Mission, Structure, and Function
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Mission, Structure, and Function: An Analysis of Organizational Unity and Mission Particularity in the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church by Leslie N. Pollard, Ph.D, D.Min, MBA President, Oakwood University November 18, 2014 This paper is an open invitation for theologians to join this conversation. One frequently overlooked aspect of SDA ecclesiological conversation concerns structuring communities for mission. I suppose that it would be natural that we who are administrative theologians to think about these things! We wrestle with the theological implications of operating mission and business units for the church on a daily basis. But the question of structure has broader importance, because we can argue that ecclesial structuration, the process of creating structures, serves as a tangible expression of a community’s self-understanding, as well as it core mission. In its “diakonia” to the world, the church actively discloses its understanding of God’s kingdom and God’s community. This paper is intended is intended to provide a reflective examination of the ecclesiastical structures existing in the North American Division1 of Seventh-day Adventists (hereafter, NAD) officially designated as “Regional Conferences.”2 The ecclesiological implications of such structuring holds significant implications for SDA missiology and ecclesiology. If, across the chronological span of the Christian Church, from its founding to its finality, structuring is seen to have advanced its mission, the question arises as to the limits and 1The North American Division is one of 13 world divisions of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. It consists of Bermuda, Canada, the French possession of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the United States of America, Johnston Island, Midway Islands, and all other islands of the Pacific not attached to the other 12 divisions. Organized in 1913, NAD numbers 5,243 churches with a membership of 1,090,217 and a general population of 340,583,000 persons. Within the United States are 58 conferences, organized into 8 Unions. Of the 58 US conferences, 9 are Regional Conferences. For more, see http://www.adventistyearbook.org/ViewAdmField.aspx?AdmFieldID=NAD. 2Regional conferences describe the 9 geographical units of the SDA organization in North America which house the predominately African-American (black) churches in their respective union territories. Voted on April 10, 1944, the General Conference Spring Council authorized the creation of Regional Conferences. At the time of their creation, the 17,891 black members of the Adventist church were spread across 233 congregations. More information is available at the GC Online Archives at http://www.adventistarchives.org/docs/RCO/RCO- 02__B.pdf#view=fit. Lake Region was the first regional conference organized on September 26, 1944 with 2,260 “colored” believers. The most recent Regional Conference, Southeastern, was organized in 1981. Regional Conferences today number a membership of approximately 300,000 members. While the primary target population is the 37.6 million African-Americans, the Office of Regional Conference Ministries reports that Regional Conferences also include 70 non-black congregations who have voluntarily united within their fellowship. Regional Conferences are organizational units in every union of the NAD except North Pacific and Pacific Union. According to the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1976), 1192 “The Regional conferences were formed in the hope that the new organizations might, with concentration on work with a specific ethnic group, achieve greater results in a shorter space of time than would be achieved under the previously existing organizations . .” For detailed histories that chronicle the creation of Regional Conferences, see Roy Branson, “Adventism’s Rainbow Coalition,” in Make Us One, Delbert Baker, ed. (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press, 1995), 75-80; George Knight, Organizing to Beat the Devil: The Development of Adventist Church Structure (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing, 2001), 145-150 and R.W. Schwarz, Light Bearers to the Remnant (Mountain View: Pacific Press, 1979), 564-570. 2 appropriateness of such contextualization. Of necessity, this paper draws on a variety of sources- - biblical materials, missiological research, and organizational-effectiveness research from both business and ecclesiastical studies and texts—to explore the question. In the best selling business work on organizations and structure, authors Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal assert that structure is “. a blueprint for officially sanctioned expectations and exchanges among internal players (executives, managers, employees) and external constituencies (such as customers and clients). Like an animal’s skeleton or a building’s framework, structural form both enhances and constrains what an organization can accomplish.”3 Recently, a number of writers and speakers have urged changes in the NAD that intend the dissolution of Regional Conference structures. These calls have been forwarded in the stated interest of “unifying” the Adventist church in North America. Such writers contend that the current structures disclose the unresolved schism between the races in the North American Church. Thus, the existence of conference structures has evoked a variety of descriptors intended to emphasize the “disunity” in the NAD due to the continued existence of these 9 organizational units. Adventist writers or speakers have described the existence of Regional Conference structures as “race-based organizational segregation,”4 “Adventist apartheid,” 5 “the sin we don’t want to overcome,”6 “an abnormality”7 “a disgrace.”8 “morally untenable,”9 and “a lingering evil.”10 The Adventist Desegregation Coalition on Facebook is an interest group of 2,477 members that boldly asserts that “the Adventist Church is segregated,”11 obviously assuming that such segregation is pejorative. Other writers and speakers have also urged the restructuring of the NAD, though in less evocative language. In the February 20, 1997 Adventist Review, David Williams suggested that the church should “eliminate all [emphasis supplied] of the current structures and build new ones 3In the best selling business work on organizations and structure, authors Bolman and Deal assert that structure is “. a blueprint for officially sanctioned expectations and exchanges among internal players (executives, managers, employees) and external constituencies (such as customers and clients). Like an animal’s skeleton or a building’s framework, structural form both enhances and constrains what an organization can accomplish.” See Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, 4th edition (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 50. 4David K. Penno, “An Investigation of the Perceptions of Clergy and Laity concerning Race-Based Organizational Segregation in the Southern Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists” (Ph.D diss., Andrews University, 2009), i, ii, iii, etc. One feature of Penno’s dissertation that raises a crucial methodological question is the failure to define the key word in his title—segregation (note the absence of a definition on pages 12-14). This reader could locate no place in the research where this core term was explicated. Penno’s apparent non-technical use of the term “segregation” raises serious methodological questions that bias his investigation. Under accepted and common definition of segregation, Penno’s claim that the SDA Church maintains a “racially segregated organization” (page 2) cannot be substantiated. 5David Person, “Adventist Apartheid” in an online letter to the editor, Adventist Review at http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=660. 6Samuel Pipim, “Separate Black and White Conferences-Part 1: The Sin We Don’t Want to Overcome,” at http://www.drpipim.org/church-racism-contemporaryissues-51/97-separate-black-and-white-conferences-part- 1.html. 7See post on July 4th from “explorer” at http://www.atoday.com/add-your-name-petition. 8Comment posted at http://h0bbes.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/the-beginning-of-regional-conferences-in- the-us-iii/, on October 17, 2006. 9Comment posted at http://h0bbes.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/the-beginning-of-regional-conferences-in- the-us-iii/. 10See “The Lingering Evil in SDA Divided Conferences,” at http://njkproject.blogspot.com/2009/12/sda- racially-divided-conference.html. 11Information as of June 11, 2010 at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=53734749401&ref=ts. 3 based on new principles.”12 In the May 25, 2006 Adventist Review, William Johnson, in one of his final articles as editor of the Adventist Review, raised and answered the question, “What will it take to bring us together?” Johnsson pointed to what he termed “division” between blacks and whites in North America. Johnsson wrote: “. I have to question whether the current divided structures should continue indefinitely.”13 In a February 21, 2008 column published in the Adventist Review, columnist Frederick Russell wrote that “we will need at some point to disassemble the last symbols of our historical divide—racially segregated conferences in the United States.”14 By July 25, 2008, Russell’s column was cited as the basis for an online petition15 calling for the abolition of Regional and state conferences.16 On September 29, 2009 Jan Paulsen, then President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, during a globally-televised discussion with young