A church milestone brought more than 1,500 Seventh-day Adventists to a celebration of the centennial of the church's arrival in this East African nation with a week of festive events and plans for several projects in the area.
A church milestone brought more than 1,500 Seventh-day Adventists to a celebration of the centennial of the church’s arrival in this East African nation with a week of festive events and plans for several projects in the area.
From the arrival of two German Adventist missionaries in the capital of Dar Es Salaam in December of 1903, the Adventist Church has grown to 274,774 members in seven regional areas of Tanzania. The main anniversary meetings were organized on June 28 and were held at Tanzania Adventist College, which opened in 1975 as Arusha Adventist Seminary, with regional leaders and international guests in attendance. The celebration was also attended by Harold Lee, president of the church’s Columbia Union Conference with headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, in the United States. Lee’s participation was an expression of solidarity between the church region he represents and the church in Tanzania, who has a special fraternal relationship with the church’s Columbia Union.
“The significance of this event is we are remembering when the missionaries came to Tanzania and the message that they brought to us when they came here,” said Pastor Steven M. Bina, local president of the church. “This is very important because we will be commemorating the message of the gospel, and we will go forward remembering the message of these 100 years. This is very important to our people.”
While the week-long meetings were going on at the college—which hopes to achieve university status later this year—evangelistic meetings were held in other parts of Arusha as well as the town of Moshi. Bina says “More evangelistic campaigns will be conducted as part of the centennial celebration.”
Each region of the church in Tanzania has committed to building a staff house at the college as part of the centennial year’s activities, and an archives is being assembled at the Arusha college as well. The church’s aggressive growth, aided by satellite evangelism and Bible schools conducted in local churches, has brought great gains.
Bina said that this growth should promote the Tanzania region to the next level in church administrative rankings, that of a “union conference,” by 2005.
For many attending the event, the celebration brought back fond memories and an appreciation for what has happened in past years. Dr. Neils Oster, physician at Heri Adventist Hospital in Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, says he has a personal connection to Tanzania and its people.
“I was very happy to be here. It did a lot for me,” Dr. Oster said of the celebration. “I’ve been part of this movement for 76 years. I was born in Africa. I grew up around here and came back 10 years ago. In between, my thoughts were in Africa.”
According to Dr. Robert Taylor, president of the church in Tanzania from 1985 to 1990, the event was a time of refreshing. “This celebration has been fantastic, it’s been very spiritual. Everyone has been uplifted. We’re just happy we have been able to be part of it,” he says.
