2000 Annual Council - Opening Address

OPENING ADDRESS ANNUAL COUNCIL-2000

Jan Paulsen
President
General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

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The large challenges which faced the church of the first century were those of mission and unity. Having pondered and reflected for some time on where we are and where we are going as a Seventh-day Adventist Church at the beginning of the 21^st century, I am convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that the same two remain our most formidable challenges. And they can be addressed and dealt with successfully only if approached in a planned and deliberate manner. These two--mission and unity--do not come of themselves. They don't just happen, and they are not self-generative, nor are they by-products of anything else we do. They ARE the very objectives you aim for--they are an integral part of the design and purpose of the Church herself as a living organism. If either or both of these are lost in the life and spent energies of the Church, the Church has failed, and eventually decay and disintegration set in. I do not want mission and unity simply to become something we duly acknowledge and then we move on to other important and pressing matters. They are, in my view, terribly important for the Seventh-day Adventist community today. It is right that the General Conference should be an instrument designed to focus on both of these and to use its resources to achieve them.

If I seem to be returning to and laboring these two points heavily--and I accept that I do--it is simply because they arises out of my conviction of what the Lord expects of us as His chosen leaders sitting in council together. Fortunately it is abundantly clear to me also that I am among converts who share these visions and convictions about what we must do in the immediate future. That makes it possible for us to move forward in a concerted manner. Whatever initiatives we embark on, they need to be seen initially and primarily as being there to assist us in achieving our mission and holding us together.

There are some items on the agenda of this council which reflect things we have talked about in some quarters; we have seen them coming towards us down the road of time. Now we need to agree on the best way of meeting them.

Let me first make a brief comment or two about Strategic Planning. The secular world has taught us that it makes good sense for any organization to plan strategically as it designs its own future. Any industry or business will do it in the production and marketing of their goods. Why should not the Church, whose "business" has importance beyond that of any other entity or activity, do so with utmost vigor? It is simply an intelligent way to spend our time, energies, and monies. Of course, we all believe that that is something the Church should do, and in our various assignments, institutions, and organizations we do it. My point is simply: so must the General Conference. The General Conference must identify the global issues which we, sitting together in council, consider important and critical and have them filtered into our Strategic Planning. We have already taken the first steps that will keep that process in motion. We will share regularly with this body phases of the strategic plan as it takes shape.

I will expect that all departments and initiatives which service the world Church from this house will build into their plans a very intentional design which enhances unity, stimulates growth, and makes this Church a better spiritual home for all. So, I say to my colleagues: If that is not part of your present plans for the next 5 to 10 years, go back and rethink and redevelop your plans! There is no virtue in simply being busy--in staying in perpetual motion and being able to spend one's travel budget.

Next a word about Leadership Training. Whenever we have asked our world Church to define their most urgent needs, "leadership training" has emerged as the one needing special attention. To a large extent it is our growth which has created this need. And in many parts of the world where we are having our strongest growth, we have also the most inadequate educational and training opportunities. Where do we expect our next generation of leaders to come from?

It goes without saying that "leadership training" teaches certain skills that will make leaders effective. They learn to work with modern equipment and to read financial data. They learn to think critically and to have understanding. They learn the value of listening, and they learn how to treat people with kindness. All of this important in order to be a good leader--and not just in the Church. But "leadership training," from the perspective of our Church, is a very deliberate process of creating a particular type of mind-set. The mind-set of a Seventh-day Adventist leader is different. Yes, he or she will develop all of the above; but beyond that the Seventh-day Adventist leader's mind-set is hall-marked by clearly marked spiritual values and a clearly defined mission; and something more: It is characterized by its ability to see the large picture--its ability to see the whole. Our various constituencies are only in a technical sense very local. In a much more comprehensive sense, our constituencies are universal and unlimited. It is necessary for a Seventh-day Adventist leader to understand that and to accept it. If you are a conference president and you define your responsibilities only towards the one-third of one percent of the total world membership who elected you to be their administrative leader, or if you are a union president and the world you see consists essentially of the two percent of the world membership who elected you and you are satisfied defining your leadership responsibilities as being ,all in all, towards this "thin" segment of the Adventist world, something of greatest importance is missing. When that happens to me, my Adventist world becomes limited to persons I know by first name, and I become provincial and turf-protective. The Adventist world is much bigger than that.

I say again: Seventh-day Adventist leadership is hall-marked by its ability to see the whole--the much larger picture. The God-entrusted responsibility that I have as a union president towards the 98 percent of the world membership who did not take part in my election is understood and accepted. In addition to teaching skills, Adventist Leadership Training must deliberately go about creating that kind of mind-set. God's undivided commitment is to the whole world. My commitment to Him, as an elected leader, is similarly in the interest of the whole world.

With such a mind-set, leadership binds together rather than scatters, looks out rather than in, shares rather than hordes. Is not that, historically, a pretty good description of how we have functioned in mission as a Church?

While we have set up a Leadership Training unit at the General Conference and shall, during these meetings, elect a Director who will have his defined creative functions, all of us as we serve the world Church are involved in modeling leadership--both by what we teach and by how we act, both by structured presentations and by comments loosely made. So I say to myself and to my colleagues, in any department or service of the General Conference: What sort of Adventist leadership mind-set am I encouraging?

You will find on the agenda a recommendation to set up a Council on Africa. Over the past 30 years our work in Africa has gone through several structural changes. Some of them have come about in efforts to resolve local challenges. But on the whole, during the 1960's and 1970's, as nations in Africa emerged with their own selfhood, the Church also considered how to best bring the administration and planning of our work in Africa to the African continent, and with that a strengthened local sense of ownership in the in the life and activities of the Church. It has been established, and I think indisputably so, that there is a direct relationship between growth in a given area and the sense of local ownership which the Church has in that area of its own life and witness.

Some twenty years ago our work in Africa was administratively arranged in three divisions: the Africa-Indian Ocean Division, the Afro-Middle East Division, and the Trans-Africa Division. Two of those structures have ceased to be, for one reason or another. In the third one (AID) there are today, twenty years later, cause to wonder whether the stated reason for its establishment--to develop and strengthen our work in the French-speaking parts of Africa--was ill-conceived or should be addressed differently.

Our church in Africa is today experiencing rapid growth. During these two decades there has been a 500 percent increase in membership on the continent. The next 500 percent increase in membership in Africa is projected to take place in half of that time, i.e. in one decade. As we all well know, there are huge demands on infrastructures, institutions, pastorates, and leadership. So the time has come for us as a world body of leaders to ask: Have we provided our best to care for the future of our church family in Africa? Humanity is by definition in a flux, especially among developing nations. Faith and doctrines may be fixed; structures and ways of doing things are much more adaptable and dextrous.

- Leadership in Africa is part of the challenge

- South Africa itself is part of the challenge

- Institutions (Higher Education, Health Care, Publishing) are part of the challenge

The time has come, we believe, for us to take a fresh look at all of that.

I had also hoped that we might have been ready to set up at this time an instrument to comprehensively review how we as a world Church arrive at our decisions and manage--dare I say "control?"--our mushrooming institutions and programs in higher education. In some parts of the world these institutions are owned and operated by unions, but equally often they are division institutions. That means that the General Conference, through our various regional offices (divisions), is involved in these institutions without really being able to give acceptable guidance to the whether and what of these institutions and the programs they offer. My question is: Is that an acceptable arrangement for the future? We can validate, inspect, give guidance to, and have some control over say fifty such institutions from this house. What about one hundred and fifty such units? The pressures, particularly in the developing countries of the world--pressures from the church constituencies as well as from governments who, it would seem, are ready to give an official charter to an institution run by us--are virtually irresistible. And before you know it you have been drawn into something that will tax your resources beyond what you can live with. What guidelines and governing structures can we as a world Church body offer to this development? Is just "wishing them well" good enough?

I understand that you have looked at this while you have been together, but that you would like to think about this for a while. And that may be fine. It is a "big" one, and probably complicated. So I can well understand the hesitancy. Help us not to lose sight of it for we shall meet it again.

I am pleased to have received the report of the first meeting of the Council on Evangelism and Witness. I would have loved to have been there, but it was not to be. Let the world Church family know that the General Conference is involved in and actively pursuing evangelistic thinking and planning, and that we confess this to be our first task as God's people in these last days. Let them sense how strongly we are committed to that. Too many out there tend to view us as a bunch of bureaucrats, and not as what we really are--mission-driven servants of our Lord.

And I want to say a word specifically to those of you who do not work here at the world headquarters: Help those of us who do work here to create services and initiatives that fit into the life of the church as you know it from your various corners of the globe. It is not as though we have everything pre-defined, cooked, and canned at this place. We may sound like it at times, but really we do not. I have sat where you sit, and I have walked away from meetings such as these with feelings of frustration and resignation as though it does not make any difference what you say. I know how destructive that can be. I pray that I and my colleagues will be "young" enough in mind to be ready to listen and learn. So please talk to us and help us with that process, and keep us close to the life that you are experiencing in your churches.

In closing, I just want to read from one of the Psalms of David [Psalm 139:17,18,23,24]: "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Amen.