The fourth day of the North American Division’s (NAD) 2022 Year-End Meeting, themed “Together in Mission: I Will Go,” balanced thankfulness for the leaders who came before and the work of many of the ministries within the division with heartfelt discussion and debate on some of the major issues of the day, including how much to pay church workers, how to retain and recruit teachers and where to go with the massive growth of online church activity continuing since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Oct. 30 business session began with a poignant video showing former NAD president Daniel R. Jackson singing a hymn to open a previous year-end meeting. Jackson passed to his rest in July of this year, after having retired as NAD president two years before. G. Alexander Bryant, current NAD president, led the delegates in pausing to pray and remember Jackson, and more than 30 other former church leaders who have passed away in the past couple of years. “We are family,” said Bryant. “And we miss each other when we are not here and look forward to that great day when Jesus will come and we can see all of those whom we’ve missed.”

In the Adventist church, tithe and resources are combined in order to increase the scale and scope of the work, and a key part of the year-end meeting is the reports of various ministries and departments sharing back to delegates how these resources are being used. Sunday featured many video reports from the church’s ministries.

Pacific Press

Pacific Press Publishing Association (PPPA) is the division’s publishing house, producing millions of books, magazines, and other resources for the church, and distributing them through Adventist Book Centers and other outlets such as their 67,000 subscribers to AdventistBookCenter.com emails and in-person, door-to-door sales. “Literature is evangelism,” asserted PPPA employee Dave Gatton and this definition of its mission was proudly repeated by staff throughout the presentation. Following this report, PPPA president Dale Galusha shared about the recent launch of the first completed volume of a New International Bible commentary, a project already 12 years in the making and with an expected 15 volumes to be completed over the next five years.

enditnow

The church’s long-running global initiative and advocacy campaign against domestic violence,enditnow, in North America, will host a free virtual summit on Nov. 13, focusing on topics such as creating a culture of safety, real stories of people impacted, and practical tools for providing safe havens.

NAD Ministerial Association

This department focuses on ministerial directors, pastors, their spouses, and church elders and is one of the longest-serving departments of the division. In a video presentation, director Ivan Williams highlighted the CALLED Pastors’ Family Convention held this past summer and attended by over 5,400 pastors and their families — and he stressed how important creating community among pastors is meaningful and vital to their work. Delegates also received the NAD Ministerial Association book Baptize, and a copy of a small book called Mending Ministers, which is based on a study on pastor’s health that was funded by an external grant so that the division can have a research-based approach on how to support pastors ‘mind, body, and soul.’

Adventist Media Ministries

The video report for Adventist Media Ministries incorporated material from Breath of Life, Faith For Today, It Is Written and Escrito Está, Jesus 101, La Voz de la Esperanza, LifeTalk Radio, and the Voice of Prophecy. In the introduction, it was explained that the media ministries are headquartered in various cities around the division and have each diversified across various platforms.

Besides its traditional activities, in the past year Breath of Life offered free media and production training to small churches. Faith for Today has the number one life coaching show with more than three million viewers each week and are launching a lifestyle website this fall.

Highlights from each ministry continued. It Is Written TV is online on multiple platforms and has many resources for evangelism and missions. Jesus 101 also has evangelistic resources for local churches including a brand-new TV series ‘The Battle is the Lord’s.’ La Voz de la Esperanza has conducted 12 evangelistic campaigns and hosted Bible school publications, including one focused on middle school children. Their YouTube channel is growing at the rate of 1,200 subscribers per month. LifeTalk is celebrating 30 years of ministry and is now on 250 radio stations and many other outlets such as three live-streaming channels, including one for kids and one with Christian music. Voice of Prophecy is working closely with local conferences on the evangelism cycle and is in the process of launching a new in-person series Revelation Speaks Peace in Calgary, Canada next April.

Multilingual Ministries

One of this ministry’s responsibilities is to assist new immigrants and help integrate them into local churches. Groups include, but are not limited to, Romanians, Hungarians, Portuguese speakers, Hispanic peoples, Greeks, Southern Asian peoples, Asian Pacific peoples, Franco-Haitians and other French-speaking immigrants, Koreans, and Zimbabweans. Jewish ministry and Adventist Muslim Relations also work in this space.

Minervino Labrador, vice president of Multilingual Ministries, answered questions following the presentation and advocated throughout the day for additional resources for this growing area of the work. Delegates echoed this request, including additional support for French speakers, First Nation/Native American members, Sabbath-keeping Iranians, and newly arriving Ukrainian refugees.

During this portion of the meeting, Bryant was pleased to share that the NAD has finally been put on the official list of missionary territories by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. He said that this is the area in which the division is growing the most, yet it requires a lot of resources at the conference level so support is important. One key challenge for the future is the fact that many immigrant families would like their children to go to Adventist schools, but they cannot afford to send them, pointed out Tony Anobile of the Southwestern Union Conference.

North American Division Evangelism Institute (NADEI)

The afternoon began with Bryant reporting back from the NADEI board meeting to announce that the previous director, Eduard Schmidt, had requested retirement and the board had appointed Tim Madding to be the new director. “I believe in evangelism,” said Madding. “I would not be an Adventist if a loving, caring family had not been willing to be used by Christ to witness to a homeless teenage boy. And if it was not for a loving church that partnered together with that family, I would not be here today.”

NADEI is based at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and helps provide a curriculum for pastors. They partner with conferences and churches to support evangelism and church-planting.

Finance Committee, Breakouts, and GC Greetings

The important decision-making part of the day was a vote on the finance committee’s recommendation to increase church worker salaries in the U.S. and U.S. territories up to 6 percent in order to address inflation, which is running over 9 percent. NAD treasurer Randy Robinson led the discussion and delegates alternated between expressing how much they want to make sure church workers are adequately compensated while worrying about how local budgets will need to stretch to accommodate this — and that the increase might result in downsizing. Because of the substantive nature of the decision, electronic voting devices were used and the motion passed with 86 percent approval.

During the discussions, Bryant and Robinson shared several technical details such as progress in pension funding and General Conference contribution parity reductions that have allowed the NAD to make sure more money stays at the conference level. Bryant suggested that in the future the NAD should run training for delegates to more fully explain how the tithe distribution is currently conducted.

In the middle of the day, the education breakouts groups received additional time to consolidate their suggestions on how to retain our teachers and fill the vacancies that will be coming up. As they finished this discussion, they were asked to move into a discussion about where we go from here with online church communities. Delegates were asked to have a discussion on how we can have a thriving in-person congregation but also cultivate and grow an online community — and how these two relate. (These breakout topics and discussions will be covered in more detail in another article.)

Sunday also included speeches from the two General Conference attendees, Gerson Santos, an associate secretary, and Maurice R. Valentine II, a vice president. Both saluted the accomplishments within the division and Valentine emphasized the GC’s “Back to the Alter” initiative and how much “we are on the same team.”

— Heidi Straw Camargo writes from Nairobi, Kenya.