The Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders have moved to take lay involvement in mission to a new level, voting guidelines for the church's global "Go One Million" initiative.
Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders have moved to take lay involvement in mission to a new level, voting guidelines for the church’s global “Go One Million” initiative.
Go One Million, launched in April this year, is an initiative to mobilize, train and equip 1 million Adventist lay people for evangelism by the time of the next Adventist World Session in June 2005.
“The Seventh-day Adventist Church has always been a church of mission,” said Michael Ryan, Global Mission director for the Adventist Church, who presented the initiative to the church’s executive committee earlier this year. “‘To go’ has never been a question mark. Adventists have accepted the gospel commission as a personal invitation to become involved.”
A key part of equipping lay people for mission is providing them with a kit of materials, said Jim Zackrison, personal ministries director of the Adventist world church and secretary of the Go One Million coordinating committee.
Under the guidelines voted September 26, Go One Million kits must, above all, be culturally adapted to the region of the world in which they will be used.
“This is not a ‘top-down’ initiative,” added Zackrison. “Go One Million will only succeed if it is fueled by grass-roots church member enthusiasm and reflects local challenges and needs.”
Go One Million kits could include Bible studies, audiovisual materials, information on establishing new groups, and a report form. Each administrative region, or division, of the Adventist world church will be responsible for designing and approving kits.
“In communicating with different divisions about Go One Million, we have discovered a great eagerness to participate on the part of administrations around the world,” said Larry Colburn, assistant to the Adventist Church world president and chair of the Go One Million coordinating committee.
In the five months since the Go One Million initiative was approved, some 500,000 lay people in the Southern Asia-Pacific and South America regions have already begun training for involvement in mission outreach.
