Most church members are not overly concerned about church organization and structure. They'd rather learn how to live the Christian life. But church leaders like Bertil Wiklander president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European region
Most church members are not overly concerned about church organization and structure. They’d rather learn how to live the Christian life. But Bertil Wiklander, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European region, and other church leaders say, “It is the duty of each member to know what kind of organization they have joined, to know how it works and to take responsibility for how it works.”
“My experience is that an average church member of any gender and age does not care about the church’s organization,” agrees Richard Omondi, an Adventist church member and an adjunct professor at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton in Kenya. “First, they don’t understand it [and second], they are not concerned as long as someone is there to deliver a sermon to them every Sabbath,” he says.
But the Adventist church is about much more than a sermon and a single community of worshippers, suggests Roscoe Howard, secretary for the Adventist church in North America. “When people don’t know [how their church operates], they assume and when they assume, they are often wrong. We need to know what functions certain departments fulfill and if they are fulfilling the mission of the church.”
He and other church leaders say the democratic way in which this 15 million-member global church is governed is what makes the local church the cornerstone of the organization.
When describing the levels of the church’s organization, it helps to imagine a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle represents Jesus Christ. The next circle represents the individual church member, who along with others, make up a local church. Several local churches then join together to form a Conference. A group of conferences then belong to a Union, which covers areas as large as countries or several provinces. Next comes the Divisions, of which there are 13 in the Adventist church and they are the administrative arms of the church’s General Conference. Divisions cover portions of or entire continents and represent the world church in particular regions. The General Conference ensures that the global church shares the same visions and beliefs. It also brings together members of the worldwide church every five years to elect officers and make decisions under the guidance of Jesus Christ.
Each level is responsible for handling different areas of administration. For example, Conferences provide congregations with professional leadership, supportive and outreach ministries, training and Christian education. Unions oversee projects that affect people over large territories, such as colleges, hospitals and large-scale evangelism. And Divisions provide guidelines and policies on how each local entity should function.
The key part of the Adventist church’s organization is its constituent model. This means that through representatives local church members have a say in the decisions and policies implemented from the local church all the way to its highest level—the General Conference.
“The congregation is the place where ministry needs to be empowered the most,” says Debra Brill, a vice president of the Adventist church in North America. “Members are the voice of the church. Members of the congregation choose and elect membership to represent them at the Conference level. From the Conference level, representatives are selected to the Union and so forth up on to the Division. At every level church members are represented, which is the strength of the Adventist church structure.”
The union is the highest constituency in the organization as neither the world divisions nor the church’s General Conference has a constituency.
Still, the Divisions and the General Conference have a part to play in unifying the church regionally and globally.
“Can you imagine the kind of chaos there would be if each Adventist school operated under different policies?” Brill questions. “While the Division has no authority over the Union conferences or the local Conferences we work together in cooperation to build consensus and create best practices and policies for our church and church leaders.”
Church leaders say another strength of the Adventist church structure is the church’s system of pooled funding.
“There are churches that would never have pastors unless larger churches share with smaller churches. If we were selfish in a congregational way some larger churches would prosper but small churches would dry up. I believe the Lord put this structure together,” Howard says.
Wiklander adds, “Our organization is unique and appropriate, in that it makes each member in the church part of the global mission that God is carrying out through our church.”
Understanding church organization then becomes important, Wiklander continues, because “if the member understands the global calling of Christ to mission—going to the world with the gospel—then he needs to see that a world organization to facilitate mission is necessary.”