The time it takes for a new Seventh-day Adventist Church to be established dropped below the three-hour mark. According to the General Conference Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research, a new Adventist church was added every 2.97 hours in 2023.
At that rate, a new church is being established approximately every three hours—or eight new churches every day. The last similar milestone was 23 years ago. In 2000 a new Adventist church was added every four hours—six churches a day.
“I believe that mission is a miracle, and this growth in church planting represents the miracle that is happening more and more,” said General Conference Secretary Erton Köhler. “That is the promise that we received from the Bible that closer to the second coming of Jesus, more and more miracles in mission will happen through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
“We praise God that new Adventist churches are being planted faster than ever before,” says Gary Krause, director of the Office of Adventist Mission at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. “But our focus is not on numbers. It’s on wholistic mission, making faithful disciples of Jesus.”
The Office of Adventist Mission oversees the church’s Global Mission initiative to start new groups of believers in unentered areas and new people groups. It emphasizes, in particular, church planting in three “Mission Refocus” windows: the 10/40 Window, the Urban Window, and the Post-Christian Window.
The 10/40 Window, stretching from northern Africa through the Middle East to Asia, contains some 60 percent of the global population, with most people coming from the major non-Christian religions. The cities are now where the majority of the world’s population lives, and the Post-Christian Window reflects the rapidly growing number of people who claim no religious affiliation, particularly in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America.
Currently, Global Mission supports 2,480 church planters, called Global Mission pioneers, who are working to start new groups of believers. “Church plants are just a beginning,” says Umesh Nag, Adventist Mission director for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Southern Asia, and a former Global Mission pioneer. “They start small, but the goal is to grow them into churches that will plant more churches.”
Recently Nag visited a town chosen for a church planting project many years ago. Two Global Mission pioneers were sent to this area where there were no Adventist churches or members. They struggled at first, but eventually, they established three churches—one in town and two outside of town. Today, each of these churches has about 125 members, and they have started four more churches plus a couple of Adventist schools.
One hundred years ago, there were 5,000 Adventist churches around the world. Today, there are some 100,000 churches and church membership has grown to some 23 million Adventists.
“Doors are being opened, churches are being planted, and some of them in very challenging places of the world,” Köhler said. “It's a reason to celebrate. It's a reason to renew our confidence in the Lord and our commitment to the mission as well.”
The original article was published on the Adventist Mission website.
