Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America have adopted a new agreement for funding the church’s retirement program, ending more than a year of uncertainty over the future of the plan.

In January 2001, North America’s nine regional conferences established a separate retirement plan for their employees. Regional conferences are made up of historically Black churches in the eastern two-thirds of the United States. The retirement funding agreement voted by the North American Division Year-end Meeting last week acknowledges the regional conferences’ separate plan, while ensuring that the church’s existing financial commitments to retirees and current employees are met.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the regional conferences will pay $42 million over approximately 20 years toward the church’s existing commitment to retirees, while assuming about $32 million of commitment to current employees in regional conferences. The North American Division also will pay $6 million to the regional conferences’ retirement plan. 

“This agreement affirms our ability to work together to tackle difficult issues,” said Kermit Netteburg, assistant to the North American Division president for communication. He said it also represents a way for all the conferences to cooperate in funding existing retirement plan commitments.

“More importantly,” Netteburg added, “it allows us to move forward together, turning our full attention and energy toward sharing the Adventist message of hope in our communities.”

The retirement plan actions of the regional conferences stemmed from a longstanding belief that they were over-subsidizing the church’s retirement plan in light of the number of regional conference employees actually receiving retirement benefits. Although all conferences overpay in order to fund retirement benefits for institutional and expatriate church workers, leaders from regional conferences made the case that their level of overpayment was still disproportionate to that of other conferences.

The church’s North American Division Executive Committee, made up of more than 300 administrators, laypeople, pastors, and educators, voted the new retirement agreement at its Year-end Meeting, which convened October 28 to 31 at the church’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States. An Adventist Review special feature on retirement plan issues will be available November 8 at www.adventistreview.org.