After the extremes of late night meetings and fellowship, delegates might be forgiven for slipping in late to the Friday business session. Yet there were a large number of delegates who celebrated with Matthew A. Bediako, executive secretary of the world church, as he shared his joy in the growth of the church across the world. He stated how the church’s focus on growth, unity and quality of life has attracted people to join the church.

Statistics can be boring, but the delegates applauded as they recognized that growth in the last five years has been the fastest in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church: 5,049,157 accessions have led to a membership in December 2004 of 13,936,932. This means that there is now one Seventh-day Adventist for every 459 people in the world.

Bediako reported how this growth has led to a third division in Africa along with new unions and conferences, or administrative church regions, in Inter-America, South America, Southern Asia and Euro-Asia.

One-third of all Adventist church members now live in Africa. Two million members make Inter-America the largest of the 13 divisions with an annual growth target of 10 percent. Brazil is the country with the greatest number of Adventists in the world: 1,329,662.

These statistics hint at stories of individually changing lives. Division reports during the coming evenings will turn the statistics into stories. Yet even the statistics talk. Over the last five years more than 1,000 regular missionaries have served across the world alongside more than 8,000 Adventist volunteers. The Institute of World Mission has trained 500 missionaries, adding to the 5,000 already qualified.

Those missionaries have given of their best; some have given their lives. As the report was voted, Bediako made an extra presentation: Mellisa DePaiva is a missionary daughter. Her parents, Ruimar Duarte and Margareth DePaiva, served as a missionary pastoral team on the Micronesian island of Palau. In December 2003 they were murdered, along with their son, Larisson.

Tears came to delegates’ eyes as Mellisa came to the platform and indicated to delegates that her goal in life is to be a missionary and return to Palau. Statistics become reality as that kind of Christian commitment and zeal is repeated across the world.

With all the good news, Bediako’s report also presented challenges, including the need to focus missionary resources to the areas of the world where the Adventist Church, and Christianity in general, has had marginal impact. There is also a need to increase the spirit of volunteerism as well as to adapt evangelism to reflect local needs and issues, taking the “good news to all people”

Bediako called on the delegation to identify with the “must have” goal of the Adventist movement: To fall in step with God and advance with Him to the ends of the earth, finishing the work of evangelization.