As many of you know, the Michigan Conference carried out a vendetta against Conrad Vine, Ron Kelly, and the Village Church (VC) in 2024. Essentially, their conference president was determined to stifle the voices of these two men, and reduce the best church in North American Adventism to a shell of its former greatness. It was/is a very ugly time in the Adventist Church, exposing a dark underbelly of corporate intimidation and bullying, reaching all the way to the head of the fish.
Led by their very capable head pastor (Ron Kelly) and well-informed religious liberty leader (Conrad Vine), the Village church was a model of human liberty and freedom of conscience during the Covid mandates, lockdowns, coercion, mask mania and the pharmaceutical fealty of the General Conference. The Village Church also spoke truth to culture, holding sexual purity conferences that help people resolve moral failure in their lives and find scriptural freedom again. All this was too much to swallow for a conference president who preferred control over freedom and lock step with the general conference in lieu of individual liberty of thought. Here’s a summary of the situation and current update.
Summary
On August 19 of last year, Conrad Vine gave a message in Maine titled Remnant, Respectable, or Regime Church. Outlining the failures of the general conference during covid, Vine offered suggestions on how we might respond during a subsequent failure of the General Conference to safeguard the religious liberty of Seventh-day Adventist church members.
On September 3, Jim Micheff (president of the Michigan Conference) sent a letter to all pastors in the Michigan Conference, banning Vine from speaking in any Michigan Seventh-day Adventist church. A large wave of indignation began to move across Adventism with over two million hits alone on YouTube videos. 90% of the interaction on social media is supportive of Vine.
For two months, the Michigan Conference remonstrated with the Village SDA Church, seeking to have Vine stripped of his church offices. This isn’t how our church operates, there are safeguards in place to prevent vindictive conferences from interfering with duly elected church officers. Frustrated by that reality, the conference withheld liability insurance from the Village Church’s new health outreach building to leverage the VC to strip away Vine’s Church offices. It didn’t work.
On December 4, Ron Kelly was fired as head pastor of the Village Church under the guise of ‘administrative leave.’ On December 8, there was a townhall meeting at the VC with Michigan Conference administrators. Many Seventh-day Adventists candidly informed Jim Micheff what they thought of his abuses of power. The Michigan Conference appointed Taariq Patel as interim header pastor.
On February 26, Conrad Vine announced that he was resigning from Adventist Frontier Missions to start a new ministry dedicated to preaching Bible-based sermons and informing Seventh-day Adventist church members about religious liberty issues. In a sermon on March 1st, he said that his resignation would keep the GC from further aggression towards AFM. Ugly stuff.
Why Patel accepted the position as interim head pastor at Village Church in the midst of this turmoil, is hard to say. Perhaps he naively thought he could handle it. Bottom line, he is there because the conference wants him there. He is there to do their bidding. We are told that last week he informed some of the leadership of the Village Church that he is now their head pastor. Ok..
So, Ron Kelly is officially fired from Michigan. Conrad Vine is banned from speaking in Michigan, and he resigned as president of AFM and moved his church membership away from the hostile Michigan conference, to Maine. What next? Will the Michigan Conference enter a period of serendipity, satisfied that they have destroyed one of the best churches in North America, fired and driven their pastor away, took their (paid for) health building as conference property (like they do church buildings) and cancelled the Village Church’s awesome Religious Liberty weekends that dared to question denominational infallibility? What next?
What’s next is the Michigan conference will go after pastors who stood up to Micheff and supported the Village Church and Ron Kelly. One pastor in southern Michigan may have been let go, another one is on double secret probation, another one is being called on the carpet as we speak. Freedom of speech continues to be under assault in SDA hierarchy.
Ten churches have called for a special constituency meeting to address the spiritual abuses of the Michigan Conference. There will be others, in spite of the conference’s attempt to dissuade church boards from adding their names to the list. Our advice? Add your name to the list and let’s have an open and honest conversation about conference bullying and spiritual abuse, and put checks and balances and accountability back in place. Only this will restore trust between Seventh-day Adventist members in Michigan and an out-of-control Pyongang-esque Conference leadership.
The ‘T’ word. Tithe was down $2,026,725 in Michigan last year, with 74% of that shortfall coming in December, 2024. Apparently, Michigan constituents are not impressed with their conference, and it is manifesting itself in their giving patterns.
Yesterday, it was announced by Taariq Patel that next Sabbath is his last one at Village Church. Will he be moved up into the hierarchy as a reward for his fealty to the conference? It remains to be seen.
On April the 14th, there is a board meeting at Village Church. On April 20th, there is a business meeting.
A major issue in Michigan is the attack on freedom of speech by the conference, under the guise of promoting unity. Don’t fall for it, dear friends. It is part of an effort to control the conscience of people by leaders who say in their pride “I sit a queen….and shall see no sorrow” (Revelation 18:7). Freedom of speech is a crucial component of religious liberty.
“We Are The Lord’s Anointed.”
A well-known passage in the Bible is where David was encouraged by his men to kill Saul in the cave. He answered,
“The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD’s anointed, to put out my hand against him [Saul], seeing he is the LORD’s anointed” (1 Sam. 24:6).
David’s reluctance to kill Saul because Saul was the Lord’s anointed has been interpreted by many administrators and laymen as a biblical principle that applies to pastors and administrators of the modern SDA church. To them, once these leaders are the Lord’s anointed, they cannot be contradicted, questioned, or criticized. God’s anointing becomes a kind of immunity given by God to church administrators. To go against them would be to go against God Himself. But is this really what the Bible teaches?
The expression “the Lord’s anointed” refers to how the kings of Israel were officially chosen and designated by God to occupy the role through the anointing done by a judge or prophet (10:1; 16:13). David didn’t want to kill Saul because he recognized that Saul, although unworthy, occupied a role designated by God. David did not want to be guilty of killing the one who had received the royal anointing.
However, what cannot be ignored is that this respect for the life of the king did not stop David from confronting Saul and accusing him of injustice and perversity in persecuting him without cause (24:15). David was not going to kill him, but he invoked God as judge against Saul in front of the whole army of Israel and openly asked God to punish Saul (v. 12).
David also told his allies that God Himself would in due time punish Saul for his sins (26:9–10), but David did not want to be the one to kill him. This did not stop David from confronting him.
We believe our spiritual leaders deserve respect. We believe they should earn our trust. We believe that we should honor their authority—while, of course, they are obedient to the Word of the Lord, preaching the truth and walking in a dignified, honest, and truthful way. When they become reprehensible, they must be corrected. Paul admonishes Timothy to do this with elders who have done wrong (1 Tim. 5:19–20).
True men of God (leaders) don’t reply to disagreements, criticisms, and questions by shutting the mouths of the sheep with “don’t touch the Lord’s anointed,” but with openness, honesty, and sincerity. They also don’t label their trucklers as ‘Supportive’, and good, and those who occasionally question their decisions as ‘Independents’ or bad people.
This is why a special constituency meeting in Michigan is needed—to expose the underside of a rotting log in Adventism, and help the church find correction to a dangerous precedent of authoritarian power, before it is too late.
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“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).
