3 Steps Toward a New Adventism
I love Adventism.
I love our theological narrative complete with our passion for Daniel and Revelation. I love the health message. I love the writings of Ellen White. I love the history of our church and its legacy. I love our sanctuary hermeneutic, our global structure, and haystacks. And most of all, I love the way authentic Adventism lifts Jesus up. There’s just nothing like it.
Because I love Adventism I have a passion to see it thrive, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those searching for a liberating and healing picture of God. Our church exists to communicate this picture to the world.
Which is why its so sad when I attend an Adventist church that is youth-less, lifeless, stuck in a bygone era, and filled with its own brand of toxic theological messaging. But the thing that hurts the most is that this kind of church is not rare. In fact, it's the most common type of local church I have experienced in the various places I have lived throughout my life.
And I’m not the only one whose noticed. Research shows us that “our churches are growing older,” and “[m]any young people are leaving the Church once they reach independence.”[1] The primary reasons why people leave our church continue to be “hypocrisy, conflict and lack of friends (especially while going through life trauma such as marital problems")”[2] A 2013 retention summit “revealed the denomination has lost one in three members over the last 50 years. Additionally, for every 100 people the Adventist church gains, it loses 43 previous members…”[3] with one of the main contributions from the church being, “not helping people through their tough life experiences.”[4]
As a pastor who dialogues with other pastors and mission minded members, the conversations always revolve around three main points. First, why do our churches struggle so much? Second, why do 80% of the members do nothing while the same 20% do everything? And third, "how can we keep our youth and reach the culture, when our churches are in such a bad state?”
No one really has the answers to these questions, but we must continue to agitate the conversation because the truth is, the story of God that we tell is desperately needed by the culture. We cannot rest while our churches continue the same unhealthy behaviours year after year. We must raise our voices and inspire the birth of a new Adventism. Here are three steps I believe can get us started.
1. Rediscover the centrality of Jesus.
The message of Adventism isn’t about Adventism. At least, its not supposed to be. Sadly, over the decades thats what it has become. But if we look at our movement throughout history, our message has never been about us. It's always been about Jesus.
As heirs of the radical reformation in the Arminian and Wesleyan traditions, our heartbeat has always been a true revelation of God’s character of love. When that focus gets replaced with a revelation of “us” our movement loses the very reason for its existence. And in my experience, every struggling church I have ever been to is a church that has lost sight of Jesus as the center of our message. Instead, they have gotten caught up in talking about themselves, their uniqueness, and their identity. But the world doesn’t need Adventism. It needs Jesus.
Of course, this doesn’t mean Adventism is a pointless phenomenon. I believe with all my heart God has raised up this movement at this moment of earths history for a very specific task. I have written about this extensively in my books. But here is my point: our task isn’t an addition to the message of Jesus. To the contrary, in the midst of a Christendom dominated by coercive pictures of God, theological constructs that are abusive, and theocratic nationalistic tendencies that fuel social injustuce, God has raised up a people passionate about his heart and his Kingdom of love. That makes our message very important, but only to the degree it keeps its focus on Jesus. Without him, we are just another religious group with nothing truly useful to offer our hurting world.
2. Reorient the focus of the church.
Imagine a race track where the cars stay in maintenance bays with mechanics constantly oiling the engine and warming the seats, but never actually racing. As bizarre as that scenario might be, thats what lots of our churches do. We are maintenance minded instead of mission minded. This means that most of our energy goes toward keeping the church engine (programs and departments) oiled instead of getting out there and serving the city for Christ. In order to change our trend and bring about a new Adventism, the focus of the church has to change from “keep the engine running” to “hit the race track.”
What this looks like at a practical level is beyond the scope of this simple blog. But if you are interested in tangible missional steps, join my online training school, The Mission Collective, here.
3. Redesign relationships.
When it comes to the research, the one thing Adventists consistently score lowest in is “loving relationships”.[5] In short, we lack authentic connection with one another. This is a symptom of Christless religion. And its also a symptom of Western hyper-individualism and consumer culture. Only the Holy Spirit can truly restore us to his original design as a church. But there are some practical things we can do to co-create with him.
The most important: start focusing on relationships. The way to foster relationships in your church is to create spaces where people can build memories together. A church mission trip. A church camp. A church service project in the community. Church picnics, fundraisers, and holistic small groups—all of these activities are out of the ordinary and help foster memories that in turn raise the level of intimacy among your members. If this is combined with a focus on Jesus and a focus on serving the lost, the results will be beautiful.
Perhaps few have captured our current state and future potential as well as Danny Bell in his article, “North American Adventist Church Growth: The Untold Story”, when he wrote:
“The reality is that the Church in western society has become insular, self-centred, and unconcerned about a suffering, dying world. We prefer to stand at church doors and call out to the public rather than go out and get involved in the dirty business of befriending the scum of the earth. The fortress mentality is alive and well in our churches and until we realise that it’s not all about “going home to heaven” and “wishing Jesus would come,” the sooner we can properly engage in the Master’s business.[6]”
The challenges we face as a global church are big, especially in the Western context. But the solutions are not as complex as many imagine. The centrality of Jesus in our message, missional-priority in our structure, and relational intentionality in our culture are simple things, but with them we can get the journey toward a new Adventism started.
And honestly, if you think about it, this new Adventism really isn’t new. Its a return to the way it was always meant to be.
[1] https://record.adventistchurch.com/2018/06/08/growing-young-how-to-save-our-church/
[2] https://www.adventistarchives.org/why-did-they-leave.pdf
[3] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2013/december/seventh-day-adventists-assess-why-1-in-3-members-leave-sda.html
[4] https://news.adventist.org/en/all-news/news/go/2013-11-19/at-first-retention-summit-leaders-look-at-reality-of-church-exodus/
[5] This statement is in reference to the Natural Church Development Survey
[6] http://atoday.org/north-american-adventist-church-growth-the-untold-story/
