The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Southern Asia-Pacific region has voted to train and equip 100,000 lay people to lead out in expanding church membership.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Southern Asia-Pacific region has voted to train and equip 100,000 lay people to lead out in expanding church membership. The goal has been set as part of the world church’s “Go One Million” program, which aims to train one million lay evangelists around the world before 2005.
In 2002, the Southern Asia-Pacific church plans to fulfill one-tenth of Go One Million’s global goal. For the past three years it has conducted seminars and workshops in local churches on leadership and personal witnessing. This year, the workshop-seminars have focused on the issue of church growth.
Lay-led public evangelism meetings will also be held next year throughout the region, which includes Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar.
“There has been a very enthusiastic response from the field for these planned outreach programs,” says Violeto Bocala, president of the Adventist Church in the region. “If we train 100,000 church growth participants in 2002, a 100,000-membership increase in the next two years is not far-fetched.”
Michael Ryan, director of Global Mission for the Adventist Church worldwide, applauds this new initiative, saying lay involvement in evangelism is pivotal to the future growth of the Adventist Church.
“Being an Adventist means taking seriously the Gospel commission—the mandate, given to us by Jesus Christ, to go into all the world with His message of hope and compassion,” says Ryan. “Go One Million builds on the commitment to evangelism that already exists within the worldwide Adventist community.”
Church leaders in the Southern Asia-Pacific region are also developing another training program for 2002, which will focus on ways to nurture new Adventist Church members, promoting quality of life and unity within the church organization.
