News
News Briefs for August 17, 2018 - News reports from Garden Grove, California; Loma Linda University Medical Center; the Dominican Republic; the North American Division and Volusia County, Florida According to the site Solar Power World, solar power company XsunX installed a solar carport power system at Garden Grove Seventh-day Adventist Church in Garden Grove, California. Solar carports are overhead canopies constructed […]- Norwegian Adventist Pastor Launches “A Female Pastor” YouTube Channel - 16 August 2018 | Guro Edvardsen, an Adventist pastor in Norway, has launched a YouTube channel titled “A Female Pastor.” Although she is in favor of having female pastors in the Adventist denomination, she made clear in an email to Adventist Today that her intention is not to attack those that have a different point of […]
- Lawsuit: Midwives Claim Shawnee Mission Health Killed Their Business - 15 August 2018 | Midwife Partners, a Lenexa, Kansas-based midwifery business is suing Shawnee Mission Health, the Kansas State Board of Nursing, and several obstetricians who work at Shawnee Mission Medical Center for allegedly putting them out of business. The business obtained a collaborative practice agreement (CPA) in 2015, a requirement for midwives wishing to […]
- System-Wide Name Change Announced As Adventist Health System Reveals Plans to Become AdventHealth - 14 August 2018 | According to a press release from Altamonte Springs, Florida-headquartered Adventist Health System, all of the network’s wholly owned facilities will be carry the AdventHealth name as of January 2, 2019. The transition is described in the press release as a move to “being one consumer-centric, connected and identifiable national system of […]
- Ben Carson Attends Premiere of Christian Film That Compares Democrats to Nazis - 13 August 2018 | US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, attended the premiere of controversial Christian Film Death of a Nation, on August 1. The Adventist Trump cabinet member attended the premiere with his wife, Candy Carson. Death of a Nation was created by Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing filmmaker and provocateur who […]
- Summit Charts the Future of Adventist Higher Education in North America - 12 August 2018 | The board chairs and top administrators of the 12 colleges and universities operated by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in the United States and Canada met in Chicago through the weekend, following a teachers’ convention last week that involved thousands of K-12 and higher education faculty from Adventist schools. The “Summit on […]
- More Believe Owners of Wedding-Based Businesses Should Be Allowed To Refuse To Serve Same-Sex Couples - 12 August 2018 | A poll by Public Religion Research Institute shows statistically significant growth in the percentage of Americans who believe that owners of wedding-based businesses should have the right to not serve same-sex couples if serving them conflicts with their religious beliefs. An article in Religion News Service said that the poll, surveying […]
- News Reports for August 10, 2018 - News reports from Romania, Hungary, Oakwood University, Takoma Academy, Australia and Egypt ADRA Romania, a branch of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency is providing drinking water, food and hygiene supplies to families impacted by flooding in 20 counties, including the capital city of Bucharest. The project is called “Hope afloat.” Dr. Gábor Mihalec, family […]
- Youth Mentorship Clubs Launched by Adventist Church in Jamaica to Counter Appeal of Gangs - 10 August 2018 | Tent City Seventh-day Adventist Church in Portmore, St. Catherine, Jamaica has started mentorship clubs that seek to inspire adolescents to higher emotional, moral and spiritual development. Jamaica’s The Gleaner reported on August 10 that 35 youth had been inducted into the clubs, known as the Girls of Eloquence, Morals and Standards […]
- Lead Pastor and Board of Elders Resign from Willow Creek Community Church - 8 August 2018 | On Wednesday night, August 8, the lead pastor and the board of elders at Willow Creek Community Church resigned. The group said that they had made a mistake in not believing women who accused the megachurch’s founding pastor, Bill Hybels, of sexual harassment. Although there have been a number of women […]
- After Protests, Scheduled Speakers from Coming Out Ministries Do Not Appear at Adventist Camp Meeting - 7 August 2018 | Two speakers from Coming Out Ministries that were scheduled to present at an Adventist camp meeting in Nova Scotia did not end up coming to the event. Canada’s Maritime Conference of the Adventist Church had been heavily pressured to remove the two speakers that are deemed controversial by LGBTQ advocacy groups. […]
- Lawsuit Alleges Boys’ Club Atmosphere at Shawnee Mission Health - 6 August 2018 | A former Shawnee Mission Medical Center director of women’s and children’s services is suing the hospital claiming that male executives ignored her report about hospital birth center understaffing because she is a woman. The lawsuit claims that there was a “boys’ club” atmosphere at the hospital. Margaret Meier says she was […]
Commentary
- “At the Eye of the Storm: Conflict Concerning the Ordination of Women Within the International Seventh-day Adventist Church” - by Ronald Lawson | 15 August 2018 | I have been sharing here on Adventist Today papers on Adventism and a variety of social issues, including abortion, polygamy, homosexuality, and HIV-AIDS. But what of the most bitter social issue in the church, the position of women and their ordination to the ministry? I have just […]
- The Problem of Predation - by Richard W. Coffen | 14 August 2018 | “Nothing, save the selfish heart of man . . . lives unto itself. No bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life.”[1]—Ellen White, The Desire of Ages. The Desert Speaks! While I was tromping in the […]
- Is Donald Trump the Cyrus of Prophecy? - by David Hamstra | 13 August 2018 | Recent American presidents are known to have spritzed their worldview with a whiff of rhetorical essence distilled from biblical prophetic themes. Jimmy Carter worked for peace in the Middle East out of his conviction that the “establishment of the nation of Israel” was “a fulfillment of Biblical […]
- Donor, Beware: A Crisis of Integrity in the Mission Field - By Loren Seibold | 11 August 2018 | A friend who runs a small Adventist-based non-profit organization told me this story. A few years ago she’d gotten a request from a pastor in Africa, describing how he and his wife were running ministries for children and the elderly which included school, daycare and eldercare, feeding […]
- Nightmares and Rainbows - by Christopher C. Thompson | 9 August 2018 | When I was a kid I used to have this really bad recurring dream. In the dream I was surrounded by these old school mobster-type characters who looked like the villains from a crazy Dick Tracy episode. They were all cramped in a dark room with […]
- Adventist Tomorrow #7c: Creative Discussions - by Jack Hoehn There is a confluence of ideas coming from within and without the Seventh-day Adventist church, that suggest places this church can grow with its theology and mission. Jack wants to talk with you about growing an Expanded Creationism for Adventists. This is the third of three articles on this important topic. The […]
- The Dark Side of Adventist Life - by Lizwi Alpha Ntuli | 3 August 2018 | The Adventist Church has over the years churned out millions of people who have known no other lifestyle save the Adventist one. One is born of Adventist parents, educated from preschool to university in Adventist schools, employed in Adventist institutions and sometimes we die in Adventist hospitals […]
- Sabbath Worship: Honest Right Down to Our Jeans - by Tami Cinquemani | 3 August 2018 | “People that are in front—praise team, pastor’s wife, etc.—not so casual in their dress. Stop wearing jeans. Once a week go to church, wear our best.” The response above was from a visitor as completion of the statement, “I was distracted by . . . “ In […]
- Adventist Tomorrow #7b: Grown-Up Creationism - by Jack Hoehn There is a confluence of ideas coming from within and without the Seventh-day Adventist church, that suggest places this church can go with its theology and mission. Jack wants to talk with you about some of them. This article is on an Expanded Creationism for Adventism growing big enough to fit the […]
- Two Texts That Revolutionized My Spiritual Outlook - Richard W. Coffen | 30 July 2018 | Even if you’ve spent a minimal amount of time “in the Word,” you’ve undoubtedly come across passages that revolutionized your thinking. Six years ago, as I reread a text commonly used by Seventh-day Adventist evangelists, I learned something so amazing I should have never ignored it! Then, […]
- Adventist Today’s Most Misunderstood Article Ever - By Loren Seibold | 29 July 2018 | Recently a friend in the General Conference building said to me (she had a smile on her face, but she was serious) “I like Adventist Today, but there’s one thing I’m having a hard time forgiving you for.” “What’s that?” I asked. “That article with a ‘proposed […]
- An Apology for Partisanship - By Lindsey Painter 24 July 2018 “Moderation in all things” is a phrase my mother taught me. And I believe it applies to most things in life. Eating healthy, for example. I believe that most of the food I consume should be healthy, but it’s okay for me to have a chocolate truffle sometimes. There’s […]
Features
- Respect for Tradition - To comment, click here.
- Dr. Ron Numbers on Writing Prophetess of Health - Adventist Today editor Loren Seibold talked with Dr. Ron Numbers, whose article on once-Adventist, later media and sports mogul, John Fetzer will appear in the autumn edition of Adventist Today magazine. You have a distinguished pedigree with the Seventh-day Adventist church. According to family lore my great-grandmother, Mary Anne Dicky Branson, then living in southern […]
- You Can’t Win, Can You? - To comment, click here.
- Adventists and HIV-AIDS - By Ronald Lawson | 21 June 2018 | To what extent should Adventists be concerned about people with HIV-AIDS? In the 1950s America suffered a polio epidemic. This was right down our alley as Adventists: we loved giving water treatments, massages, etc. Those affected were usually innocent young children, and our hearts went out to […]
- Baptismal Vows - To comment, click here.
- When the Adventist Church Sponsored an Ex-gay Ministry - by Ronald Lawson | 15 June 2018 | “The Troubled Career of an ‘Ex-Gay’ Healer: Colin Cook, Seventh-day Adventists, and the Christian Right.” Seventh-day Adventists had long assumed that they had no gay or lesbian members, even though there was a history of gay pastors, some in key posts, being discovered and fired, and gay […]
- Small Things - by S.M. Chen | 13 June 2018 “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” Confucius, aka Kong Qiu (551-479 BC), teacher, politician, philosopher I’m standing by the kitchen sink. As I lean over the garbage disposal, I hear a faint clink, metal on metal. I increase kitchen illumination, look around, […]
- Sermon: Working Like God - by John McLarty | 12 June 2018 | Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for May 26, 2018 Texts: Deuteronomy 14:22-29, Exodus 20:8-11, John 5:8-19 Yesterday I was at Cypress Adventist School to present a chapel talk. Since I’m freshly returned from vacation in southern Utah, I told the kids about one of […]
- The Church and Its Homosexual Members - by Ron Lawson | 29 May 2018 | The chapter I wrote for the book, Christianity and Homosexuality: Seventh-day Adventist Perspectives, edited by David Ferguson, Fritz Guy, and David Larson, which was released in 2007, has been uploaded to my website, www.RonaldLawson.net. The title of the paper is “The Caring, Welcoming Church?: The Seventh-day Adventist […]
- Seventh-day Adventists and Polygamous Converts - by Ronald Lawson | 29 May 2018 | “Church-Sponsored Injustice: The Seventh-day Adventist Church and Polygamous Converts” addresses how Adventists have dealt with polygamously married converts in Africa, where the practice has been widespread. The policy long followed by other mission churches was to refuse to baptize converts who were polygamously married unless the male put away […]
- Selective Conformity - To comment, click here.
- Email with the Church Organist - To comment, click here.
Poetry & Arts
- The Kingdom of Heaven - by John Bryan | 11 May 2018 | How would you explain color to a man who’s never seen before? With what words would you describe the sounds of music to someone who is deaf? Pingelap is a small circular island in the Pacific, an atoll, forming part of the country of Micronesia. A portion […]
- Somewhere: Spiritual Lessons from West Side Story - by S.M. Chen | 26 April 2018 | “There’s a place for us…” —from “Somewhere,” song in 1957 Broadway musical “West Side Story” One of the finer achievements of the late musician (conductor and composer) Leonard Bernstein was the music he composed for “West Side Story.” In collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, lyricist, he created for […]
- Revelation 2:17: A Poem - by Carolyn Shultz | 13 April 2018 | A smooth white stone. Mystery-white like Melville’ s whale? Alabaster— Or perhaps a new-made onyx Forged in the last prolific fires That purge and permute the once clean earth To Earth again. Inscribed, John says. Ur-Hebrew? Apocalyptic Greek? I think I’d fancy Strange new shapes and lines […]
- Lest We Forget - “Love is so short; forgetting is so long.” ~Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet (1904-1973), Nobel laureate (1971) in literature “… before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” ~Isaiah 65:24 I take a number of pills daily. These include a multivitamin formulation, chewable megavitamin C, vitamin D, L-lysine, and […]
- Something for the POTUS - by S.M. Chen | 23 February 2018 | I don’t know if Donald Trump reads USA TODAY. The back page of the first section of the 2/13/18 issue caught my attention. Someone named Tom Blair took out a full page ad entitled “Mr. President,” with the subheading: “In anticipation of Presidents’ Day (February 19) consider […]
- Ken Lauren: An Appreciation - by S.M. Chen | 12 February 2018 | Dr. Ken Lauren died not long ago of an injury sustained in Costa Rica, while he was working as a volunteer on the construction of a church. A report was posted here at Adventist Today. I visited Peru in 2005 at the invitation of my brother, taking […]
- Jesus’ Response to Nationalism & Racism - by Lars Justinen | 2 February 2018 | There was an immigration problem back in Jesus’ day. It seems the culture then was steeped in nationalism and racism. Especially hated in Israel were the “Muslims” of their day: the Samaritans. While sharing the same roots in Father Abraham, the Jews viewed the Samaritans as […]
- Doing Nothing Because You Can Do Only a Little? - by S.M. Chen | 22 January 2018 | “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” —Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish statesman and philosopher The story is told of an old man who walks the beach. He is in the habit of doing this before he begins […]
- Sunrise, Kapaa 1/11/18 - by S.M. Chen | 12 January 2018 | Some ancients bent a knee to sun. With outstretched arms they welcomed it And turned their face to catch its light And heat that warmed them to the bone, That took away the chill within. We, too, have shared the wonder of A rising sun in flaming […]
- More Rain - By S.M. Chen | 21 December 2017 | “The rain falls on the just And also on the unjust fella But mainly on the just Because the unjust steals the just’s umbrella.” —Heywood Broun, 20th century American journalist When, a few months ago, I wrote an essay, “Rain”, little could […]
- A Light to Lead Us Home - by Sharan Bennett | 20 December 2017 | Christmas, 2017 enters a chaotic and gloomy world that seems unprepared to receive it. But has our world every been much different? Ellen White says of the first Christmas: “The earth was dark through misapprehension of God.” (The Desire of Ages, p.22) And “While the light of […]
- On Learning from Bad Decisions - By S.M. Chen “There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.” – Abraham Lincoln “Every why hath a […]
All
- News Briefs for August 17, 2018 - News reports from Garden Grove, California; Loma Linda University Medical Center; the Dominican Republic; the North American Division and Volusia County, Florida According to the site Solar Power World, solar power company XsunX installed a solar carport power system at Garden Grove Seventh-day Adventist Church in Garden Grove, California. Solar carports are overhead canopies constructed […]
- Norwegian Adventist Pastor Launches “A Female Pastor” YouTube Channel - 16 August 2018 | Guro Edvardsen, an Adventist pastor in Norway, has launched a YouTube channel titled “A Female Pastor.” Although she is in favor of having female pastors in the Adventist denomination, she made clear in an email to Adventist Today that her intention is not to attack those that have a different point of […]
- Lawsuit: Midwives Claim Shawnee Mission Health Killed Their Business - 15 August 2018 | Midwife Partners, a Lenexa, Kansas-based midwifery business is suing Shawnee Mission Health, the Kansas State Board of Nursing, and several obstetricians who work at Shawnee Mission Medical Center for allegedly putting them out of business. The business obtained a collaborative practice agreement (CPA) in 2015, a requirement for midwives wishing to […]
- “At the Eye of the Storm: Conflict Concerning the Ordination of Women Within the International Seventh-day Adventist Church” - by Ronald Lawson | 15 August 2018 | I have been sharing here on Adventist Today papers on Adventism and a variety of social issues, including abortion, polygamy, homosexuality, and HIV-AIDS. But what of the most bitter social issue in the church, the position of women and their ordination to the ministry? I have just […]
- System-Wide Name Change Announced As Adventist Health System Reveals Plans to Become AdventHealth - 14 August 2018 | According to a press release from Altamonte Springs, Florida-headquartered Adventist Health System, all of the network’s wholly owned facilities will be carry the AdventHealth name as of January 2, 2019. The transition is described in the press release as a move to “being one consumer-centric, connected and identifiable national system of […]
- The Problem of Predation - by Richard W. Coffen | 14 August 2018 | “Nothing, save the selfish heart of man . . . lives unto itself. No bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life.”[1]—Ellen White, The Desire of Ages. The Desert Speaks! While I was tromping in the […]
- Ben Carson Attends Premiere of Christian Film That Compares Democrats to Nazis - 13 August 2018 | US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, attended the premiere of controversial Christian Film Death of a Nation, on August 1. The Adventist Trump cabinet member attended the premiere with his wife, Candy Carson. Death of a Nation was created by Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing filmmaker and provocateur who […]
- Is Donald Trump the Cyrus of Prophecy? - by David Hamstra | 13 August 2018 | Recent American presidents are known to have spritzed their worldview with a whiff of rhetorical essence distilled from biblical prophetic themes. Jimmy Carter worked for peace in the Middle East out of his conviction that the “establishment of the nation of Israel” was “a fulfillment of Biblical […]
- Summit Charts the Future of Adventist Higher Education in North America - 12 August 2018 | The board chairs and top administrators of the 12 colleges and universities operated by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in the United States and Canada met in Chicago through the weekend, following a teachers’ convention last week that involved thousands of K-12 and higher education faculty from Adventist schools. The “Summit on […]
- More Believe Owners of Wedding-Based Businesses Should Be Allowed To Refuse To Serve Same-Sex Couples - 12 August 2018 | A poll by Public Religion Research Institute shows statistically significant growth in the percentage of Americans who believe that owners of wedding-based businesses should have the right to not serve same-sex couples if serving them conflicts with their religious beliefs. An article in Religion News Service said that the poll, surveying […]
- Donor, Beware: A Crisis of Integrity in the Mission Field - By Loren Seibold | 11 August 2018 | A friend who runs a small Adventist-based non-profit organization told me this story. A few years ago she’d gotten a request from a pastor in Africa, describing how he and his wife were running ministries for children and the elderly which included school, daycare and eldercare, feeding […]
- News Reports for August 10, 2018 - News reports from Romania, Hungary, Oakwood University, Takoma Academy, Australia and Egypt ADRA Romania, a branch of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency is providing drinking water, food and hygiene supplies to families impacted by flooding in 20 counties, including the capital city of Bucharest. The project is called “Hope afloat.” Dr. Gábor Mihalec, family […]