I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore

by Loren Seibold  |  8 July 2025  |

Please forgive me: I’m going to whinge a bit. Because I’m fed up.

The General Conference (GC) Session brings people from all around the world into one place. These are, presumably, some of the most faithful, generous, mission-minded Seventh-day Adventists in the world, which is why they were chosen to come here.

But we are now on the sixth day of forcing them to engage in the most mind-numbing, soul-sucking activity: Imagine 2,000 people spending hour after precious hour making minor changes to the Church Manual. “Should this quote be on page 35 or page 38?” “Is the grammar in this sentence correct?” “Should we amend this motion with the addition of ‘the pastor’?” “No, let’s say ‘the pastor and the church clerk.'” “Okay, so that’s an amendment to an amendment, so let’s vote to end debate on the amendment to the amendment, then vote the amendment to the amendment.” “That fails, so let’s vote to end debate on the amendment, and vote the amendment.” “That passes, so let’s go back to the motion.” “The original motion with the amendment passes. So let’s move on to the next [almost totally pointless] change.”

All of this bumf can take an hour or more. And if one stands to his or her feet to make a motion and it’s a point of order, or stands for a point of order and it’s actually a motion, he or she gets (occasionally, borderline rudely) told to sit down and get out of the way.

(My favorite is when someone rises to raise a point of order about a point of order.)

When a motion finally passes, people applaud. “Pastor Chair” (as you are often addressed): they don’t applaud because they like the outcome. They applaud because they’re sick to death of this bore-fest, and they want to get to dinner—or anywhere else but here.

Is this the best you can do?

Seriously, Gerson and Hensley and Artur and Todd and Thomas and the rest: you’ve paid out millions upon millions upon millions to bring these dear people from the other side of the globe, and this is the best thing you can think of to use their talents and life experiences for?

Think about this. Please. Editing does not require people all in one place. And can you think of anything less efficient than editing a document by committee of 2,000 people?

There have to be better things to do with these fine missional Adventists than this! I can think of one right off the top of my head, dear charcoal-gray suits: listen to them. Let them do strategic planning. Pick their brains for ideas to make the church work better.

And by the way, that’s not the same as making the organization work better. Maybe there’s some overlap but there’s a difference. A huge difference. It seems to me there is precious little upside in figuring out how to keep our centralized, overweight bureaucracy overweight, rather than how to make our dear church actually matter in the world. 

Sludge

I am seriously considering that this is a sort of manufactured sludge, to keep the people occupied so they don’t disturb the roles of all the charcoal-gray suits, and make them rethink what they’re doing—or not doing.

So far in this meeting there have been precisely three items that (seem to me) might make a difference to the church: the election of a new president, the election of a new executive secretary, and five of the thirteen division presidents being new—most everyone else is incumbent—at least one of whom (Barna Magyarosi) appears to be marginally younger than the usual profile.

And note: that one thing that seems like it will make a difference is not policy, and not Church Manual, and not spiritual life, but personalities! Wouldn’t you rather have people place their faith in something more substantial than which charcoal-gray suit is running the show?

My wise and thoughtful African friend Admiral Ncube wrote this in a recent issue of Adventist Today magazine:

The Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to run on a structure inherited in 1901, characterized by duplicated offices and roles at local church, conference, union, division, and GC levels. Sections of the proposed supplements suggest that the conference and union would increasingly serve as gatekeepers to ensure local church compliance with the mandates of church administrators. … All of this puts a massive burden on the GC Session. In addition to the voluminous Church Manual revisions that already consume three days, the addition of division-specific supplements will require delegates to endure the torture of voting further revisions (and edits on revisions). Future sessions will be collective editing sessions of trivial rules. Is this the best use of time and resources for these expensive meetings? All of this could be simplified if we’d take a holistic look at the entire governance process and organizational structure (“Supplement of Absurdities,” AT magazine, Spring 2025).

Only three days, Admiral? We’ve been doing a “collective editing sessions of trivial rules” for five days already, and we’re not nearly done!

When Nokia was acquired by Microsoft, the Nokia CEO ended his speech by saying, “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.” That’s us. Our leaders can argue that we’re not doing anything wrong, but neither are we doing it right. The meeting I’m sitting in right now demonstrates that. For the remainder of the day we will be looking at minor grammatical edits and word changes in the Church Manual (CM), most of which no one in the pews will ever notice!

This meeting costs, conservatively, tens of millions. It is a fantastic opportunity for church leaders, if they saw the bigger picture. I’m not sure they do.

Yesterday I tried to pump up a few of the CM changes for you. You weren’t that interested—because almost no one here is, either. So far today there hasn’t been one thing that would make your relationship with Jesus better, or your church community substantially happier, or solve any of your problems.

So forgive me, please, for not spelling out motion after motion today. It’s a waste of my time, and yours. And the time of most of the 2,000+ people hanging out here and trying to stay awake.

Loren Seibold is the executive editor of Adventist Today.

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