Twenty-one pastors of some of the largest Seventh-day Adventist Churches, each unaffiliated with a college and each with more than 1,500 members—met at the church’s North American headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, Feb. 10 and 11. The goal was to share information and concerns about the burdens and blessings of large congregations.

In the Adventist Church’s system most funding for large churches is used just to maintain the facility, but large churches tend to bring in finances that end up supporting other churches in their conference, or administrative locale. While large Adventist churches are not on the order of “mega-churches”—as many as 10 thousand or 20 thousand members—church leaders in North America recognize large churches have special needs too.

“This was the first time these pastors have ever had a chance to get together like this,” says Dave Osborne, ministerial secretary for the Adventist Church in North America, himself a senior pastor of a large non-institutional church—the 2,000-member Carmichael Adventist Church in Sacramento, California. Each attendee had a minimum of 20 years of experience as a pastor.

“I think the sharing of ideas was excellent,” says Osborne, explaining that what the group came up with were not concrete proposals. “The [issues are] to be studied and looked at.”

One concern arising from the meeting was the way large churches typically financially support smaller churches in the conference. Pastors, on the whole, seem comfortable supporting a small church that’s growing and doing active ministry, according to meeting attendees, but this isn’t the case for small congregations that are on “life support” and have been for a long time. These are typified as congregations where many members are related to each other, and also show little interest in growing. 

“There’s no plan to make adjustments [right now], just the idea to give study to that,” says Osborne.

Most large church buildings tend to be older and, since nearly all of their funding goes to maintain the plant facilities, little money is left for church programs, all of which are vital to ministry, say pastors.

One pastor suggested 10 percent of the tithe could come back to the local church, or a “tithe on tithe.” It could be specifically earmarked for ministry, not going to facilities maintenance, suggested some pastors.

Guillermo Garcia, pastor of the 1,800-member Central Spanish Adventist Church in Los Angeles, said he didn’t think that would happen. The fact that large churches tend to support smaller churches in a conference does not concern him. “That’s exactly what we need,” he said. “Thanks to the structure of the church, the work [as a whole] is going forward.”

Central Spanish is the largest Hispanic Adventist church in the United States and Garcia has the support of three other associate pastors paid by the conference.

On the other side of the continent, there are only two pastors at the Ephesus Church in Harlem, New York City. Sherwin Jack and one associate pastor minister to some 2,300 members.

The difference: Ephesus Church belongs to a regional conference, which typically comprises African-American churches. Many of these have fewer pastors—sometimes only one, regardless of the number of members.

In many cases a large, understaffed church is “‘underministered’ to in a sense,” says Osborne.

The Marietta Adventist Church north of Atlanta, for example, has 1,100 members with three pastors. Across the state of Georgia, in a regional conference, the West Broad Street Adventist Church in Savannah has some 1,800 members with only one pastor.

For that pastor, “the work never stops—sermons, weddings, funerals…” says Osborne, emphasizing that many regional conference churches have only one pastor.

About 15 percent of membership in North America belongs to regional conferences, yet the majority of large non-institutional churches are in regional conferences, according to Osborne.

“A pastor with three churches, 30 or 40 members each, is only ministering to 100 or so people, even though he has three churches,” explains Osborne. “One pastor at a large church is ministering to 1,000 people.

“That’s the way a conference chooses to divide the money,” he says.

Also discussed during the two-day meeting was how to extend the sabbatical program; burnout, particularly for solo pastors at large churches; and Web-based philanthropy training for pastors.