Adventist Church in Denmark ‘Appoints’ Pastors to Avoid Ordination Conflicts
From APD, May 8, 2016: Yesterday the Adventist denomination’s Danish Union Conference had a service at its annual camp meeting setting aside four young pastors with prayer and laying on of hands. It was not an ordination service, although it looked like one to some observers. The four pastors were “appointed,” announced Pastor Thomas Muller, the union conference president. Two were men and two were women.
In 2013 the union conference voted to end gender discrimination in the ordination of clergy, including a suspension of both ordination and commissioning until the General Conference (GC) Session which was held last summer in July 2015. When the delegates to the GC Session voted against ending gender discrimination for ordination, the Danish Union Conference looked for a way to avoid both gender discrimination and conflict with the decision by the GC.
“Appointment” is term not used in denominational policies or minutes. It is different from either “ordination” or “commissioning,” both of which are defined in the GC Working Policy. The union conference has appealed to the GC’s Trans-European Division for a new credential for “appointment” under GC Working Policy E 05 05 which allows for other credentials to be issued as culturally appropriate.
The four pastors were Michael Bidstrup, Anne-May Muller, Rebecca Pedersen and Thomas Rasmussen. “The appointment is made by the Lord,” stated the union conference president. “Today we are setting apart and recognizing their gifts and their calling to pastoral ministry.”
“To recognize the spiritual gifts of a person [and] to pray with her and … lay hands, in our opinion, is a way to a more Biblical understanding of the status and role of pastors in our church,” Thomas Müller, said during the ceremony. “The Adventist Church in Denmark is seeking unity with the worldwide [Adventist] Church.”
The Danish Conference was the first self-supporting conference established by the Adventist denomination outside of the United States in 1878. There are more than 2,500 members in 45 congregations in the nation of 5.7 million residents.
APD is the Adventist news service in Europe.
It was just a move to circumvent GC authority by a political ploy. The GC has lost its power to administrate and this is what many, if not most wanted.
It is like a little kid who is threatened by his parents about 50 times until the kid knows they aren’t going to do anything about it anyway. So he does as he pleases and ends up a total rebel against every authority that is over and above himself. And this child will certainly never submit to God’s authority. We have tens of thousands of young people being trained in secular society to rebel against authority.
We may well fear the cure more than the disease when a totalitarian government enslaves the citizens who begged for entitlements. Our whole government system is “self destructing” and it is being reflected in the SDA church.
Reminder: God only is our authority. We have no pope nor creed.
You are suggesting we make an image to the beast by choosing human reason over the Truth as it is in Jesus.
EM said that someone was “suggesting [that] we make an image to the beast by choosing human reason over the Truth as it is in Jesus. I wonder if EM would indicate how “human reason” can overshadow “the Truth as it is in Jesus.” I don’t understand. Please explain.
“Reminder: God only is our authority.”
This is false. While God is the final authority on bible issues He has stated, God has ordained authority to many areas of government in this world. Thus, the church has the authority to identify itself and state its understanding of bible truth. If people want to be a member, they must agree to the stated view of the church. If they don’t, they are free to join some other communion, or, no communion at all if that is their decision.
But to claim “Reminder: God only is our authority.” is false teaching and not biblical. It is a false interpretation of religious freedom. To call church authority “Popery” is absurd, inane, and childish. It only shows how shallow the mind of many people are in the area of religion and politics.
“Appointment.” That’s a refreshing and creative word in the WO saga. Bravo Denmark!
But more pseudo-prophetic doom and gloom from Bill, of course.
Semantics. Praying and laying on of hands and setting apart someone for ministry is ordination, whether done for a deacon, an elder, or a pastor.
Our Church, as well as other significant denominations birthed during the 19th Century in North America, have often been proverbially slow to recognize that Truth is progressive and that the way things were in 1844, or 1862 or even 1888 is by no means an epitome that places a moratorium on further revelations of truth. We seem to be very sensitive to any kind of theology that posits that more and more Truth is being expounded; we often prefer to bemoan the decline of morality and Godliness and how bad things are becoming….
Because of the slowness to accept any possibility of Truth actually expanding with the Age, change must come extremely slowly to these denominations, and sometimes that slowness is reflected in the careful terminology employed. Perhaps with the exception of hard-right old-schoolers, there is generally wide consensus that women can and will be employed by the Holy Spirit to help finish the work, and that as in the case of Ellen White, they may be dominant leaders of men. Yet because of the hard-and-fast adherence to tradition and peculiar interpretations of the writings of Paul, it takes a lot of extra patience to bring change. Sam Geli is right on in calling on us to take change slowly (see his piece this week in Adventist Today)…
They use gimmicks to rebel against church authority. It is a veiled “legalism” by claiming their is no law that specifically defines their actions. We should see that antinomianism is simply a veiled legalism to circumvent the law. So they use the law, to deny the law.
Laying of hands and setting apart, hmmm, whatever language you will use, it is ordination.
Creative and courageous!
The MANNER in which people have been “ordained” in our denomination in my lifetime has been designed (whether intentionally or not) to convey a sense that spiritual authority was being conveyed by the laying on of hands by conference officers. Whether intentionally or not, that practice has given the impression that spiritual authority is vested in a religious organization and can be obtained only from the officers of that organization.
In the 1970s, I was asked to teach an adult Sunday school class for a United Methodist congregation. All of the active adult members of that congregation knew I was a Seventh-day Adventist. I taught the class for three months and included every doctrine mentioned in Desire of Ages. Shortly thereafter, I decided move to another state. The methodists held a farewell dinner (complete with vegetarian meat balls from the nearby SdA academy and Pero in the coffee pot). They didn’t tell me their plans in advance but held an ordination service in which they ordained me as a missionary.
No. it wasn’t Methodist conference officers who ordained me. It was laymen. And they didn’t intend to convey spiritual authority. The ceremony was intended as a public affirmation of their belief that I was ALREADY a missionary.
The very essence of the nature of the church and the purpose of denominational organization is at stake here.
Stay tuned.
Thanks, Roger, nicely said. God calls. We humans may (or because of our shortsightedness or stubbornness) may not recognize the call.
We notice no scripture is offered to indicate a failure by the Danish Union in their method of recognition of the gift of pastoring as supplied by God—The Holy Spirit. Why? Because there is no Biblical teaching about such methods.
The Danish Union is to be affirmed for being faithful to their sincerely held beliefs while complying with their understanding of the 2015 GC Session vote, and while complying with the law of their land!
While some may say if hands were laid on it is ordination, I truly doubt they would accept any of the four as ordained ministers in the SDA Church. There most certainly is a difference in the method of affirming the ministry of the four, and all four were treated without gender discrimination.
Most anti-WO will allow for a female to teach and preach and pastor a congregation as long as there is someone of male gender to “oversee her”. In this case there is a Union President to do that, one who meets the key qualification—He has male body parts not female.
Oh my, how significant is this?
If the SDA church continues to discriminate against women in the church, it will not only lose any authority over its members; it will cause people – members and others to disregard the Bible. The male leadership in the church, in an effort to preserve its turf, is doing serious injury to the growth and maturity of church membership. It may well turn out to be a case of “penny wise and pound foolish”.
The wisdom of the Danish brethren must be applauded.