News

Rooted in the Word: Scripture Comes Alive at the 2025 NAD Pathfinder Bible Experience
From April 25 to 26, more than 3,000 Pathfinders, supporters, and volunteers packed the arena in historic Battle Creek, Michigan, for a weekend of worship, Bible knowledge testing, and celebration. And on Sabbath, April 26, 185 teams — the second highest number ever — gathered in person from across North America and beyond. Four teams joined virtually.

Lessons for the Living
I have a confession to make. I have a habit, some might call it a morbid one, but wherever I go, whatever city I’m visiting, I will find myself in the oldest cemetery in town, walking among the dead. I can go to a cemetery, and stay for two hours, three hours, and I walk up and down reading the tombstones. I like to ponder: Who was this person? What was their life?

Help Provided in St. Louis After Tornado Strike
On May 16, 2025, a powerful EF-3 tornado tore through St. Louis, Missouri, and continued into Madison County, Illinois, reaching wind speeds of up to 152 mph and spanning 22.8 miles. NAD Adventist Community Services (ACS) is partnering with the Mid-America Union Conference, local churches, civic leaders, and other Adventist entities to provide ongoing disaster relief.

Spreading an Evangelism Net
As Adventists today embrace Pentecost 2025 it is important to remember some cutting-edge innovations for Adventist outreach and evangelism that took place during the 1990s. Some three decades later it may be difficult to fully appreciate just how new (and at times even startling) these efforts were. Such discussions began in 1993 when the North American Division (NAD) leadership participated in a series of satellite broadcasts with the newly formed Adventist Communication Network.

Robotic Thoracic Surgery Offers Loma Linda University Patients Minimally Invasive Options
Chest surgeons at Loma Linda University Health are the region’s pioneers in combining human skill with advanced technology by wielding surgical robots since 2018 to optimize already 250 patients’ experiences and outcomes from certain chest surgeries. “Loma Linda University Health is the first and only medical center in the Inland Empire to provide patients with this advantageous option for robotic thoracic surgery,” says Nguyen Le, M.D., FACS, a robotic chest surgeon at LLU.

Southwestern Adventist University Nursing Grads Share Experiences From the Front Lines of the Pandemic
When the pandemic started, Southwestern Adventist University nursing graduates Dex Esmeralda (2019) and Luke Zabala (2018) were fresh in their careers. Little did they know, they would soon join thousands of nurses across the country experiencing a time unlike any other — encountering more trauma in a year than some nurses encounter in a lifetime. Yet both were prepared for the challenges at hand because of the clinical and spiritual training they received at SWAU.

Creating Real Community in Virtual Spaces
Early in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in wide-spread quarantines that shut down church buildings all around the globe, many of us pastors, churches, and tech teams faced the challenge of trying to figure out how to do ministry effectively in a media space we had spent quite a bit of time demonizing. Upon making the plunge, however, attention naturally turned to two main things: how to make the technology actually work in these new spaces, and then how to create better programming that would grow bigger audiences — or at least just help us not lose the ones we already had.

NAD Leaders and Staff Honor Three Retiring Vice Presidents
The North American Division honored three retiring vice presidents through a virtual event that gave colleagues the opportunity to express their gratitude and share memories of the outgoing leaders. Alvin Kibble, former vice president for executive coaching, training, development, public affairs and religious liberty, literature ministries, and social media and big data; Paul Brantley, vice president for strategy and assessment; and Gordon Pifher, vice president for media ministries, received heart-felt spoken and written messages on May 12, 2021, from administration and staff about the legacy they’ll leave behind as they enter retirement.