Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Seventh-day Adventist world church, has challenged church leaders and members to be more engaged with the everyday concerns of the communities where they live.
Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Seventh-day Adventist world church, has challenged church leaders and members to be more engaged with the everyday concerns of the communities where they live. The “broad and comprehensive” nature of the church’s mission, which responds to people’s “everyday pain,” was one of the major themes of Paulsen’s opening address to Annual Council, a three-day meeting of international church leaders that began October 7.
“We would fail as a church if we become indifferent to the suffering of this world,” he said, “or become so wholly ‘other-worldly’ in our thinking that we are insensitive to the suffering of humanity, and cannot be bothered. For this is the world in which we also live. And Christ’s death for humanity describes its value to Him.”
Paulsen made his remarks to members of the church’s executive committee, a planning and decision-making body of the world church. The group, currently meeting at the world church headquarters, is made up of more than 250 church administrators, pastors, and lay people from each of the church’s 12 administrative districts, or divisions.
During his address, Paulsen urged church members to make mission—sharing the message of hope in Christ—a part of their everyday lives. “Without mission, personal spirituality, however well attended to, is like ‘being all dressed up, but nowhere to go,’” he said.
In talking about the scope of the church’s mission, Paulsen called on leaders and members to think beyond the norm. It is right that Adventists be involved in disaster relief, education, and healthcare, said Paulsen. “It is right that as a community of faith we should also be a mouth-piece for the poor, whose number is ever increasing; for the refugees, who come to us in waves asking for nothing more than one more chance to build a life for their children. And it is right that we should be a mouth-piece for other disenfranchised minorities. Is not this also mission? I think it is!”
“We are not changing our mission agenda which we have been true to for this many years,” Paulsen reassured his listeners. “We just need to make sure that it is large enough and inclusive enough to reflect the breadth and depth of Christ’s care for suffering and lost humanity.”
Paulsen also highlighted significant challenges facing the world church today. In talking and thinking about church growth, he said, we must guard against becoming preoccupied by numbers. He cited instances where “mega-campaigns” have resulted in mass baptisms, where the names of the thousands of new believers have not even been recorded. True growth only comes through evangelism that teaches and nurtures new believers over many months, he said, so they “know who they are, and what they believe, and they have a network of friends in the church.”
“The very word ‘growth’ means to become bigger, stronger, healthier, and more capable of functioning effectively,” said Paulsen. “Growth lies imbedded in the three [strategic] values we have chosen: Growth in size, growth in unity, and growth in the qualities which define our life as Seventh-day Adventists.”
While some parts of the world church grapple with the challenge of rapid expansion, Paulsen also acknowledged the problem of stalled growth in many parts of the developed world.
“It is not for lack of commitment, nor because leadership has lost the vision and the church is in apostasy and is off course,” he said. “No, nor is it because the Spirit is gone. So, what is it?” Paulsen suggested that the answer may lie, in part, in the level of personal involvement of church members in sharing their faith. “Maybe we have forgotten that all of the things we value as believers can be kept only when we share them,” he said. “Maybe as leaders we have not been able to project this concept strongly enough.”
He called “contagious enthusiasm,” “involvement,” and “joy in the life of the church,” key ingredients of a healthy spirituality that results in growth. Without involvement in mission, Paulsen added, “our lives become stale and spirituality loses its shine.”
Read the full text of Paulsen’s address, or listen to the audio online, at: www.adventist.org.