nations
And what about the Adventist Church connection with the United Nations? There are connections that do exist that have not delivered anywhere near a societal leverage to the Church that might offset the harm and loss of trust those same connections have caused. It would be well for the Church to completely disengage itself from the United Nations. There is no end-time scenario in which the UN helps the people of God. When Babylon, the kings of the earth, and the merchants of the earth unite their influence (Revelation 18), it will not be in favor of present truth!
Miserable Covid
Let’s be honest with ourselves; none of us entered the Covid crisis with a sufficiently Protestant spirit. We all learned in real time and had to make course corrections and adjustments. Some exited the Covid era with less trust in governments and more in Jesus. All were caught by surprise. As I see it the Church earned a failing grade. Yes, there were substantial leadership failures; there were also significant member errors. The Church was divided in a whole new way.
Certain persons in leadership wanted to align the Church alongside the establishment. Fear and tribalism and cancellation were in the very air we breathed. Was what happened an intentional attempt to assert control over the bodies and consciences of Adventists worldwide? No! But it was sadly illustrative and sadly reflexive. Persons (whom I grant were well-meaning) adopted a conventional approach: align with the establishment in a time of crisis.
I am saddened when I see the promotion of so-called social justice or promotion of the LGBTQ agenda by subsections of the Church. Really, all of us are participants in various subsections of the Church. Our influence is best exerted in our particular subsystem. Share your concerns (and actionable corrections) first thoughtfully locally to your conference leaders or your union.
Hindsight
To this day, honest brothers and sisters disagree about what has happened in recent years. Some of us are very convinced that egregious transgressions were committed against personal liberty, while others remain convinced that steps taken by government and medical authorities were right. You or I may find it difficult to understand how someone holding a position opposite our own could still think as they do after what has been learned since then. In such a situation it makes little sense to anticipate an apology. It will not be productive to wait for one. What needs to happen is simply for the two statements in question (2015, 2021) to be rescinded.
Rescinding
Rescinding would be an important acknowledgement of the great division that has arisen as leaders endeavored to process these events. It would be a reset for the entire Church. Rescinding does not require us to agree about the issues but it would help members know they have been heard. It would show that for the sake of the work of God there is an acknowledgement and a change of course, an unambiguous declaration of a neutral, not an effectively pro-Covid-vaccination, stance.
Suggestions have been made to justify a cessation of returning tithe via the Church structure until certain demands are met. Is there no mechanism to drive change besides manhandling the sacred tithe? Has God called any certain person to fan the flames and channel the steaming heat of discontent? We need truth tellers but no man is infallible. All men are given two ears. God wants me to listen for His voice through my brothers and sisters in Christ.
The Church structure is not a closed system; God has infinite access to it. In some places it may appear to be winding down but in others perhaps it is winding up!
Finally, it has been suggested that a shift might occur to house churches led by local elders and deacons “without an administrative structure that can betray us.” But not having an administrative structure offers no guarantee of non-betrayal. On the contrary, the conference system agreed upon by the world church, imperfect and even sometimes abused, has checks and balances. Church members have not only responsibilities but also rights. Conferences ignoring them do so at their own peril!
The answer is not to dissolve the structure, or to speak to diminish it to a mere legal mechanism in member’s minds. The answer is more engagement and more involvement as the Church. Not less.
We are marching to Zion. Great energy has been invested in creating the Church structure. It is a remarkable army of missionary entities organized for service. It is a mistake to starve all of them for the errors of certain subsections. We will face even greater challenges.
I want to press together without compromise. So do you. Then whatever else happens, let us have our part individually in bringing energy, not entropy, into God’s remnant Church.
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“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands...” (Psalm 90:17).
