OUR TERRITORY presents a tremendous challenge to the Adventist Church. The field is very complex—220,000,000 people in seventeen different nations. The membership of 110,000, scattered throughout the division, varies from one in every 428 people in Iceland to one in 8,027 in Poland. While the task before the church is great, leaders, ministers and members gladly take up the challenge of declaring Christ and His message to men.
At the quadrennial council in Bergen, Norway, in 1976, division personnel, union presidents, and committee members accepted the challenge of reaching every person in our territory with the good news. We adopted as our motto "One Thing I Do." This theme council delegates determined to keep before them in all plans and activities.
"One Thing I Do" means "Total Evangelism" to us in the Northern Eu rope-West Africa Division. Our ministry has been urged to bend every energy to the ultimate aim of leading all church members into personal or public evangelism and to set a personal example by actively spending themselves in the cause of soul winning, so that we might see the work finished.
Division president W. R. L. Scragg has given strong leadership and suggests an excellent threefold commitment that can help bring this about: (1) every church revived and praying; (2) every member trained and working; (3) every worker involved and sharing.
With this approach in mind we have adopted the following objectives for the period 1976-1980: 50,000 baptisms; 2,000 evangelism projects; 500 new areas entered; 1,000 literature evangelists.
When we look back at 1975 and see that our baptisms were just more than 7,000 we can see that these objectives are certainly greater than what has been achieved in the past. But they are reasonable and certainly not beyond our reach. We have one thousand churches in the division. This means that during the next five years each church would add 50 members (10 members per year), conduct two evangelism projects, have one literature evangelist, and, together with another church, witness in a new area. Of course, we would not want to stop there. But by God's grace we believe these objectives will be achieved and exceeded.
Goals, however, are one thing, while action is another. We are not sitting by, hoping and praying that the goals will be reached. Praying earnestly, yes but also diligently at work to make them a reality. Already negotiations are proceeding to add at least two overseas evangelists to our worker force. Together with a northern European evangelist, they will become inter-union evangelists and will be assigned to different unions within the division for a two-year period to lead out in large-city evangelistic programs and to train others in the art of publicly presenting the gospel. Then they will be assigned to other unions for succeeding two-year periods. This should do much to strengthen and advance our public out reach.
Funds have also been set aside by the division to assist young ministers in their first evangelistic campaigns. This will help them to have an adequate budget to give their program every chance of succeeding. Encouragement is also being given by the division for local conferences and unions to experiment with new avenues of evangelism to reach different types of people, and to establish the Lord's work in new areas. Such approaches may include: new approaches in direct public evangelism; direct evangelism to youth; health-related evangelism; minister/layman evangelistic teams; young people devoting time and talents to full-time lay witness; literature evangelists laboring in unentered towns and districts, concentrating on finding and developing interests; full-time door-to-door personal evangelism. Ample funds have been set aside to support such projects and others that may be conceived.
The division departmental directors have made it clear that their departments exist for the single purpose of aiding the church to reach its objectives, providing plans and ideas readily avail able for use. Each one has outlined clearly his department's plans by which it can help the church to reach its goals and be true to the motto "One Thing I Do."
At the time of writing, reports of public campaigns and baptisms for 1977 are not yet in hand. Our winter period is coming to a close, and spring will see a surge in the reaping work being carried out all over the division by evangelists, pastors, teachers, and workers. Many campaigns are now in progress from north Norway down to West Africa. Elder D. D. Doleman, from the United States, has conducted greatly appreciated campaigns in Hull, England, and Lagos, Nigeria, and is at present busily at work in Sweden. I have had the privilege of holding a campaign in Coventry, England, and have just completed an other in Kumasi, Ghana. Pastor David Currie, Ministerial secretary of the British Union, is busily laboring in Bournemouth, England, with an able band of helpers who are being trained for wider service in the future. Rolf Kvinge, recently returned to Norway from further study at Andrews University, as Ministerial secretary of the West Noric Union, is already leading out in public campaigns. Ruben Engdahl, Ministerial secretary of the Swedish Union, is also regularly on the public platform. I could speak of other workers in Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the British Isles, Ice land, and Poland, who are faithfully at their post sharing the good news and seeking men and women for the kingdom of God. What of West Africa and Nigeria? Ministers and laymen every where are sharing their faith and the Lord's Spirit is using them to bring conviction to the hearts of many.
Our division presents a difficult field for evangelism, but we are of good courage in the Lord. We know His Spirit blesses every effort put forth to bear witness to Christ and His truth. And if our "One Thing I Do" can become the aim and desire of every member of the church in NEWAD, we will see great advancement in the cause of God and perhaps even the completion of the task committed to us by the end of the quinquennium in 1980.
