Unprecedented growth in the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide means that demand for new church buildings is at an all time high, says Pastor Michael Ryan, director of the church’s Global Mission initiative.
Citing recent church statistics, Ryan says that “Dramatic growth is occurring throughout the world, including many of the world’s most economically challenged areas.”
According to a report delivered on June 30 to the Adventist World Session in Toronto, Canada, in 1999 alone, 1,090,848 people became Adventist Church members. On average, someone joins the Adventist Church every 28.91 seconds, and every 4.73 hours a new Adventist congregation is formed.
“This is a ‘good’ problem to have-in the sense that more and more people are hearing the good news about Jesus and joining the Adventist Church family,” says Ryan. “But we have a challenge and a responsibility to help nurture these people in the faith, and many of them are poor and unable to finance even basic places in which to worship.”
A tangible church presence-whether through a church building or school-is essential in order for a congregation to be maintained and to grow, says Kyle Fiess, spokesperson for Maranatha Volunteers International, a lay Adventist organization that works with Global Mission and constructs churches, schools, orphanages, clinics and hospitals around the world.
“The magic is not in the building itself,” says Fiess, “but an established presence helps give the Adventist church credibility in areas where it may not be well known.” This has been borne out time and again, he adds, and points to Guatemala where in 1993 Maranatha constructed 50 new churches and three schools. “When we recently inquired about the status of these churches, we were told that they are all filled to capacity, and we’ve received a request for another 100 churches in one Guatemalan conference alone.”
Fiess says that the growing demand for church buildings is “incredible.” At the Adventist World Session earlier this month, Maranatha met with Adventist leaders from around the world and received large-scale construction requests from more than 30 countries, including Albania, Papua New Guinea, Kosovo, Barbados, Bequia, Mongolia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Sumatra, Granada, India, Philippines and Guatemala.
Sacramento-based Maranatha, which in the last fiscal year built 270 churches, 18 schools and 233 other structures, will discuss ways of dealing with this flood of building requests at its upcoming board meeting, says Fiess.
Ryan says that the “Roofs for Africa” project represents an innovative attempt to address the increasingly urgent demand for church buildings. Largely funded by Adventist lay people in North America, the project combines overseas support with local participation. Local Adventists provide labor and materials for the foundations and walls, while money donated through Global Mission provides the roofs. During the past few years, this project has built more than 5,500 new churches and schools for 28 countries of Africa and has provided seating for more than two million new Adventist believers.