Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders this week will vote on proposed territorial restructures to accommodate growth in the church's Inter-American region.

Members of the Adventist world church's Executive Committee will also receive an update from a distance-study commission, established in October to examine future support of the church's distance-education institution, Griggs University.

Held each year in April, Spring Meeting is one of two annual business sessions of the committee, which is comprised of some 300 world church officials and delegates.

Spring Meeting is typically a two-day meeting addressing financial issues, said world church Undersecretary Larry Evans. The other is Annual Council, held in October to address policy items.

Beginning tomorrow, delegates will hear about proposed management restructure of four areas in and around Central America, a region of the world church with some of the highest membership growth rates worldwide.

The action would involve the creation of new "union conferences" and "union missions." A union is made up of several local administrative fields. A union with the "conference" designation is financially self-supporting, while a union with a "mission" status is still reliant on its parent "division" for support and oversight.

Proposed changes would mainly affect Jamaica, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras and El Salvador.

During Spring Meeting, Executive Committee delegates will also receive a report from a distance-study commission, which was established to examine future support of Adventist distance education, specifically Grigg's University.

While the school of 5,000 students has expanded into developing markets during the past five years, it hasn't been able to keep up with evolving distance education technology and practices, the intuition's president Don Sahly told ANN in October. Also, 2008 was its worst year financially, despite a 12-month enrollment increase of some 1,500 students.

Though the institution's work doesn't generate much revenue in some parts of the world, Sahly said it contributes to the church's mission. Affiliate campuses are mostly reaching people who are not Adventist Church members.

Spring Meeting delegates will also vote whether to approve the church's Thirteenth Sabbath offering for the fourth quarter of this year to assist rebuilding efforts in Haiti. The action would move the previously scheduled offering to benefit the church's West-Central Africa region to the third quarter of 2011.

Delegates will also receive an update on the church's financial picture, hear an update on the church's proposed partnership with the World Health Organization, and review plans for this summer's 10-day General Conference Session in Atlanta.