The Berrien Springs Village Church: Laying Bare the Adventist Secret
by Loren Seibold | 11 December 2024 |
When I was a young pastor, I remember saying to an another pastor who thought like I did, “Won’t it be nice when our generation takes over and the church will be more open-minded, more progressive? When it can at least accept people across the spectrum of belief? When it acknowledges science rather than contradicting it?”
“What if just the opposite happens?” he asked.
I didn’t believe that was possible.
I have, for most of my life, prayed that my church would wrestle truthfully with the real world, rather than reliving a mythical past or longing for an unrealized future. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we can’t shake our past. We’re fighting against a torrent of history that still erupts here and there in fresh cascades of conspiratorial thinking.
Consider the events that have unfolded in the Berrien Springs Village Church in the last few years.
The Michigan Conference has been the embodiment of Adventist conservatism. Even when the denomination said it was acceptable to wear wedding bands, conference president Jay Gallimore banned them in Michigan. Gallimore appeared at times contemptuous of the university in his territory. He didn’t act against Last Generation Theology proponent, Samuel Pipim, until the man’s multiple immoralities became so brazen that they could no longer be ignored.
When the Berrien Springs Village Seventh-day Adventist Church (VSDA) first started talking against vaccinations, I thought it a temporary dalliance, soon to pass when the Covid-19 pandemic came under control. But by making vaccinations a religious liberty issue—a notion which the denomination refused to countenance—it became apparent that pastor Ron Kelly and his first lieutenant Conrad Vine were doing something much bigger.
They were setting up for a showdown.
Junk science & Christian nationalism
Some VSDA church members become incensed when you suggest that their congregation has opposed vaccinations. They say that they only advocate for vaccination freedom.
But if it were only about religious liberty, Kelly and Vine wouldn’t have needed to talk about vaccinations every time they had a microphone; saying it occasionally would have been enough. (I value religious liberty but, I confess, I don’t understand why being asked to get immunized against a fatal disease to protect the lives of the people you breathe upon, in any way hinders the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Three Angels’ Messages.)
Nor would they have needed to invite blatantly anti-vaccination speakers to their dais for VSDA’s periodic religious liberty conferences. Peter McCullough, a former cardiologist who opposes vaccinations in favor of the discredited drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, was a headliner at these conferences. He was the author of several studies against vaccinations and in favor of alternative treatments, all of which have been disproven. McCoullough has said that “the COVID-19 pandemic was planned, the spike protein causes cell death, medical authorities are conspiring to illegitimately suppress hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.” Baylor Medical Center was so embarrassed of him that they sued to be sure he wouldn’t mention he’d worked for them.
He’s also been a presenter at the ReAwaken America Tour, whose organizer, Clay Clark, has said that “[Bill] Gates and [Jeffrey] Epstein” are attempting to “create a new race of humans by combining luciferase and Epstein’s DNA into the COVID-19 vaccine.” The ReAwaken America Tour has deep roots in both the Trump administration (one of their keynoters is General Michael Flynn, who said at one rally, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God”) and the New Apostolic Reformation, a dominionist movement. Dominionism advocates a nation governed by Christians based on their interpretation of biblical law—a Christian version of sharia law.
Another favorite speaker at VSDA is podcaster Eva Tompkins, a New York attorney and investor who calls herself “a strong and passionate advocate for freedom of conscience and for every individual to be afforded their inalienable rights bestowed upon them by God.”
So far, so good. I believe in freedom, too. But Tompkins unlocks even more connections to junk science: she spoke admiringly at VSDA of Dr. Stella Immanuel—an African physician who
“believes many gynecological illnesses are the result of having sex dreams with succubi and incubi, and receiving demon sperm; and that endometriosis, infertility, miscarriage, and sexually transmitted infections are caused by spirit spouses. In a 2015 sermon, Immanuel said space alien DNA is used in medical treatments and that ‘reptilian spirits’ and other extraterrestrials run the U.S. government.”
and Sherri Tenpenny, who teaches that vaccines cause autism, opposes the use of face masks, and says that COVID-19 vaccines will turn people into “transhumanist cyborgs.”
What’s of greater concern is that Stella Immanuel, Sherri Tenpenny and Peter McCullough are regulars at the ReAwaken America Tour, a vipers’ nest of conspiracy theorists, anti-vax grifters, Christian Nationalists, dominionists, and the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
Speaking of grift: both Immanuel and McCullough endorse their own nutritional supplements to help you fight off Covid and detox from “long vax,” and Tenpenny has a massive merchandising business.
Tangential connections?
VSDA people I interacted with insisted that these are merely loose, tangential connections. That Eva Tompkins joined the ReAwaken America Tour—on the same platform where a recent speaker said that Democrats “are drinking the blood of children,” and “prophet” Amanda Grace said that we are in danger of “mermaids and water people…that’s a division in the kingdom of darkness and they’re highly technologically advanced”—shouldn’t disqualify Tompkins from speaking to an Adventist congregation.
A closer connection to Christian nationalism? Recently both Kelly and Vine appeared on a podcast with Artur Pawlowski, a Canadian who is a strong supporter of the Christian nationalist movement, and a frequent guest of New Apostolic Reformationist podcaster Lance Wallnau, another Christian dominionist. Wallnau was one of the organizers of the January 6 attack on the United States capitol.
What’s probably most surprising is that it wasn’t their flirtation with weird science or Christian dominionism that unraveled the relationship between the VSDA and the most conservative, most tolerant-of-right-wing-nuttiness conference in North America. Nor was it Vine’s dog-whistle comparison of church leadership to Nazism in a sermon at the Mentone, California, church. It was money.
In August of this year, Conrad Vine spoke at a camp meeting in northern Maine. There, he suggested that conferences are money-hungry, and it is time to deflect tithe from them.
“It appears to many members today that our hierarchy exists primarily for the financial benefit of the hierarchy and its functionaries through the preservation of federal income streams to our institutions—and the concerns and consciences of members are no longer of concern to our senior administrators. … If the General Conference supports future mandates over the consciences of members, establish a parachurch movement within Adventism.”
He added, “The conferences that go woke will go broke.”
In a note sent to Adventist Today, Vine said that he’d been misunderstood. But others heard it the same way we did: following that statement, the Michigan Conference asked that Vine be banned from all their pulpits. (I’ve been told that Vine, who works for the Michigan-based independent ministry Adventist Frontier Mission, doesn’t receive his ministerial credentials from Michigan, which means they don’t have any authority over his preaching elsewhere.)
When senior pastor Ron Kelly was recently placed on administrative leave from Michigan Conference employment, many supposed that it had to do with the matters mentioned above. Yet these weren’t the battles the Michigan Conference wanted to fight—at least not directly.
A friend in denominational leadership wrote me a note last week. “Just a heads-up,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this situation won’t hinge on vaccines, theology, or politics. It will involve property, insurance, money, land titles, or some combination thereof.”
He was right.
Rapid expansion
There’s a lot of good things going on at VSDA: evangelism, health work, and other ministries that should make Michigan Conference proud. Why would the conference put the pastor on leave over this matter now, when VSDA had an anti-vaccine and Christian nationalist agenda for years?
At the end of a sermon on 23 November, Kelly told the congregation that the church had purchased a number of church-adjacent properties. Kelly brought to the dias architect Dan Bacchiocchi, who showed a 3D rendering of all the planned projects, including not just remodeling the church building, but a media ministries building, a health clinic, and other free-standing structures.
In all, according to Kelly (speaking on 16 November), this rapid property expansion included “four acres, four houses, two buildings, a medical clinic across the street.” Also on 16 November, Kelly made a public request to all “lawyers, paralegals, and political science majors” to be part of a new religious liberty association that would be “primarily lay-run.” This lay-run organization would presumably facilitate the Kelly’s and Vine’s vaccine-freedom-as-religious-liberty agenda.
The VSDA’s obsession with immunization strikes many of us as bizarre, especially in light of the undisputed fact that millions died from COVID before the vaccine was introduced. But this anti-intuitive stance has proven quite popular among a certain set of Adventists. Church leaders’ rejection of vaccination freedom as a religious liberty issue has attracted disaffected Adventists from outside Berrien Springs. The money to buy so much property so quickly speaks to how many agree with the direction Kelly has taken the church.
The meeting
At a full business meeting of the Berrien Springs Village Church on the evening of Sunday, December 8, a letter was read to the gathering from Elder Kelly. (Italics added.)
“You can imagine my surprise when later I found out that the conference was not going to help us acquire our professional liability insurance for the Medical Missionary Clinic until they ‘knew where we stood on Conrad Vine.’ My stance had always been known, and it is still the same. I have said it in private and I say it here again today. Until the denomination is held to the same scrutiny as Conrad Vine, there would be no discipline against this man while I am the senior pastor.”
He called Michigan’s request, “the lowest order of bullying.”
The meeting was, according to some who attended, a full-throated attack on the conference president, Elder Jim Micheff. In one snippet of video you can hear an unidentified man making this statement:
“It is evident to the whole global church that Pastor Kelly has humbly submitted to God and that he was blessed in his endeavors. But you, Elder Micheff, magnified your guilt by persecuting the innocent and the righteous. It is very clear to us today that you have misused your authority by seeking to cancel and terminate the man who sacrificially and diligently ministered to the flock of God for this time. I’m glad that in the midst of this confusion that you have caused by your wrong judgment, God has given us clear guidance what needs to be done.
“Ellen White, our prophetic authority, has written a chapter entitled “The Conference President” in the Loma Linda Messages, page 324, and I quote: ‘When a man is placed as president of a conference, it is not to be supposed that he is to mold and fashion the minds of the workers in that conference after his own human ideas and that if men do not follow his ideas they may be brought to terms by his saying to them, “You cannot receive wages from this conference unless you do as I tell you.”’
“Elder Micheff, this is exactly what you have done against the clear counsel of God. So where do we go from here? The quote continues: ‘I’m instructed to say that when a man swells to large undue proportions, the people should assemble and in the name of the Lord release that man from office.’
“In order to resolve this major crisis in our church in obedience to the clear counsel of God and in the name of all believers who perceive the damage that you have caused, I call on you to step down from your position and allow the church to be led by a faithful shepherd who will truly care for the flock.”
The action that came from the church board meeting the following night, and signed by lay elder Tom Wilson, takes a milder tone, affirming the board’s trust in the conference and asking only for Kelly’s full reinstatement:
“We affirm as a Board that the VSDA remains a loyal member of the MISDA, and are grateful for Elder Micheff’s participation, and that of his fellow MISDA leaders, at the recent town hall held on 12/8/2024 at VSDA.
“Regarding Elder Kelly, we wish to affirm in the strongest way possible the desire of this Board, and of the members of the VSDA, for the MISDA Executive Committee to reverse their decision of 12/3/2024 concerning Elder Kelly, and to reinstate him to his previous status of employment as the VSDA Senior Pastor by 1/2/2025. We believe, given the evidence we have been presented with, that while there may have been interpersonal challenges between Elder Kelly and Elder Micheff, those challenges were not of such a magnitude to warrant Elder Kelly’s removal from VSDA, given what God has miraculously wrought under his leadership at VSDA.
“Regarding our relationship with MISDA, we affirm our desire to build a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation with MISDA. We look forward to building that relationship of mutual trust under the leadership of Elder Kelly at VSDA.
For his part, Conrad Vine made it all about himself. He addresses Micheff: “You have besmirched my name before the whole world. I think you should resign.”
A concluding postscript
The congregation is understandably upset at losing their pastor—and I sympathize. Kelly, for all that he has clothed his gospel in junk medicine and political conspiracies, has been a popular and effective leader. He has empowered his congregation in that community—if you can overlook that some may have died because Kelly invited Peter McCullough to tell them that the vaccine would hurt them.
To those of us on the outside of that ecosystem, having for years heard Conrad Vine’s divisive language and seen Kelly’s chummy embrace of Christian nationalist figures, it seems like it took Michigan too long to act. The signs of an impending conflict were evident; wouldn’t it have been easier to manage if addressed when the symptoms first appeared?
The conference will necessarily be cautious about explaining why they placed Kelly on leave. Clearly, the congregation doesn’t think the situation was handled well—and I know, after years of working for this denomination, that church leaders don’t always manage personnel matters expertly. The process can appear somewhat arbitrary: I’ve seen leaders forgive and forget readily when there has been clear misbehavior or outright stupidity, and other times pull the plug on good employees with little reason.
Or, as here, they wait so long that the problems are too embedded to manage effectively.
But to me the bigger story is how this large congregation, just a mile from the Adventist seminary, has laid bare our secret: that though we claim to have evolved into a Christian church pursuing Jesus Christ above all, we easily slide back into behaving like the doomsday cult we started out as 200 years ago.
We know the gospel. We are quite capable of reflecting the grace of Christ, and often we do. But throughout all of our history, right back to our Millerite origins, we’re drawn to ask the wrong questions and seek titillating answers. By history and hermeneutic, we Seventh-day Adventists are novelty seekers, easily infatuated by conspiracies and fables.
My friends in Loma Linda say that Adventism there is sophisticated, professional, respectful of science. For all I know, in Loma Linda, it is. But out here—right next door to our flagship university—we remain gullible, unable to tell friend from foe, truth from error, or generosity from selfishness, and we are easily seduced by charismatic leaders.
What happened in Berrien Springs seems to me the very definition of what Paul spoke of in 2 Timothy 4:3. It’s a temptation we’ve never been able to overcome, even at the highest levels of the church, as evidenced by our leaders’ near-idolatry of Ellen White and The Great Controversy.
I confess, I see little hope of that changing.
Loren Seibold is the Executive Editor of Adventist Today.
