The Challenges to the Church—in a Nutshell
by Dan Appell | 29 May 2024 |
There is inherent danger in attempting to summarize in a nutshell something as broad as the teachings and actions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Words mean different things to different people, and we all have the tendency to impose those meanings on the words of others. Without the opportunity to clarify intent it is easy for real meaning to be lost or misunderstood in the flow of communication.
That said, in the interest of being clean, clear, and concise, I suggest the following decisions we need to make. I offer them here without support, scriptural or otherwise—these points are so frequently discussed that readers of Adventist Today will recognize them.
Please consider this list of concerns that our denomination faces:
- Whether our view of salvation is grace-based or transactional.
- Whether we will maintain the view that God is trifurcated, or a dynamic whole.
- Whether we view the law/Torah as, not abolished, but transcended, by the events of the New Testament.
- Whether the law in Galatians refers to the ceremonial portion of the Torah, or the whole Torah.
- Whether Adventism is relationship-based, or rule-based.
- Whether the important law is the greater (royal) or lesser law (Torah).
- Whether our focus will be on what we are for, or what we are against.
- Whether we will continue to misuse the Bible and Ellen White, or respect them as written.
- Whether we will choose a fundamentalist/inerrant view of Ellen White and the Bible, or respect them as written.
- Whether we will focus on positives or negatives.
- Whether we will live and share the Sabbath as a gift, or employ it as a test.
- Whether the General Conference in session is the inerrant ex cathedra voice of God, or just God’s people doing their best to discover his will.
- Whether the General Conference president is a leader or a pope.
- Whether we will follow James and Ellen White’s and J.N. Loughborough’s advice against creating a creed or not. (A rose by any other name—for example, 28 Fundamental Beliefs—is still a rose.)
- Whether we will accept Ellen White’s definition of seven basic pillars as defining Adventism, or the much larger and more specific set of 28 identifying characteristics.
- Whether we will continue to idolize the sanctuary tent and all of its accoutrements and sacrifices, when we have the reality of what it all pointed to.
- Whether the judgment messages of Revelation 14 are about the bad news that our judgment has begun, or whether they are the good news that Satan’s kingdom of darkness is being judged in preparation for its destruction, while every human is offered the chance to be saved.
- Whether we are comfortable with the health systems operating under the Adventist Health nameplate to morph from a ministry model to a corporate, largely secular model.
- Whether will continue to use Bishop James Ussher’s ridiculous 6000 year date for creation, in the face of mountains of scientific evidence for a much older earth.
- Whether we are going to continue to support what is arguably the finest system of Christian education in the world, or let it die the slow and lingering death it now is experiencing.
- Whether we see our church as an ark or armory, versus a hospital and a conduit for God’s grace.
- Whether we picture the church building as a meeting house or a sanctuary.
- Whether we will continue our deep distrust and suspicion of experience, emotion, and story, rather than celebrating emotion, relationship, and experience, as seen in four Gospels and Acts.
- Whether we are going to insist on an outside translator/priest/pastor/prophet/Sabbath School lesson in order to appreciate and understand the Bible.
- Whether we will hold the parochial notion that only Adventist scholars are spiritually qualified to interpret prophecy in Scripture (2 Peter 1:20-21), as opposed to listening to Christian scholars across the board.
- Whether we will forget and/or ignore the biblical principle that all Bible prophecy, and Ellen White’s prophecy, is conditional.
At no time in our church’s history have the stakes been higher, and important issues on matters which have accrued through the years must be resolved if we are to fulfill our God-given mandate at the end of the world as we know it.
This is a Rubicon moment. Will we become all that God dreams for us, or go down as a failed messenger?
What will it be?
Dan M. Appel is a published author and retired pastor living in Magalia, California. He is a deeply committed and sometimes passionate follower of Jesus who loves being a layman and trying to live in the marketplace that he has encouraged others to do for so many years.
