Despite the challenges awaiting the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Adventists should not take a “defeatist attitude,” world church president Jan Paulsen told nearly 150 church officials at the close of Spring Meeting yesterday. Instead, he challenged Adventists to be “positive” and “move forward, focused on our mission.”

Paulsen also called for “inclusive discussions” and cooperation among church leaders heading into 2009, which delegates designated on April 6 as the church’s ‘Year of Evangelism.’

While meeting at church-run Andrews University in Berrien Spring, Michigan, United States, delegates also voted on other business items, including nominations for church offices. 

Delegates appointed Gary R. Councell, former United States Army chaplain and current associate director of Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries, to head up the department following Martin W. Feldbush’s retirement. Mario Ceballos, currently a vice president for Kettering Medical Center, will fill the vacancy left as Councell assumes Feldbush’s role.

Delegates also elected Paul Brantley, director of the church’s newly formed Office of Assessment and Program Effectiveness, as a general field secretary. Paulsen thanked Brantley for his “skillful and effective” service at world church headquarters

In his closing prayer, Paulsen suggested church leaders should be attuned to God’s direction for the church. “If, in spite of what we have decided here, You have a better way, help us to be ever sensitive to Your guidance,” he said.