Despite offering to give brief backgrounds of those up for nomination to head the Seventh-day Adventist world church departments - an offer made after several delegates complained of being unfamiliar with many of the candidates’ backgrounds - no one requested that service.

This was because nearly all of the 15 leaders of the world church’s departments up for election July 5 had been incumbents, or in one case an associate director in their department, and were unanimously re-elected at the church’s quinquennial business meetings in St. Louis, Missouri. The vote represented a partial report on headquarters departments as there were no nominations on July 5 for either the Stewardship or Sabbath School and Personal Ministries departments.

Pastor Howard Faigo was the only associate director of a world church department in the Adventist church’s world headquarters to be promoted to director. Faigo, associate director of the world church’s publishing department since 2001, succeeds retiring director Jose Campos, who had been elected in 2000. Two other acting departmental directors have been elected directors of their departments. Martin Feldbush is now director of Adventist Chaplaincy Ministries and Heather Dawn Small is director for the Women’s Ministry department of the world church.

Other incumbents include: Gary Krause and Dr. Angel Rodriguez as general field secretaries. Krause is director of the church’s Office of Mission Awareness and Rodriguez directs the church’s Biblical Research Institute.  James A. Cress was re-elected as secretary of the Ministerial Association. The other incumbents are: Linda Koh, Children’s Ministries; Rajmund Dabrowski, Communication department; C. Garland Dulan, Education Department; Ron and Karen Flowers, director and associate directors of the Family Ministries department respectively; Alan Handysides, Health Ministries; John Graz, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty and Baraka Muganda, Youth Ministries.

Before the nominations were announced, Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the world church explained that the election process for church leadership works on a representative basis.  The 2,000 delegates meet in regional caucuses and choose a representative to send to the “nominating committee.”  That committee, with about 200 members, then vote on candidates after examining detailed biographies of candidates.

He said not presenting a full biography to the entire delegation is not an oversight. “This is a choice we made to work through the nominating committee, the composition of which was made [of] trusted individuals you chose,” he said.

Paulsen also addressed the unique relationship between the North American region of the church and the world church headquarters, which is formally known the General Conference.  His comments followed floor complaints from some delegates that the North American region was being treated as the global church.

He explained that until about 15 years ago, the church in North America did not have the separate administrative structure that is found in the rest of the church’s world regions. Thus, the structure of the North American region came out of the world church’s headquarters, Paulsen said.

“They are our largest partner in the global church and we rely on them for major contributions to financial and other resources of church,” he explained.

Paulsen asserted that there is a special relationship between North America and the world headquarters since the region hosts the world body and shares office space.