A mélange of languages wafts through the lobby of the Sürmeli Hotel Ephesus, in the province of Izmir, Turkey, as holiday makers mingle on a Sunday night before their return to the "real world." But for one group of travelers here, the past 10 days, thoug
A mélange of languages wafts through the lobby of the Sürmeli Hotel Ephesus, in the province of Izmir, Turkey, as holiday makers mingle on a Sunday night before their return to the “real world.” But for one group of travelers here, the past 10 days, though enjoyable, haven’t really been a holiday.
Instead, participants in the Second International Bible Conference, organized by the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Biblical Research Institute (BRI), spent their time debating the fine - and not-so-fine - points of theology, and forming friendships that may well last a lifetime.
From a cross-section of participants in this event one heard repeatedly of the unity the event fostered, as well as the opportunity to feel less, as Australian Adventist pastor Grenville Kent said, “like Robinson Crusoe,” or someone stranded on a desert island.
For Darius Jankiewicz, who teaches theology at Adventist-owned Fulton College in Tailevu, Fiji, a highlight of the trip was “talking with and getting to know people.”.
Some of the presentations “gave me encouragement,” he added, making “Adventism a little more inclusive.”
Harald Giesebrecht, who runs the Bible Correspondence School for the church in Norway, was impressed with the archaeological sites, “the tour of Ephesus and the size of Laeodicea.”.
“When I saw the theatre at Ephesus, I saw why Paul saw an opportunity there,” Giesebrecht added.
The ability to “get to know a lot of new people” was another plus, Giesebrecht, who also studied at Tübingen University in Germany, said. He regrets there wasn’t “time to go deep enough” in some subjects, but found presentations useful.
“I was impressed with the agreeable spirit,” said Steve Bauer, an associate professor at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. “Even when we didn’t see eye-to-eye, getting along took precedence.”
Bauer praised the “quality of the presentations,” saying they were “thoughtful, scholarly and well done.”
According to James J. Park, an assistant professor of discipleship and church growth at the Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies, or AIIAS, in Silang, Cavite, Philippines, there was “a real unity among the theologians and administrators” at a conference that represented “a pretty fair cross-section of the [Adventist] world.”
For Park, a former pastor of the South Bay Seventh-day Adventist Church in Torrance, California, discussion of the subject of rebaptism was important: “It’s one issue I deal with,” he said.
Gordon Christo, a vice president of the church’s Southern Asia region, said he was glad to have an “awareness of issues in other parts of the world,” and that he went away with “a deeper sense of commitment to Adventist education,” a subject stressed in many plenary and devotional talks.
“I almost feel like going back to the classroom,” said Christo, a former dean of Spicer Memorial College in Pune, India.
Though interested in the issues raised here, Christo said his region is more concerned with “down to earth evangelism; we are not really engrossed in theological debate.”
However, for Pastor Ronald Marjee of Chachkopi Seminary near Ranchi, India, the forum provided a way to share knowledge of his lay worker training seminary with people from other church regions. One, West-Central Africa, may adopt the Chachkopi model of training lay workers for two years to serve as pastors and health workers. This is one way of getting workers into regions where growth is explosive but where there aren’t enough traditionally educated pastors to go around.
Veteran Adventist theologian and scholar Roy Gane of Andrews University said the conference let participants communicate “on an equal footing.” Ray Roennfeldt, dean of the Faculty of Theology at Avondale College in Australia said he would come back to Turkey, the land having grabbed his imagination.
Elias De Souza, dean of the theological seminary at Northeast Brazil College, said the seminar showed he and his colleagues how to deal with dissidents who “use theology to divide, as a weapon.”
Perhaps the “bottom line” result of the conference was summed up by Passmor Hachinga, a vice president of the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean region of the church: “Overall, I like the emphasis on and coming back to the Scripture, the Scripture, the Scripture,” he said. “I have nowhere else to go!”