During the 2021 year-end meeting of the North American Division, facilitators posed groupings of several questions to the pastors and other leaders in attendance. Each of them focused on one of the three strategic focuses of the church in the next several years: Multiply, Media, and Mentorship.

“We chose ‘multiply’ as a broad, overarching approach to mission because it covers the ministry of Jesus in all aspects: His ministries of healing, compassion, and discipling,” explained G. Alexander Bryant, NAD president.

Media use has always been important to the sharing of the gospel message. One example: the early Adventist Church consistently and productively used the printing press — new technology for their time.

“We haven’t yet leveraged what we have now in the same way,” Bryant pointed out. “Even though all of us are using media, we aren’t doing it in a collective way for the greatest impact.”

This is where Bryant and other church leaders feel young adults and youth will play a pivotal role because they see media simply as a way of life. “We need to take advantage of their abilities and use of technology,” Bryant added. “If we allow them to, they could catapult the church.”

With more than 50 percent of Adventist pastors and 65 percent of administrators at the conference, union, and division levels either currently eligible for retirement or reaching eligibility within the next two years, Bryant says mentorship is crucial for the church.

“We need to focus on developing the next generation of leaders,” Bryant said.

As a significant step toward that commitment, leaders at the NAD sent the same list of questions they’d posed to pastors in the fall to student leader groups at each of the colleges and universities within the division in early 2022. Students were asked to gather a group of peers to discuss the questions, record the responses most agreed upon by consensus, and submit them to NAD leadership.

While several student groups followed through (some answering every single question), many did not respond at all, which Tracy Wood, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at the NAD, said still speaks volumes.

“We have to earn their trust before they will invest their time in our requests,” he said. “Many of our young people have lost hope in the institutional church, and they don’t feel talking with us will make a difference. It’s up to us to change that.”

What follows is a collection of responses from the various student groups who shared their thoughts on “the 3Ms” with NAD leadership. Not every question is included in this article, nor is every response shown, but each group who responded is represented — and what is included are examples of the most common responses, as well as several unique stand-alone responses.*

How can we increase members’ involvement in the mission of the church?

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF) Student Association

People are really busy. Adding yet another program to their already overbooked schedule is rarely welcome, so we need to help people think missionally about what they’re already doing. A book we recommend is Surprise the World: Five Habits of Highly Missional People, by Michael Frost.

Seminary Student Forum Think Tank

Personal involvement in church springs from a heart connected to Christ. It is important, therefore, that church leaders prioritize teaching personal spirituality (how to read the Bible, prayer, life decisions, etc.), building friendships for the sake of pure Christian fellowship, and unlearning ineffective church practices and traditions.

Southwestern Adventist University Student
Association Ministry VP

Start small! It is vital to develop relationships with people around us, and when we start in small groups, relationships can grow naturally and comfortably. Group members will then spread the word and invite more people who can also become involved in the mission of the church. People are the best way to bring in people, not solely advertisements.

AdventHealth University Student Chaplain

Increasing diversity in leadership and being more creative in worship are two huge ways to get a greater number of church members involved. Young adults especially report feeling helpful and needed when they are asked to be involved, rather than being left to find ways to get involved on their own, as that can be intimidating.

Southern Adventist University Student Association

The first step would be to inform people of what that mission is, advertising it from a position of loving others as Christ loves them. Disciples will follow once there is a clearly stated and just mission. Ensure that all members are treated fairly and without judgment or criticism. If the church is not a place of judgment, people both within and outside of the church will feel more welcome and comfortable there. In short: The emphasis of our mission should be more on love and less on doctrine.

What attributes do you believe are currently associated with the Adventist brand in North America, and how can we rebrand?

Pacific Union College Student Association

Words and topics such as conservative, missions abroad, ADRA, the Adventist health message, and “blue zones.” We need to rebrand away from traditional evangelism, and as a global entity that is focused on our local communities around the world. Honestly, our focus shouldn’t be on branding — we should instead focus on teaching, educating, and healing.

ACF Student Association

Adventism is associated with old churches, old values, and old people. We need to be more engaged with the conversations and issues our neighbors grapple with, instead of designing our social media to reach only other Adventists. We need to identify what non-Adventists want to hear and talk about, then produce that content. It’s not a matter of struggling with equipment and platforms; it’s really that we’re just not saying anything people care about.

Southern Adventist University Student Association

Attributes: conservative, different, weird, cultish, unknown, cliquey, keeps within their own religious and cultural groups, doctrinal, behind the times. To rebrand, the church needs to be where society is looking for brands — multimedia platforms such as video and social media sites. This means greater funding, of course, but if we want more, bigger, and better storytelling collaborations, we have to invest in these tools and those who know how to use them well.

How can we encourage our members to use their social media accounts as evangelistic outreach?

Seminary Student Forum Think Tank

The church should have professional social media platforms, which may involve hiring outside expertise, as the budget reflects priorities where members are invited to participate in different ways. This would require a social media team and may be a good place to involve the youth and young adults in leadership and ministry positions, as it would allow them to work with pastors and elders in the creation of solid biblical content. These leaders would mentor the youth, and in turn, the young people would teach the older leaders their skills and insights.

Southern Adventist University Student Association

If the church itself has a higher social media presence, with posts that are easy for people to share in their own stories, it would naturally become something more people did. Also, having local churches collaborate on events, doing outreach together, and supporting each other’s events and projects would lend itself to connecting and sharing online. Additionally, greater efforts to increase media literacy would help, perhaps through classes or seminars taught by social media experts currently in the field.

Pacific Union College
Student Association

Members must be convinced that outreach doesn’t have to mean traditional evangelism. This means that church leaders must first acknowledge and accept this. And we’re not talking about simply sharing Bible verses on Twitter; sharing God’s love through experiences in our own lives can be incredibly powerful.

ACF Student Association

One example of encouraging our members to use social media accounts as evangelistic outreach is how one of our officers uses their daily devotions to create Twitter posts every day. When getting through a morning devotion simply became another checkmark on the to-do list, they adopted a “freshness goal,” in which they read until they found something fresh to share, then packaged it into 280 characters and shared it on Twitter. Something as simple as this can not only enhance personal spiritual lives, but also be an interesting evangelism tool.

How are we equipping the next generation of leaders? And how, in a constituency-based system, can we still prepare leaders for tomorrow?

Southern Adventist University
Student Association

By empowering and supporting the young people of the church through involvement and mentorship, allowing them opportunities to be involved in meaningful ways. Beyond pastors and parents, there are other, older members of the church who can and do continuously show their support and offer advice. Having a support system in the church is very important if the church wants its young people to be involved and, ultimately, to stay in the church.

ACF Student Association

Give young people keys to the church, and offer them the opportunity to help in a leadership role, where they can learn and grow from their mistakes in a safe environment. Also, experienced leaders should stop trying to do all the work by themselves and delegate to a less-experienced young adult. Pastors should send young people to conference events to participate as representatives of their congregation. All of these things demonstrate that the current leaders of the church have an interest in young people, and are willing to mentor—and perhaps be mentored by—them.

AdventHealth University

It seems there should be more done to equip the next generation of leaders, and this can be successfully done through continuous involvement and mentorship. We need to feel needed, and we long to be given opportunities. To equip the next generation of leaders, the church must be made into a safe place, where young adults can receive love and support while facing twenty-first-century struggles.

Pacific Union College
Student Association

Including young adults in the hierarchy with decision-making would go a long way toward preparing us to fill the shoes of those who have gone before. Put us on committees, intentionally seek greater cultural representation in those groups, and ask us what we want to do differently. It’s less about preparing us to be leaders tomorrow, and more about allowing us to lead today.

Many Similarities

NAD leadership was surprised to find great similarity between the responses of pastors and church leaders at the NAD year-end meetings last fall, and those of the student leaders this spring.

“The Multiply initiative is, at its core, about getting people involved in the mission of the church by using our specific gifts,” Bryant said. “This concept resonated greatly with both groups, in much the same way.”

Bryant also pointed out that feedback from the pastoral and administrative leaders indicated a need to get more young people involved and to continue developing them—a message that was echoed from the other side in the responses from student leaders.

“There is a huge desire among our youth and young adults to be more involved, and our leaders want them involved, but for some reason we haven’t been able to make this happen effectively,” Bryant said. “So if there’s the desire on one side and need on the other, how do we build a bridge to connect the two?”

The answer may lie in media. Indications from student responses are that youth and young adults are ready and willing to not only be involved in media with and for the church, but to be leaders in this area.

“We offered our young people a chance at the mic, and they spoke up,” Wood said. “This is the core of youth and young adult ministry: Hear their voice. It’s the heartbeat of everything we do in this ministry, and this is only the beginning.”

NAD leadership, including Bryant and Wood, want to have broader conversations—with questions being asked and answered on both sides. Ultimately, they hope to bring student leaders out to the NAD headquarters in Maryland to talk with administrative leaders.

“We want to listen, learn, and, to use a current catchphrase, ‘lean in,’ ” Wood said.

Bryant added that he and his fellow administrators want to use the input they receive from young people in the church to shape the infrastructure needed to gain positive traction in mission—together.

“As we’ve conversed, we’ve begun to realize we actually have a lot in common,” he said. “So let’s find some things we can all advance and focus on together, and learn from each other. There seems to be a lot of optimism that maybe we can, in fact, do more together.”

* For a full list of all questions asked, visit https://www.nadadventist.org/YEM21discussionquestions. For a report on responses recorded during the 2021 year-end meetings of the NAD administrative leaders, see https://www.nadadventist.org/news/multiply-media-mentorship-intentionality-growing-church-christ.

— Becky St. Clair writes from Angwin, California.