The Rise of Adventism
by William Abbott, April 4, 2016: This essay looks at the comparative success Adventist missions have had over the last forty years and asks why. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has missionaries who are more numerous, better organized and certainly better focused, but the LDS have not been nearly as successful as the Seventh-day Adventists in growing their church. The Jehovah Witnesses organizationally exist solely to proselytize yet their growth rates have collapsed over the last fifteen years. It is well beyond the scope of this essay to review the histories and compare these three distinctively American, Christian sects. Personal surprise as much as anything accounts for this inquiry. Apart from the type-set evangelistic meeting, which is fading away, and ‘Ingathering’ which is history, Adventist outreach and mission has been largely opportunistic, eclectic, and relatively unfocused and uncoordinated. Yet in the final analysis it is the independence and flexibility of Adventist missions and missionaries that accounts for their remarkable success.
When I joined the Seventh-day Adventist church forty years ago there were a little over two million Adventists worldwide. Today there are over eighteen million; an eight-fold increase. By a certain way of reckoning, the Seventh-day Adventist church is now the fifth-largest Christian denomination in the world. Forty years ago there were about twice as many Mormons worldwide as there were Adventists. But today the Adventist church has twenty percent more members worldwide than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. LDS membership continues to grow rapidly, but not like the Adventists’. If Adventists maintain the same growth rate for another forty years there will be over one hundred million Adventists. By 2100 there would be one billion of us. What is it about the Adventist system that leads to such growth?
I lived on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands and taught school as a student missionary. The LDS (Mormon) missionaries were also active on the Island. LDS teens will usually serve as missionaries after high school. They lived nearby and we grew to be friends. I was impressed how organized and focused the LDS were. Their mission candidates were aptitude-tested for their ability to learn a foreign language before they were assigned overseas. Their mission lasted for two years, not one school term like ours. Two by two, they went out every day and tried to persuade the Marshallese to be Mormons, one soul at a time. Their proselytizing worked, and it seemed to work well.
We Adventist missionaries on the other hand ran around the Islands helter-skelter. We started schools, some succeeded, and some failed. We abandoned schools. The self-supporting Spence’s had their sailboat named Canvasback and sailed the islands doing medical work. The church took a disastrous two-year stab at administering the Marshall Islands health care system. Our student missionaries were not vetted or managed like Mormon missionaries. We had some ‘incidents’ too. We had Student Missionaries who definitely weren’t good missionaries. We Adventists believed we had the best school system in the Islands. The schools were staffed entirely with untrained, volunteer, student missionaries. It was an assumption. When they finally did do comparative testing we found the Adventist students were far behind the Catholics with their native Marshallese teachers. We were shocked.
From a tiny membership base forty years ago, there are purportedly upwards of 500,000 Chinese Adventists today. The Seventh-day Adventist church in China is not organized at all like the rest of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It is a congregational system; very factionalized, very independent. Some factions don’t report anything to the China Union Mission – no contact. And the China Union Mission is perhaps relieved; some factions have some very ‘different’ ideas. Adventism in China is so heterodoxical, really the name and the Sabbath is all some of these Chinese Adventists share in common. In contrast, the Mormons don’t proselytize in China. One suspects the LDS structure and missionary outreach cannot bend that far nor accommodate the Communist Party’s restrictions on foreign involvement in local Chinese churches.
Adventists have a long history of pursuing mission work with independent, entrepreneurial zeal. If Mormons are the “settlers,” Adventists are the “frontiersmen.” Whether it’s a “dark” county or Pitcairn Island, Adventist missionaries have always sought to go “where no man has gone before.” The Hares, Halliwells, and Stahls, J. N. Andrews in Europe, Mrs. White in Australia, the mission doctors, the health food entrepreneurs, HMS Richards; it is a long list. The entrepreneurial spirit has not left the Adventist church; if anything, it’s stronger than ever: Maranatha, ShareHim, 3ABN, self-supporting schools, Amazing Facts, OCI, AWR, ASAP,ASI, AFM, AWA, David Gates Ministries, and countless other efforts, many nurtured under one of these umbrellas. For generations these missionaries and their missions have been the heroes and the unity of Adventism. One of the most persistent arguments in favor of women’s ordination has been the success women have had as evangelists in the “mission field.”
The Black Regional Conferences in North America are an embarrassment to some. Equality being the watchword these days, many Adventists are embarrassed at the separated races within the church. The Regional Conferences have perpetuated and even encouraged this racial dis–integration in the North American Division (NAD). But the Regional Conferences are also responsible for the Seventh-day Adventist church’s being the most racially diverse religious denomination in the United States. From a proselytizing prospective, Black Conferences have been wildly successful.
The Regional Conferences fit the Adventist entrepreneurial model. One hundred years ago there were around one thousand Black Seventh-day Adventists in North America. The Regional Conferences began in 1940. This divestiture gave the Black Adventist preachers control of the Church’s “Negro Department.” Their “ownership” created a special style of Adventist church, and growth has been phenomenal. If success is measured in membership it is no surprise the NAD recently announced it had no intention of tinkering with the Regional Conferences.
The Adventist weltanschauung is more eclectic than it might first appear. I learned early there were Adventists, and there were “California” Adventists. The opinions about the precise nature of “Prophetic Guidance” seemed infinitely varied. The health message could be applied with the exactness of Sharia law, or taken with a grain of salt. Vegetarianism was optional. Adventist have been in universal agreement about these three things. #1: The Sabbath remains fixed upon the seventh day. The Ten Commandments are for everybody. #2: Fundamental Belief number one, which reads in part: “…The Holy Scriptures are the supreme, authoritative, and the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the definitive revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history…” And #3: Jesus is coming soon. It is very hard to be actively participating in and supporting the Adventist Movement if you disagree with any one of these three tenets. Adventists tend to be individually resistant to creedalism, the twenty-eight fundamental beliefs notwithstanding, and are good at accommodating heterodoxy, even if it is grudgingly accommodated.
The church’s ancient focus has always been on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christian’s animating purpose is proclaiming Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice – a message that is underemphasized by many Adventists. That is not to say Adventism’s biggest successes aren’t due to individual Adventists’ and missions’ preaching Christ and Him crucified. But Adventists do not judge their missions by that standard. Adventists are proud to be called the “People of the Book.” They get a tiny bit nervous when you start calling them “The Body of Christ.”
In the end, success often gets defined by the lowest common denominator of success – i.e., success. Adventists are very proud of their hospitals, which are essentially businesses (increasingly, big business). They are viewed as an important, successful part of Adventist Missions, even though they represent limited opportunities for evangelism and add almost nothing to church growth.
“Success breeds success.” Adventist Missions have done that. They have sought out and then replicated mission strategies that succeeded. Very much like a successful business tries to replicate its successes with new products in new markets. But the gas and the grease that makes it all go round is the individuality and “ownership” which the largely independent missions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church engender. It’s high status to be a missionary in the Adventist Church: to be one of its true “Pathfinders,” so to speak. It is open to all who are willing to endure the sacrifices it requires.
The zeitgeist has been kind to the Seventh-day Adventist church. The internet has made Everyman a historian. Joseph Smith, the foundation of Mormonism, has taken some hard knocks in the uninsulated and unfiltered digital information flood. Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to have renamed themselves JW.org, but continue to refer to their members as “publishers.” The Witnesses unsparingly document their decline in successful proselytizing for all to see on the internet. They have changed the packaging, but the contents are the same. The colporteur work for SDAs used to be an apprenticeship program to the gospel ministry. Now it’s selling “maga-books,” a summer job for high school and college kids. Whatever works, works for Adventists.
Mrs. White’s pedestal was not so high and her authority not comparable to Joseph Smith and the Angel Moroni. Ron Numbers and the plagiarism controversy thoroughly vetted her decades before there was a worldwide web. All Adventists, generally speaking, live with their Prophetess in peace, even if it isn’t a close relationship for many. She isn’t a mandated big deal. The final authority is Scripture: its FB #1. That has tended to keep the Adventist message protestant, evangelical and orthodox. In the end, the message has counted for far more than the messenger.
Like all sinners, we Adventists are tempted to idolatry, tempted to worship our successes and the status success brings. Adventists need humility. In missions and everything else we do, humility is the most important thing. Humility is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Service and humility: Our mission has failed if we do not emulate our Lord. “Tell the people of Jerusalem, ‘Look, your King is coming to you. He is humble, riding on a donkey–riding on a donkey’s colt.'”
William Abbott graduated from Union College, works with wood protection in the forest products industry, and has served as an elder at the Columbus, Nebraska, Seventh-day Adventist church for over thirty years. He and his wife, Janette, have been married for forty years and have six children. He serves on the board of Congo Frontline Missions (CFM).
Bro. Abbott,
The Mormon church is organized along clear lines of authority and that is reflected in their mission work. Yes, it has been successful, but don’t be quick to spotlight them as an example for us to follow in any way other than management by gifted people. My eldest brother (raised Adventist, went to Walla Walla, studied medicine at Loma Linda) is a Mormon and was a Bishop and regional president for several years before his latest relocation and, according to him the church in North America is losing members in considerable numbers. Apparently they have the same problem SDA churches have with children not seeing faith modeled in their parents in ways they feel they can emulate, so large numbers of teens and young adults are leaving. Two of his children served terms as missionaries and since left the church, one as a direct result of what she experienced.
We need to be more flexible and adaptive with our application and presentation of the Gospel. The colporteur work largely disappeared, not for lack of people, but because the market changed and it became nearly impossible to sell books door-to-door and make a living.
What we need to grow the church is people whose lives show that they are living their faith instead of refuting their words about faith. We need people in whom the Spirit of God dwells so others will see their good works and glorify God.
William Noel said on April 4, 2016 at 1:55 pm
“We need to be more flexible and adaptive with our application and presentation of the Gospel. The colporteur work largely disappeared, not for lack of people, but because the market changed and it became nearly impossible to sell books door-to-door and make a living.
What we need to grow the church is people”
William you are right, again, thanks for your wise sharing.
We need Barbara to sing this at Brother Wilsons’s next birthday party.
People,
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world
We’re children, needing other children
And yet letting a grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than children
Lovers, very special people
They’re the luckiest people in the world
With one person (one person)
One very special person (one very special person)
A feeling deep in your soul (in your soul)
Says you were half now you’re whole
No more hunger and thirst
First be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world
No more hunger or thirst
First be a person who needs people (people need people)
People who need people
Are the luckiest (luckiest) people in the world
Songwriters
CARMINE APPICE, CARMINE JR. APPICE, MARK STEIN, TIM BOGERT, VINCENT MARTELL
It will probably never happen…but it’s good to dream!
Really interesting, William. Thank you.
What churches are growing in America and western Europe? Is it not the case that churches grow less in largely democratic “free” societies and less in the controlled governmental authority? That applies to church growth: if there was less centrally organized and planned “church growth” would it hinder or allow more independent growth of Christianity and less of institutionalized religious beliefs? The Holy Spirit, like wind, goes where it will, not directed by men in administration who often hinder the growth.
Elaine: I tend to agree somewhat. My reference may be wrong, but I look at the “secret rapture” doctrine perpetuated among evangelicals at present. Even though there is no biblical basis for it, the idea has grown due to certain “Christian” films. It would seem to me if the Sabbath doctrine (with a Christ-centered emphasis) had been propagated without being connected to a denomination, it would have spread rapidly. The same goes for the “state of the dead” and some other common-sense doctrines. Perhaps centralization under an institutional label with baptism into a particular church has kept many minds closed.
These doctrines do have a lot to say about God and a loving God, but the connection seems to get less attention in evangelistic meetings (at least in the past). As a result many put them down as unimportant.
Do an informal survey of a hundred people on the streets in the US or even in Europe…I would be shocked if more people had heard about Adventism than they have heard about Mormonism. What good is it to “grow” if no one knows nothing about Adventism (outside of Adventism)??
Really Kim? Why would you be shocked? I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just wondering what your knowledge base is. Quite frankly, when it comes to Europe, I would be mildly surprised if you found one person among a group of 100 who have heard of either Adventists or Mormons. Furthermore, if our goal is brand recognition, we’re in trouble. The goal of Christians should not, in my opinion, be tooting their denominational horn. Shouldn’t the goal be to make sure that others have encountered Jesus?
Kim,
You’re right. Surveys over the past 35 years have shown a sharp decline in the public’s awareness about the church. Significant numbers used to respond that they knew or had met an Adventist, that they had a positive view about Adventists and most could correctly list at least one belief. Not now. Each time the church adds one new member in North America, the general population grows by more than 400, so we’re fading into spiritual insignificance. The last survey I saw, everyone confused us with other churches and some Eastern mystical cults.
I credit our nearly exclusive focus on preaching doctrines while scorning ministries that actually touch people with the love of God for this decline in public awareness. It also accounts for the extreme slowness in church growth.
I haven’t seen much data about the JWs, but it looks like they’re fading into public insignificance, too. The Mormons are having a similar public awareness challenge and are suffering significant member retention challenges, too.
Thank you William Noel for a most insightful, encouraging, and optimistic report!
You state that the Jehovah’s Witnesses “are fading into public insignificance”. I knew little about JW’s until I became friendly with one.
He was a very intelligent man who worked as a lady hair stylist. When I enquirer as to which college he attended, I was told that JW s are so mistrustful of higher education that they ban any member or member’s children from attending any educational institution beyond high school.
He informed me that as a result, NO JW s are professional or educated people. Since ALL of them have only a high school diploma (or less), they only fill blue collar positions.
Any JWs child who has higher career aspirations and attends a community college, college or university, is immediately shunned, banned, and ostrcicized by both his/her family and the local congregation.
Adventists have similarly, had huge mistrust, even disdain for “worldly” colleges/universities , but instead of pro hitting advanced education, we have provided our own.
It is my belief that Adventism’s focus on education, world wide, taps into prospective adherents’ aspirations for an “upwardly mobile ” life style.
Even the poorest families/immigrants who become Adventists, by the second or third generation have MDs, PhDs, DDSs , college professors in their extended families!
This focus on educational achievement is very enticing to every tribe/race/ethnicity. Desire for…
The church is not growing rapidly…lets get that straight…..they are all snails in a race and Adventists are the fastest snail….
The Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses in mission lands where we worked for more than a decade tended to be strong proponents of patriarchal practice, whereas Adventist outreach in the 1960s and 1970s, was directed primarily by comparatively “liberal” Adventists strongly influenced by Ellen White in the US and not sold out to male-headship views. Yes, there were Adventist patriarchs who were uncomfortable with a woman getting up to deliver a sermon, or with my mother as chairman of the church board, but by and large Adventists were seen as, perhaps, the morning star of gender emancipation in Hispanic lands. For example, as we would travel through the countryside in the ambulance, we could always recognize an Adventist family, because the father bore some of the burdens of the family-on-foot. A Catholic family would always travel with the women and children bearing the heavy burdens, father as the caudillo leading the way from the front. Much has been said from time to time about the adverse effect of advocating for equal opportunity for women by members of the Adventist faith, but I would point out to this readership that whether snails or centipedes, the Adventist faith has indeed grown much faster than many other faiths, and one of the reasons is that it is seen as a denomination more in tune with the natural zeitgeists of modern times than the hard-line patriarchists that continue to subscribe to an imposed male-headship paradigm….
Edwin,
In the 1960’s and the 1970’s women could not serve as local elders, let alone as pastors in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. It wasn’t controversial. Neither was a women speaking church. Adventist women have always done that. They normally didn’t preach because normally the minster or the local Elder preached. But they could.
I think you are projecting the present back to the past and imposing something onto the church that was not the case. Adventists have never been in the vanguard of ‘gender emancipation.’ Never, ever.
My mother and other women were not elders at that time, but later on that indeed became the case. Mom served as head elder of a local church in the US for a term or so. But going way back, local missionaries demonstrated to native pastors and parishioners that women could, and often did, give admirable sermons. This has been going on since at least the days of Ellen White…..
i would suggest that the SDA claim to fame is the wisdom of providing Medical Services, Disaster Relief, and Educational facilities worldwide. Without these people oriented services, SDA would more likely to be closer to the JW’S. The most successful Cults of the USA, formed in the 1800’s
were the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witness’s. All were maligned by the Protestant mainliners, rightfully so. The SDA’s and JW’S in timesettings, beliefs, and anti Biblical evidence, and by not fraternizing with Christians. The Mormons fantasy, of a young boy finding gold
leaves of a book revealing a history of the wild west visited by Jesus Christ post crucifixtion period
prior to ascending to the most holy place, in heaven. Joseph Smith was known as a dreamer, a searcher for gold, a diviner, a high Freemason. You will note on all Mormon temples, Masonic symbols on all facets of the temple, not a single Christian symbol. Most all Mormon Prophets and
prominent Mormon leaders are high ranking Freemasons, (eg: Mitt Romney).