Why I Don’t Care Who the Next General Conference President Is
by Loren Seibold | 30 June 2025 |
The Adventosphere—both the online and personal gossip variety—has been buzzing with questions about who the next General Conference (GC) president will be.
I take a minority position: it shouldn’t matter.
My diminished interest
First, I doubt the selection will be a surprise. Don’t expect a Conclave outcome, where a compassionate and pastoral unknown unexpectedly rises to the top. It will be a man already in church leadership, maybe already resident in the building.
I’d go so far as to speculate that a few General Conference men, if they haven’t already written their acceptance sermons, at least have them outlined.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it will be Elder Wilson. If I were a betting man (I’m not), I’d bet that even if Elder Wilson wants to continue (he might not), the nominating committee will say, “We appreciate Elder Wilson’s service. But it’s time to give someone else a chance.”
Change isn’t always for the better, but it seems to me it would be in this case.
Second, please remember that this isn’t a formal selection process, with résumés and interviews and competing candidates. The nominating committee will have sidestepped all of that in favor of letting the Holy Spirit guide them.
There is a strange tendency to suppose that the Holy Spirit works most effectively without research, that less information is somehow more spiritual than being fully informed. They’ll pray until the nominating committee members’ knees give out, but when it comes down to a vote, many will rely on their own ineffable feelings. Some will quietly assume that if a man has climbed the church ladder, he is qualified. Some will vote for him because they found him affable, or he seems capable. Others will be weighing political questions: what country he comes from, or the color of his skin.
And I think it’s safe to assume that many won’t have an informed opinion about the man, and will vote for him because he was nominated.
Third, the major concern, whether stated or not, won’t be how spiritual or skilled the new president is (which is not to say he hasn’t those qualities) but how closely he is thought to cleave to what is regarded as true Adventism: The Great Controversy eschatology, the one true remnant church doctrine, the health message, leadership centralized in the General Conference, and an elevated view of Ellen White. Some will also want him to embrace the issues that Elder Wilson brought to the table, such as opposition to women’s ordination and LGBTQ people, and policing the orthodoxy of our institutions and pastors.
None of these are things I feel any need to invest in more deeply to the exclusion of a more holistic biblical faith.
All of which is to say that you should probably prepare for a president who isn’t much different than we’ve had. The new GC president will know that our denomination is meant to be a species of democracy, but he would probably prefer to run it as a monarchy.
It shouldn’t matter
On October 8, 1871, evangelist Dwight L. Moody preached at his Illinois Street Church on the text of Matthew 27:22, “What shall I do, then, with Jesus?” The sermon is remembered because the Great Chicago Fire started that night; some accounts say sirens and fire bells interrupted the service.
But it’s the sermon itself, not its timing, that captivates me. While we are asking, “Who will be our president?” and other questions about church machinery, the real question for Adventists should be “What will we do with Jesus?”
Churches all say Jesus is their founder and continuing inspiration. But Jesus isn’t actually the heart of organized religion—after all, he never organized one himself. The main purpose of organized religion is to ensure the survival of the organization. Religion dips into the story of Jesus when helpful, but ignores him when he’s not. To illustrate: the biggest part of the work on our Church Manual at this meeting will have to do with money and church administration; Jesus mentioned money little, church administration not at all.
I see little evidence that Jesus meant for us to be occupied with the sorts of things that our highly centralized church is concerned with. It is almost as though the church has become our object of worship, not the Christ of the church.
Thus this question: “What shall we do with Jesus?” Whatever the General Conference and its president do, there’s nothing to stop any union conference, any local conference, any congregation, any individual Adventist—to be specific, there is nothing to stop me—from elevating Jesus above the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
The notion of one “big boss leader” isn’t a Protestant idea, nor even a Christian one. It has persisted because we have let it persist. I wish that we could inaugurate a new era in our denomination, an era where we don’t care very much what the General Conference says or does. An era wherein Jesus is central in local places, rather than Adventists looking up to the strong personalities who have ascended into the offices in Silver Spring.
I don’t mean to disappoint anyone, but I suspect that whoever the committee selects won’t be on the short list of most readers of Adventist Today. But I don’t care, because the General Conference isn’t responsible for my spiritual life. And if the church works like it should—putting Jesus above all—who occupies the top office won’t matter as much.
Loren Seibold is a retired pastor, and the executive editor of Adventist Today.
