Addressing Seventh-day Adventist theological educational leaders, world church president Dr. Jan Paulsen called for unity and a commitment to nurture the spiritual lives of Adventist youth attending their schools.

“Your church says to you: They are our youth before they come to you. Dont make them strangers before you hand them back to us,” Paulsen told the educators on July 10 during a conference at the world church headquarters.

The Conference on Religious and Theological Education was held from July 7 to 10 and brought together approximately 70 participants from Adventist institutions of higher learning around the globe.

Noting the “mission focus” of the Adventist Church from its earliest days, Paulsen said such an emphasis on outreach has indeed paid dividends.

“The size of our family today is 13 million baptized [members]—20 million including children—and that will, at the present rate, have increased a further 50 percent by 2010, if we are still here. Yes, the growth is very real and visible,” he said, adding that the number of Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities worldwide has doubled from 50 in 1993 to 100 today.

“But growth is too narrowly defined if we think of just numbers,” Paulsen added. “Growth has also to do with what happens to me as an individual and what happens to my church as an international, diverse community. A decision to follow Christ must grow and mature into a fruitful life of discipleship; to be born means primarily to be given an opportunity to live.”

It is in making the most of that “opportunity to live” that students come to college seeking to integrate their faith into their lives, he said. In an academic setting where ideas are often challenged and debated comes a tremendous opportunity to influence students toward lifelong discipleship.

“I can think of no category of service and ministry in our church which has a greater potential for defining and communicating the Adventist qualities of life than the ones who teach theology at our colleges and universities,” Paulsen said. But the same category of ministry, which you represent, has also great capacity, when misdirected, to confuse, destabilize, and undo these same values.”

In speaking to the collegiate theologians, Paulsen emphasized that unity on the essential points of doctrine was necessary for the coherence of the church, but added that issues can be questioned and examined.

“I think there is a legitimate role of testing and examining the texture of a defined doctrine or piece of theology which we hold to as a church,” he said. “But I differentiate between that and a process of undoing and discrediting the faith statements which describe who we are—in effect engage in a kind of spiritual personality change.”

Dr. Paulsen emphasized the need for placing difficult questions in their proper setting.

“Is there then nowhere or no time when the probing questions of whether we got it right at all should be asked? I think there is, but I think there are agreed ways in which we do that,” he said. “The classroom or lecture hall is not open season to have a go at who we are and how we define ourselves, when that much more properly should be tested among colleagues of scholars and leaders in a protected environment of respect and mutual trust. That is the time when the words of inspiration are examined, and time and culture play their role in determining how our faith and identity are to be expressed.”

Answering questions from the assembled group, Dr. Paulsen said that forums such as the Biblical Research Institutes committee, BRICOM, was a good place for such questions to be raised, along with more academic settings.

According to Dr. Angel Rodriguez, BRI director, the audience of theologians responded well to a call coming from first Adventist theologian, Paulsen, to head the world church.

“I think he was well received,” Rodriguez said. “There was an openness among theologians to listen to [his] advice.”