Editorial: The Change Our Church Just Can’t Make
In case you’ve forgotten, we Adventists have a lot of denominational offices. Above the congregations and their pastors there is a local conference, then a union conference, then a division office, then the General Conference. Each of these offices is fully-staffed, some of them massive—and all duplicating functions done at other levels.
These office people appear busy. They print lots of paper and write lots of emails and set up websites. They go around as guest speakers. Mostly, they attend meetings in the service of keeping their office, and those offices below and above them, operating. You’d be astonished at how much travel is required.
Pastors seem to love these offices. To be considered a career success, a pastor must leave parish ministry and be stationed in an office. (Only very rarely does someone in an office voluntarily go back “down” to parish ministry.)
We have come to take for granted that all these offices are necessary. It never seems to cross anyone’s minds that whole levels could be eliminated and few in the churches would notice.
Now and then there’s a push to eliminate some offices. The union conferences are the usual target. But these initiatives never go anyplace. A quote by Upton Sinclair applies here: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Meanwhile, pastors tell me their congregations are declining. Attendance has dropped, in some cases dramatically, since Covid-19. They have no children’s Sabbath Schools—there are no children. Giving is down, too. Some pastors travel between many churches, all of them nearly empty except for a few gray heads. Even major churches near big institutions are emptier than they used to be.
We hear little acknowledgement of that from the offices, though. Again, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
This Sabbath (June 1) in our Adventist Today Sabbath Seminar, data asset management consultant Michael Scofield will show that the steady church growth we once assumed isn’t continuing. We are in for a decline.
So what will happen to our too-many offices? Excess administration is a hard drug to kick. It’s unlikely any office or officer will volunteer to be eliminated even when it’s clear they’ve run out of road.
A reckoning is coming, though. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Loren Seibold
Adventist Today Executive Editor
31 May 2024
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Today’s ATSS class (1:30 PM Eastern) with Michael Scofield
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ATSS on June 1: Jody Washburn
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