It was a full day of business on Monday, November 3, day five of the 2025 North American Division Year-End Meeting. Gina Spivey-Brown, president of Oakwood University, presented the school’s report. She shared that they are in the midst of Culture Shift 2025, which she said is “taking students back to the Bible.” This includes modesty in dress, a no jewelry policy, and a closure of the residence halls from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sabbath. “We believe not just with our words, but in our actions and deeds that Jesus is soon to come, and we want our students to focus on that time with Him,” she explained. 

The nominating committee brought several associate director names to be voted in; the entire list was voted together and passed. Ahn noted that there were four additional positions to fill, which would be brought to and voted on at the North American Division Committee in December. These included associate directors for chaplaincy, education, treasury, and communication.

Ministry departments and unions also continued to share their reports. 

Carl McRoy, director of literature ministries, started his report on publishing by responding to the ever-present question: Do people still read books? McRoy’s response: Yes!

In 2004, 648 million books were sold. In 2023, 767 million books were sold. “Books have survived the internet, iPhones, social media, and a pandemic,” he commented.

McRoy also shared statistics revealing that while ebooks account for 20 percent of book sales, 73 percent of book sales are physical books; and that 75 percent of magazine readers “love the touch and feel of print magazines — including 58 percent of those who are 35 and under. He related several anecdotes from the literature evangelism program.

Associate director of the NAD Ministerial Association, Jose Cortes Jr., took to the stage next to share about the church plant program. “The reason you have a church to go to today is because someone in the past planted a church,” he started, before running through a list of reasons to plant a church and providing the definition of a church plant in North America. 

“According to research, there should be a minimum of one church for every 25,000 people so we need at least 15.5K churches in the NAD,” Cortes said. Currently there are 7,270 churches in the NAD, or one per every 53,000 people.

Cortes outlined four categories of churches in North America — multiplying, growing, plateauing, and declining — 60 percent of NAD churches are plateauing or declining and 40 percent are growing or multiplying. “We’re not doing well, but we’re doing better than we were in 2018,” he said.

Robert Folkenberg Jr., president of the Southern New England Conference, commented from the floor that “The model we use to do church is out of date, and we need to make way for continued church growth by creating a structure that will sustain it.” 

Cortes’ response was that most conferences planting big numbers of churches and growing the fastest are using laity and volunteer lay pastors. “It is impossible for the church to hire enough pastors to plant the number of churches we need to plant to reach everyone,” he said.

North American Division president G. Alexander Bryant then commented, “Maybe we need to focus on having more lay people. … If you step outside of North America and into other places in our world church where it’s growing, the pastor-to-member ratio is much larger than ours. Let’s let that saturate in our minds and listen to what God is telling us about this.”

A video report from the Columbia Union about Pentecost 2025 shared that throughout the year, leaders from the union, all eight conferences, schools, healthcare organizations, and radio ministry gathered online monthly to pray for “every part of our field, churches, schools, ministries, and members, bathing every activity in prayer and praise,” stated the video.

Some projects undertaken in the union during the past ten months include health clinics, care packages and backpacks for those in need, a tent meeting at Washington Adventist University, the Garment of Faith program, and the Hope for Humanity evangelism series, with church members providing groceries, diapers, clothing, laundry supplies, and dinner each evening. 

“In August, they want us to come back and do a clinic again,” commented Marcellus Robinson, union president. “It’s not a one-shot deal when you’re doing the work of the Lord.”

In celebration of the first two Adventist churches in Canada — one celebrating 150 years recently; the other 135 years — Brad Thorpe, president of British Columbia Conference, presented a plaque to the North Pacific Union Conference in gratitude for the missionaries who came from Oregon to Canada in the 1870s to hold tent meetings.

“Canada has punched above its weight class in terms of what they’ve given to the church,” Bryant noted. “The Lord has grown many men and women in Canada and brought them to serve the church at all levels.”

The group then transitioned out of NAD executive committee and into corporation membership, in order to vote on corporation business for Adventist Colleges Abroad, in Maryland; and Adventist Media Center, in California. As a group, the membership voted to approve the new AMC board of trustees for the 2026-2030 term.

The vote was followed by the Adventist Media Ministries report, presented by Rick Remmers, president of AMC, and assistant to the president for the North American Division. In his introduction to the video report, Remmers reminded the group that on November 16, ABC will air “The Funny Thing About Sadness,” a partner program with Faith for Today throughout the holiday season, hosted by Roy Ice. The video report itself included highlights from all seven media ministries under the umbrella of AMC.

Following the video, Keith Goodman from Allegheny West Conference stood at the mic to encourage those present to continue creating quality digital content. “If critics can attract hundreds of thousands of views, then surely with good news we can match that consistency with content that uplifts,” he said.

Abraham Jules, president of Atlantic Union, presented their territory’s Pentecost 2025 report. “This initiative was met with a wave of enthusiasm in our union,” he shared. “We experienced renewal in our own spirits.”

DeeAnn Bragaw, NAD Women’s Ministries director, stood at the mic and commended on, in particular, the South Atlantic Conference for seeing “the value of giving money to women’s ministry [for Pentecost 2025]. Thank you to women who participated, and thank you to those who empowered women to be a part of it,” she said.

The Pentecost 2025 report from Southern Union was presented by president Ron Smith, who was introduced by Bryant as “the number one soul-winner in the division.”

Smith shared that their union had created three sub-initiatives under Pentecost 2025:

Smith also shared that 68 percent of union staff have participated in events so far in 2025, and that they were excited to already have plans to extend the initiative into 2026 with “Beyond Pentecost: Believe. Pray. Expect.”

At this time, each union was asked to send a representative to the mic to share highlights from their OneVoice27 breakout session earlier that day. Bryant then called for a vote as to whether the division would officially be part of OneVoice. 

Angeline Brauer, of NAD health ministries, stood and asked that everyone making plans for One Voice include health ministries from the very beginning, instead of as an afterthought, which is what usually happens. “Don’t treat us as second thoughts,” she urged. “We would love to be part of things from the ground up. Please use us.”

The vote to participate in the OneVoice initiative was carried.

Minervino Labrador Jr., vice president for NAD Multilingual Ministries, introduced his video report that included highlights from 11 different advisory groups, which he commented are “helping families maintain their cultural and ethnic heritage while deepening their faith.”

“We serve people in 66 languages in 14 distinct language groups,” Labrador said. “Language should never be a barrier to spiritual growth.”

The AdventSource report was presented via video by president Brad Forbes. “AdventSource exists to make ministries easier,” he stated. “Our ministry hasn’t changed, but how we do it has.” In the video Forbes also introduced the president elect of AdventSource, Andre McCleod. McCleod is set to take the reins in 2027.

Before the NAD policy and consent agenda portion of the session, Bryant reminded those gathered that Guam-Micronesia Mission is part of the NAD, so their bylaws changes need to be approved by the NAD. As the mission had edited part of their bylaws regarding delegates, the change was put to vote and carried.

Judy R. Glass, treasurer for the NAD, presented the policy and consent agenda items, which began with several votes to approve fund allocations. All were passed. She shared that the Special Assistance Fund has been frozen for many years, and they are working to unfreeze it. “Allocations remain as they have for the last several years, with $9.5 million going to various conferences,” she assured the group.