Adventist Leaders Inaugurate New Administrative Offices in Mexico

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico recently inaugurated its new administrative office in Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon. The office represents the church with its five Adventist unions (major church regions) and handles legal, financial, and accounting matters with the government in the operation of thousands of churches, schools, universities, hospitals, and a publishing house.

“One of the reasons to have a national office is to unify efforts and create strategies that can be in harmony with the growing demands of the church,” said Pastor Ignacio Navarro, president of the church’s administrative office in Mexico. “The church in Mexico must move forward with urgency in the fulfillment of the mission, and it is necessary to work together, well focused and optimizing all efforts and resources strategically.”

Navarro, who is also the president of the Chiapas Mexican Union, said there are various legal aspects, such as permits for public worship, registration of ministers of public worship and religious associates, the procedures for registering church properties, and the supervision and application of laws that govern religious associations (or organizations), among others.

Government leaders representing religious affairs, norms, and sanctions in Nuevo Leon, as well as the mayor of the city of Montemorelos, witnessed the inaugural ceremony, along with Inter-American Division administrators, on May 13, 2022.

The new office building is approximately 500 meters from Adventist-operated Montemorelos University and includes a reception area, seven administrative, engineering, and accounting offices, a conference room, an archive room, and a parking area.

Although the church had its representative office organized 29 years ago, the small staff was housed in different small offices adjacent to union offices and several institutions, including in the Central Mexican Union in Mexico City, then later the GEMA editorial building, before the administrative office expanded to house several administrators, engineers, and treasury staff on the Montemorelos University campus more recently, church leaders said.

“We are so very glad to have the new office in Montemorelos, where the church’s highest educational institution has been established,” said Navarro.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico has more than 800,000 members, organized in five unions, forty-two local fields, four universities, three hospitals, a publishing house, and hundreds of primary and secondary schools.

This article was originally published on the Inter-American Division’s website