History a 'powerful force for doing better,' Trim says
Church historian David Trim wants Seventh-day Adventists to better appreciate their heritage. An awareness of past triumphs -- and, yes, even missteps -- can bolster members' identity, confidence and purpose, he says.
Recently elected to helm Archives, Statistics & Research at world church headquarters, Trim is sharpening the department's impact and visibility: he partners with other Adventist archives, offers Adventist historical trivia on a growing Twitter feed (@GCArchives) and presents seminars on church history at churches and schools worldwide. Catch him next month in Australia.
The scholarly Brit earned a Ph.D. in post-Reformation religious warfare and looks the part. He might be the only world church employee to pair an embroidered brocade vest and pocket watch with more pedestrian garb, including a seemingly incongruous pair of cowboy boots -- footwear he adopted while serving as visiting chair of History at church-run Pacific Union College.
He recites dates with surety and thrills to explain new research. He once spoke at the British Houses of Parliament to an audience of lawmakers, lords and journalists about the history of humanitarian intervention, on which he recently published a book.
Trim, 42, hopes to unseat some of the misconceptions about the department -- that it serves as the archives of "all things Adventist," for one, and that it offers little beyond the denomination's Annual Statistical Report and Yearbook, for another.
No, the department doesn't have a copy of every member's baptismal certificate; it serves as the archive for world church headquarters-produced material. But, among the 1.7 million digitized and keyword-searchable documents now anchored at adventistarchives.org, the department does boast a comprehensive collection of church periodicals from the very first magazines published by the Millerites in the 1840s onward. It also houses minutes from every church Executive Committee since leaders first met in 1889.
Now, Trim wants to broaden the online collection to include more actual documents, in their historical sense -- unpublished materials such as letters and notes that reflect a more personal and private side of church leaders.
He also wants to meet the challenge of archiving emails, video clips and other electronic media. Printing out and filing a PowerPoint presentation is impractical and incompletely documents the medium, he says. Archiving church websites -- especially church social media sites, which are constantly in flux and present new legal responsibilities -- is equally challenging, but solutions are available. "We have the technology," Trim says, referencing the catch phrase from The Six Million Dollar Man, an American science fiction television series from the 1970s.
But a database of church history does little more than collect virtual dust if members aren't aware. Cue Trim's seminars, recent articles in Adventist journals and the intense enthusiasm he displays when discussing the more obscure aspects of Adventist history.
Recently, while researching the church's activity during World War II, he learned that rather than hunkering down -- a seemingly sensible reaction to volatile times -- Adventist administration in the 1940s and 50s instead significantly expanded outreach to the Middle East, India and Africa. "It's astonishing. There's a major commitment, and it's because we have that sense of who we are, and a belief that God will empower us," Trim says.
When Adventists lose sight of their history, that sense of identity and the ensuing confidence can erode, he says.
"If you know your history, you can say, 'OK, we've had troubles in our local church or in this region in the past, but we emerged stronger from them and what we now think of as our 'golden years' came after what seemed like the end. And if it's happened once, it can happen again," Trim says.
An awareness of our past mistakes is equally important, Trim says. Knowing that the church's founders were flawed, like us, can be "encouraging," he says. "These people have got feet of clay. They're not perfect. So we don't have to think, 'Oh, I could never aspire to be like that.'"
Even in the Bible, Trim says, God's portrayal of people and events is candid.
"When God tells his people to remember their history, which he does repeatedly, he wants them to remember their failings as well as their triumphs," Trim says.
"[Church co-founder] Ellen White writes at length about the fact that the Bible tells the truth about people's lives, about everything, the good and the bad. And we don't. We tend to write about our pioneers the way Catholics write about Mary and medieval saints," Trim says. "It's as though we fear that if they had any flaws, it somehow discredits the church then, and now, which is nonsense. The church is bigger than any one individual."
What applies to early church leaders also applies to the church on a broader sense. Acknowledging institutional mistakes is equally vital, Trim says. "If you pretend everything was always absolutely brilliant, well the truth is, it wasn't, and that means we're going to repeat mistakes. And equally -- perversely at times -- we won't be able to perpetuate the good and cutting-edge things we did," Trim says. For example, early Adventists missionaries were trained in cultural sensitivity, a concept leaders needed to completely reimagine in the 1980s because Adventists had forgotten, he says.
A church with sharp "institutional memory" can avoid "reinventing the wheel," Trim says.
Memory can also help church membership stay optimistic. The notion that Adventists are tasked with taking the gospel to the whole world can be daunting without perspective, he says.
"I do feel like Adventists -- many of us, not all -- have lost our way a bit. We've lost our self-confidence. We've lost that conviction that we have something vital to take to the world," Trim says. "We need to recover that sense of missionary identity and purpose."
Chalk some of that loss up to the fear that it's somehow "arrogant" to think Adventists offer a unique message everyone can benefit from, he says, suggesting that notion might stem from a misunderstanding over what drives mission work. "It's not a matter of trying to teach Western civilization -- that's not what we're about. We're about helping people."
A sense of apathy can also erode Adventist self-confidence. "Too often people think, 'Well, if we don't finish the work, God is going to save people who haven't heard,'" Trim says. They conclude that outreach efforts are therefore counterproductive, leaving people without the excuse that they never heard the gospel, he says.
Analyzing the motives behind evangelism can help Adventists recapture a clear sense of purpose and direction, Trim says.
"People say, 'Let's finish the work.' But what does that mean? Does it mean bringing about the Second Coming? I'm not sure that we actually have a mandate to do that. What we do have a mandate for is to 'Go and make disciples.'"
In fact, bringing people into a community of faith is one of the most "unambiguously clear commands" Jesus gives in the New Testament, Trim says.
"Jesus doesn't say, 'If you convert this many people by this year, then I'll come. Otherwise all bets are off.' He just says, 'Make disciples.' To me, what we have as Christians -- as Seventh-day Adventists -- is so significant in making people's lives better and more meaningful that it's worth telling people about, regardless of when the Second Coming is."
--To request Trim's seminar at your church, or ask a question about Adventist history, email him at archives(at)gc.adventist.org.