They're known as a group of energetic and enthusiastic Seventh-day Adventist lay people. Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries (ASI) is all about people who love what they do--and love God--sharing their faith in their respective areas of expertise.
They’re known as a group of energetic and enthusiastic Seventh-day Adventist lay people. Adventist-Laymen’s Services and Industries (ASI) is all about people who love what they do—and love God—sharing their faith in their respective areas of expertise. Started in 1947, ASI is an organization of businesses and ministries run by lay Adventist church members.
With the motto “Sharing Christ in the Marketplace,” ASI has approximately 1,000 members who meet annually for a convention of networking and sharing stories. Growing every year, the convention features some 250 to 300 exhibits—ministries, businesses, schools and organizations—as well as meetings and youth programs. ASI also holds regional meetings across North America.
“ASI is a group of Adventist lay people…involved in work in the United States and places all over the world who have dedicated their businesses and their ministries as a platform to share Jesus Christ in the marketplace,” says Dan Houghton, president of Hart Research Center in Fallbrook, California.
“ASI is incredibly important to us as a place of spiritual renewal for fellowship with people of like mind and being a part of a group of people who put their energies together to achieve a much bigger result than any of us can do by ourselves,” says Houghton, who served as president of ASI from 1997 to 1999.
“ASI is an inspiration…because of all of the focus on sharing Christ in the marketplace,” says Heidi Domke, director of Young Professionals, a network of young people with the mission of inspiring, motivating and training young adults to live passionately for Christ. “I believe in the mission [of the Adventist Church] and as young professionals and young adults, we’re out there working in our professions as a community and this [ASI] is an organization that has helped us to network and be supportive of that mission. [ASI] has lots of mission-focused outreach evangelism [programs] that has something happening everywhere around the world.”
Dwight Hilderbrandt, former secretary-treasury for the organization and ASI member, says he appreciates ASI and what it offers. “We’re all working together for a common goal,” he says.
According to ASI staff, one of ASI’s biggest and most successful projects the organization funds includes working with young people to help them get involved in witnessing. They have supported youth evangelism initiatives for five years now, and this year marks the largest ever—40 young people have worked in 10 different sites in New Mexico, United States, where the ASI Convention was held this year, Aug. 6 to 9. Weeks before a convention begins, young people go door-to-door in the area where the convention is held, introducing people to their faith. They hold evening programs—produced and conducted by youth—and their work culminates during the convention, where they hold a baptism for those who have committed their lives to God.
Another major project that ASI has funded, in conjunction with It Is Written, an Adventist television ministry based in Simi Valley, California, is a DVD program that assists lay people in developing religious programs on their own. Called “New Beginnings,” the DVDs have been used in numerous countries all over the world.
The organization, which started under the name Association of Seventh-day Adventist Self-Supporting Institutions, can originally be credited to Ellen White, a founder of the Adventist Church. Under the direction of White, Madison College, an Adventist institution near Nashville, Tennessee, was established in 1904. White spoke about the role the college was to play in establishing a self-supporting work that would complement and challenge organizational schools.
The school, which grew and planted satellite institutions throughout the United States, served as the meeting location once a year, for 40 years, for not only schools, but sanitariums, rest homes and other Adventist organizations. The ASI Web site, www.asiministries.org, states that this laid the foundation for what is now the annual ASI International Convention.
The ASI Web site describes how the organization operates: “We recognize that our time, talents, treasures and body temple belong to God. We are stewards of these possessions. Accordingly, we believe that our vocations can and should be a ministry to aid in the advancement of the great gospel commission. We are committed to supporting the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its various outreach programs, which include health, education, evangelism, community service, family concerns and special projects.”