Conference President Roberts Receives Regional News Coverage (Updated)
by Jeff Boyd
By AT News Team, October 28, 2014
As the first woman to be elected to the position of conference president within the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Dr. Sandra Roberts was recently labeled “living history” by The Press-Enterpise, a newspaper based in Riverside, CA, serving Inland Southern California. The press coverage commemorates Roberts' first year as president of the Southeastern California Conference, an area that includes approximately 70,500 members in Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties.
Roberts' lack of recognition by the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (GC), which is the Church's global governing body, was arguably the focus of the article. “The world body still does not recognize Roberts’ election. Nor does it view her ordination as valid. Her name is conspicuously absent from the Adventist Online Yearbook’s listings of top administrators in the Riverside-based Southeastern California Conference…. A line is all that appears after 'President',” reports David Olson for the paper.
After addressing Roberts' ability to lead effectively despite this controversy, the story considers the upcoming vote on women's ordination that will be held at the General Conference assembly in 2015. Olson explains, “The 2015 measure is somewhat of a compromise. It would allow each of the 13 geographic divisions of the church to decide whether to permit the ordination of women. The executive committee only voted to place the item on the 2015 session agenda. It did not recommend a vote for or against.”
Finally, the article finishes by returning to the theme of Roberts' marginalization by GC leadership. “Roberts attended this month’s annual council meeting in Maryland, where women’s ordination was discussed and the executive committee acted. But the only female Adventist conference president in the world was forbidden from speaking on the matter during official sessions. Conference presidents in divisions that host annual councils typically are allowed to speak. But the world church does not recognize Roberts as a conference president, so she had to wear a 'visitor' tag like anyone else who was simply observing the proceedings.”
UPDATE: The Press-Enterprise posted a follow-up article on October 27, 2014. This interview between David Olson and Sandra Roberts focuses primarily on ordination. It included a comparison between the recognition shown to her at the recent GC meetings and those that take place within the North American Division (NAD): "Unlike the worldwide Adventist Church, the North American Division recognizes Roberts as a pastor and as president of the Riverside-based Southeastern California Conference. As at last year’s division meeting, she will be treated the same as any other conference president, division spokesman Julio Muñoz said. 'Sandra Roberts was elected by her constituency, and that is why the North American Division recognizes her as president of that conference,' Muñoz said. 'She is entitled to represent her constituency.'”
The complete article can be read here—“ADVENTISTS: Female Conference President Is Living History” (David Olson, PE.com, 26 Oct 2014). The follow-up interview is available here—"More of my conversation with Inland Adventist leader Sandra Roberts" (27 Oct 2014).
Equal, separate, unequal.
Pick 2.
What a dysfunctional:
A. Church
B. Cult
C. Sect
Pick 1
Sect. A cult is new and willing to try raddical things. A sect has now made steps towards establishing 'orthodoxy'. I wish we were still a cult – we'd probably be more open-minded, as the SDA pioneers were on a range of difficult issues.
It seems strange that even though the world church doesn't recognize Pastor Sandra Roberts, they still send tithe to her church for outreach, etc. It also seems strange that her salary as a Pastor is paid. When going through old archives of the General Conference, I disovered that the General Conference approved the ordination of women in the earlier history of the church so when does this schism start? I did not find anywhere where a vote was taken to rescind the original pro vote.
My own study indicates this motion was not in fact adopted but was referred to a committee of the GC officers for further study in 1881. The officers have been studying it for a long time 8-).
Oh? I will have to re-read it, because I understand that the motion was passed and Sr. White was given papers before going to Austrailia but she never used them.
Back on the issue of Pastor Roberts I have done some research. 40% of the medication used today is derived from plants. To name a few there is aspirin which comes from the bark of the willow tree. This remedy was used for years as a natural remedy for headaches before Bayer patented the process and started making money off of it. Valium comes from valerian root and the oil from the mint leaf is used to relieve itching, to relax sore muscles, and to open clogged sinuses so once again the issue of medical marijuana is one raised because it is illegal.
In Ezekiel 47:12, we are told that "the leaf thereof for medicine," and in Revelation we are told that "leaves of the tree would be for the healing of the nations." Since there will be no more sickness in the new earth, I am sure that this isn't a literal meaning, but it does show that plants were given to man for medicine.
Ellen White was issued the credentials of an ordained minister by the General Conference. There is no evidence she was ever ordained by men.
So… were those several (at l;ast 6, once a year) certificates of ordination issues to EGW fraudulent documents? She gladly accepted them, so… was she just accessary with the fraudulent procedure?
I just want to understand what was going on in those remote days.
To the question about EGW on this matter is, did she willingly accept them, or did she do so as a matter of expediency… let's get it over with and move on? In either case it was not going to affect her position and work in the church.
You could perhaps ascribe this to expediency. Considering that the matter of women's ordination was referred to the GC officers from the 1881 GC Session, they may have decided it was easier to simply issue credentials to Ellen than to confront the broader question.
I suspect that some of her contemporaries including GC President George I Butler who signed at least one of her credantials, might have said that she was clearly ordained by God and needed no ordination from men.
I am not trying to defned the Adventist church's historical de facto theology of ordination. Ordination as generally practiced in the Christian church today is largely a post-Biblical concept.
Even as health reform, dress reform, and destruction of the institution of slavery were not yet elevated as great moral issues in the apostle Paul's day, the spiritual, legal, and physical equalization of adult men and women in their status before God had not yet reached prominence in the prime years of Ellen White's ministry, and she did not go to the ramparts on its behalf.
Nearly 2,000 years before, Paul had told women to submit intellectually and spiritually in a male-driven, high-mortality society dependent on women's manual labor and raising of large families for survival, in the same way he counseled slaves to submit in an extremely tenuous economy almost entirely dependent on them for advancement.
n some sectors of the globe the emancipation of women is still an extremely disruptive social issue; this is not the case where higher education has done much to advance the underpinnings of equality for men and women, and women clearly are serving the Lord in arenas of high devotion, knowledge, and general leadership….
Over and over again it seems necessary to repeat that equality before the law of the land does *not* equate to the same functions. Men cannot bear babies; are they lesser human beings as a result? Are men then not equal?
NAD clearly demonstrates a a rebellious spirit and a proclivity to go it alone. Is that really why it wishes to move out of the premises it ocuupies with the GC? Is that why it seeks to acquire more and more entities? Current example is Oakwood.
Lower level organizations customarily follow the provisions of operation placed into effect by its parent corporation. That NAD has not complied is a grievous error. Those who now applaud NAD would not be so pleased were it abding by the decision of the GC in two official Sessions.
Maranatha
And you continue to exhibit your proclivity for trahsing and bashing on the North American Division, regardless of what are the facts.
The Union Conferences are not subsidiaries of the North American Division. They elected Dan Jackson and they do not report to him. These conferences are doing what their cxonstituencies want them to do. So your beloved conspiracy theory regarding "rebellion" must be the tip of the iceberg of an enormous conspiracy in which thousands upon thousands of Adventists in North America are complicit.
Another possibility not to be discounted is that the leaders of these various conferences are actually foolowing the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps they are committed to obeying God rather than men?
And I totally fail to understand what bearing or not bearing babies has to do with the gospel ministry?
'Ellen White was issued the credentials of an ordained minister by the General Conference. There is no evidence she was ever ordained by men.'
Ellen White didn't need to be ordained. The NT and early Church proposes two paths of leadership:
Only appointed leaders need ordination, as evidenced in the selection of Stephen and the seven. Spiritual leaders don't, just as Matthais was selected by lots (the origin of the word 'clergy').
Notable historians agree. As Oxford Professor of Christian history Diarmaid MacCulloch (Anglican-Episcopalian, 1951-) explains:
"A similar stage can be detected in the late-first-century Church: a mobile ministry included those known as apostles and prophets, the local ministry in particular places consisted of a grade known interchangeably as bishops or presbyters, together with a separate grade of deacons"
Even for a few centuries later, as recorded in both the Didache (c.50-150 AD) and Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (c.215, Rome), it makes clear spiritual leaders (namely apostles, prophets and teachers) don't need to be ordained. Hippolytus says a bishop (head elder) is chosen from the people and ordained:
"He who is ordained as a bishop, being chosen by all the people, must be irreproachable… With the assent of all, the bishops will place their hands upon him, with the council of elders standing by, quietly" (2:1,3).
But Hippolytus admits spiritual leaders don't need ordination, because "the matter is obvious":
"If someone among the laity is seen to have received a gift of healing by revelation, hands are not laid upon such a one, for the matter is obvious" (14:1) (emphasis added).
It was the Papacy who killed off this biblical model, as Henry Chadwick (Anglican-Episcopalian, 1920-2008), an expert scholar on the early Church period:
"The exact history of the transition within two generations from apostles, prophets and teachers to bishop, presbyters and deacons is shrouded in obscurity, though our sources give occasional glimpses of the process… For a generation or more the apostles and prophets coexisted with this local ministry of bishops and deacons."