“Sabbath School isn’t an institution,” says Seventh-day Adventist Church world president Jan Paulsen. “It’s an experience.” As keynote speaker in the worship service on Sabbath, or Saturday, Sept. 27, at the Jefferson Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church in Rochester, New York, Paulsen led out in an all-day celebration of the 150th anniversary of the church’s Sabbath School program.

In 1853—only a few years after the first group of Sabbath-keeping Adventists was formed in Washington, New Hampshire—James White, one of the founders of the Adventist Church, organized the first regular Sabbath School in Rochester. Today, an estimated 20 million people around the world use the Sabbath School lessons prepared and published by the Adventist Church. The program is one of the largest continuous, regular Bible study programs in the world.

“As a discipling tool,” Paulsen added, “Sabbath School is an invaluable instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit.”

One year earlier, estimating an informal membership of about 1,000 in the state of New York, White had written a series of 19 lessons appearing in the new periodical, the “Youth’s Instructor.” He authored some of these earliest lessons, “in the form of questions and answers,” as he traveled in a covered carriage with his wife, Ellen, and three-year-old son, Edson, throughout New England. Mrs. White describes how he composed much of this material during noon stops: while the horse was feeding, he used the “dinner box,” or the top of his hat, as a desk to write on.

This day marked the initiation of a wave of major events scheduled around the world throughout October and November to celebrate Sabbath School’s 150th year. Featuring the theme “Nostalgia for the Future: 150 Years of Sabbath School,” these events are seeking to highlight Adventism’s rich heritage as well as its hopeful future.

“Our intention in this approach,” says world church Sabbath School director James Zackrison, “is to look backward to the origins of this important work as well as forward to the breath-taking possibilities that it offers.”

In remembrance of this event, the Adventist world church’s department of Sabbath school and personal ministries has commissioned a limited edition reproduction of the original first issue of the Youth’s Instructor, in which the first Sabbath School lessons were published.