The Seventh-day Adventist Church, now numbering 13 million members worldwide, is a young, dynamic and growing body of Christian believers, says Charles Sandefur, president of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International. 

“Over half the church has joined this community since the ‘90s. We are a new member church of first generation Adventists, young Adventists, worldwide Adventists,” says Sandefur, who is completing his first year in the ADRA position, after heading up the church’s Mid-America region. He made his remarks during worship on the first morning of the church’s Spring Meeting, a conference of the movement’s worldwide executives.

Sandefur says his visits to 43 countries—and Sabbath worship experiences at remote locales in 20 of those lands—have given him a far different view of the world church than those in North America or Western Europe might have. 

“We’re more representative of the populations of this world than ever before,” Sandefur said. “We began as a movement, we became a denomination, and now we are a movement again,” he adds, noting that in some places growth is happening so quickly that leaders can’t count the number of members, but merely “celebrate” the changes.

For these church members, many of whom are enthused about being part of a globe-girdling group whose roots are firmly in American soil, the day-to-day concerns are far different from those of their Yankee brethren, Sandefur says. 

“I’ve worshipped in fifth-generation churches, and those still dripping wet from last week’s baptisms,” Sandefur said. “This is an overwhelmingly new church. Two-thirds of all who have ever been baptized [in the church] are living.”

It is also a church that has its challenges, he notes: There are at least 1 million Adventists who do not read, and thousands suffering from HIV/AIDS. Still others—perhaps as many as 250,000—are starving. Most of the new members “are overwhelmingly poor,” he adds.

The rapid growth of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is adding new members at a rate of just under two per minute, means that what had been a measurable organization is now outpacing its capacity to chart its growth, Sandefur says. 

Along with that growth are new and vibrant expressions of Christian faith. He talked of a man who asked to speak with him about money after a Sabbath service. But instead of being asked for aid, the man asked Sandefur, “What does it really mean to sell everything I have and give to the poor? How should I interpret that text?” he recalls.

“I’d never had that question asked of me in all my years of pastoral ministry,” he adds.

In another case, a woman in a southern Asia nation asked Sandefur to visit her home, and pray, in each of the four corners of the property, for protection from the local spirits. When he asked her why she had become a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, the woman replied that she had seen that “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was more powerful than the gods of my village.”

This explosive, exponential growth could trouble some who believe expansion needs to be managed. But, Sandefur says, a better response is not fear, but rejoicing. “I want to feel like a proud parent, [but proud] that God’s spirit is moving among His people.”