The president of the Northern Australian Conference, Simon Gigliotti, and the Northern Australian Conference Adventist Development and Relief Agency director, Chris Kirkwood. [Photo: ADRA Australia]
South Pacific Division asks, “Who are our pastors?”
WAHROONGA, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
Seventh-day Adventist pastors in the South Pacific Division (SPD) are disciple-makers who lead people to Jesus using an institutional rather than missional model of ministry, a new survey shows.
A team led by Avondale University’s Scripture, Spirituality and Society Research Centre director Robert McIver developed the Global Adventist Pastors’ Survey. Some 12,760 pastors—more than 40 percent of those working in the 13 divisions of the General Conference (and 90 percent male)—participated, including about 300 from the SPD. Pastors in the SPD seemed to have made a healthy shift in pastoral priorities They still report spending most of their time conducting worship but believe that they should be training people for mission. This shift coincides with the emphasis of the church in the SPD on discipleship, which emphasizes the importance of the pastor being a player-coach with skills to do ministry and education to train members to do ministry and mission.
Answers to a question about activities the church should be doing revealed the following top-ranking goals: “Lead people to accept Jesus as their personal Savior,” “prepare people for the soon return of Jesus,” and “share the message and teachings of Jesus with the world.” Activities ranking lowest were those that would reduce poverty, disease, and ignorance; encourage ethical living; and advocate for justice.
When asked if any of the listed activities should not be a goal of the church, a significant number of pastors indicated it was not the role of the church to advocate for justice (16.4 percent worldwide). SPD Ministerial Association secretary Darius Jankiewicz said that he thinks this is because the church has emphasized proclaiming a distinctly Adventist message while leaving advocating for justice to other denominations. But, he says, “the proclamation of the Adventist message goes hand-in-hand with advocating for justice.”
Moe Stiles from Crosswalk Melbourne graduated with a master’s degree in human rights this past month. She said that she believes raising awareness of or preventing the exploitation or oppression of others helps us better understand the suffering of Jesus. Advocating for justice is not, she says, “a leftist or political thing to do; it is a Jesus-following thing to do.”
One of the groups responding to this “antipathy” is the JustLove Collective. One member of this group’s organizing team is Signs Publishing book editor Nathan Brown.
“About one in fifteen Bible verses urge a higher priority for doing righteousness in the world,” he notes. “How can sharing ‘the message and teachings of Jesus’ miss ‘God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice’ [Matthew 5:6]? Does a genuine ‘biblical viewpoint’ skip over those 2,103 commands to ‘do justice’?”
The survey asked pastors to identify the topics that they preached most frequently. High on the list were salvation through Jesus, the second coming of Jesus, and the Sabbath, three teachings considered essential to Adventist identity. The sanctuary teaching, also considered essential, was among the least preached.
In another encouraging sign, a high percentage of pastors worldwide felt supported by their congregations and leaders. Issues identified in secondary literature as potential challenges for pastors “appear to be much less of an issue” for Adventist pastors. [Brenton Stacey, Avondale University]
Marlene Ferreras, practical theology assistant professor, La Sierra University [Photo: La Sierra University]
La Sierra University theologian wins national book prize
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
For Marlene Ferreras, assistant professor of practical theology at La Sierra University, the goal of her research trip to Yucatán, Mexico, in November 2016 was straightforward—to collect data utilizing scientific research methods to shed light on the struggles of female Mayan workers at multinational maquila manufacturing plants. But through a three-month immersion into the daily life of a welcoming village family and numerous conversations with the community’s assembly line seamstresses, the scope of her analysis deepened to ultimately offer a reshaping of the paradigm of how pastoral care can support marginalized peoples who are suffering.
The prize includes a monetary award and an invitation to lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary in June 2024. Ferreras, who is a 2003 alumnus of La Sierra University and an assistant professor in its H. M. S. Richards Divinity School, is the first Seventh-day Adventist scholar to win the prestigious recognition. The prize has been offered by the Hispanic Theological Initiative since 2002. The organization supports the development and promotion of Latine and Hispanic religious scholars and leaders.
“The H. M. S. Richards Divinity School faculty celebrate, with pride, the Hispanic Theological Initiative’s book of the year award to Professor Ferreras,” said Maury Jackson, chair of the school’s Pastoral Studies department. “[The work] embodies the ethos of the divinity school’s faculty in that it investigates the theological dimensions of social activist movements. Her work in this book highlights the Adventist question of where to find traces of eschatological hope in this world.”
Ferreras explained her motivation for taking on this project.
“I wrote the book to equip pastoral theologians with more adequate forms of care that are informed by working-class Latinx women’s experiences,” Ferreras said. “Some pastoral theologians tend to increase the power dynamic by making the pastoral caregiver the agent of hope. I want to equip the next generation of caregivers and pastors to journey with people through their suffering and find the surprising ways God lives among and between us.” [Darla Martin Tucker, La Sierra University]
Lead author Peter Williams presents Making Tomorrow’s Church Today: The Lived Experience of Youth Ministry to Gilbert Cangy, former Seventh-day Adventist Church General Conference Youth director (2010–2016). [Photo: Brenton Stacey]
Book unveils thoughts, desires, and challenges of youth pastors
COORANBONG, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
Despite personal, organizational, and demographic challenges, youth ministers in the Seventh-day Adventist church are deeply committed to leading young people into a relationship with God, a new Avondale University study shows.
The study is based on survey and focus group responses from those attending the church’s Global Youth Leadership Congress 2018 in Kassel, Germany. Almost 70 percent of respondents were over 30 years old, and most had spent “considerable” time in youth ministry as administrators or regional leaders or in a local church. Importantly, respondents represented every division of the General Conference.
A compelling visionary influence fostered by the ministers’ relationship with God helps them create a “relational, non-judgmental space of unconditional acceptance and safety,” wrote the authors of Making Tomorrow’s Church Today: The Lived Experience of Youth Ministry (Avondale Academic Press, 2023). This intentional presence comes amid pressure to meet the needs of young people with program-based activities.
These Adventist ministers “see their ministry as different to others but vital to the future of the church,” lead researcher Peter Williams said. “And yet they don’t always feel it is valued or recognized,” even by the young people themselves.
The study notes how this lack of an all-inclusive approach and a perception by some of wanting to achieve conformity through control creates “a wall of partition.” While the more invariable form of other ministries maintains a sameness in programming, youth ministries demands change, flexibility, and innovative creativity. To cope, youth ministers say they need support that equips them for long-term relationship-focused ministry rather than a short-term transitional training field preparing them for a more extensive ministry. The mindset of “cutting your teeth before accepting a real role” has to change, Williams said.
Improving the relationship between pastors, elders, and church ministry leaders with youth ministers should reduce a generational gap that “exasperates the level and quality of alignment.” Other perceived issues confronting youth ministers included expectations of “winning souls,” “stretching meager resources,” and balancing their personal and spiritual lives with the lives of those whom they serve. The challenge, the study notes, appears to be remaining steadfast in the relational heart-to-heart ministry while creating a space of unconditional safety and acceptance.
The prevalence and pervasiveness of technology did not make the original terms of reference, “but we heard about it,” Williams said. Youth ministers recognized the positive and negative implications of using social media but consistently stated that it cannot be avoided. Their desire was to communicate the writings of church cofounder Ellen G. White in a language young people can understand and in a medium they enjoy using. [Brenton Stacey, Adventist Record]
