will it be Your Acquired, ted in ’10? Dream inspired, Church or both? Today AdventistSeptember-oCtober 2008 • www.Atoday.Com DAviD Smith, $68,688 JAn PaulSen, $87,008 kessiA reYne bennett, $46,000 robert CArmen, $593,500 President, Union College, Lincoln, Neb. President, Adventist World Church, Silver Spring, Md. Pastoral Intern, Oregon Conference, Gladstone, Ore. President, Adventist Health, Roseville, Calif. Donn leAthermAn, $54,151 PatriCe hieb, $47,840 Rachel williAmS, $42,390 niCole oriAn, $38,721 Professor of Religion, Southern Adventist University, Annual Fund Coordinator, Southern Adventist University, Assistant Professor of Communication, Oakwood University, Nursing Instructor, Union College, Lincoln, Neb. Collegedale, Tenn. Collegedale, Tenn. Huntsville, Ala. While the Adventist Church struggles to preserve a uniform pay scale, health care salaries are market driven. whAt we mAke bernie AnDerSon, $53,700 DonAlD Jernigan, $806,000 StellA GreiG, $60,911 rebecca AYlSworth, $35,500 Pastor, Wasatch Hills church, Salt Lake City, Utah President, Adventist Health System, Orlando, Fla. Professor of English, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich. Head Teacher, Madras Christian School, Madras, Ore. ChArleS SAnDefur, $75,166 John DiCkerSon, $53,454 GAbriel henton, $21,408 bill tuCker, $68,976 President, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Silver Spring, Md. Principal, Livingstone Adventist Academy, Salem, Ore. IT Director and English Teacher, President/Speaker, The Quiet Hour (supporting ministry), Laurelwood Academy (self supporting), Jasper, Ore. Redlands, Calif. AdventistToday Publisher Elwin Dunn DinepSiADrtmente Executive Publisher vol. 16 no. 5 Ervin Taylor cover story Editor Andy Nash 10 At What Price? Copy Editor by Edwin A. and Debra J. Hicks Edwin D. Schwisow Contributing Editors Chris Blake, John McLarty, While the Adventist Church David Newman, James Walters struggles to preserve a uniform Art Director pay scale, health care salaries Chris Komisar are market driven. Online Editor Marcel Schwantes Webmaster Linda Greer Director of Development Edwin A. Schwisow Office Manager Hanan Sadek F O u n dat i O n B oa r D Elwin Dunn — Board Chair, Ervin Taylor — Board Vice-Chair, Eugene Platt — Treasurer, Virginia Burley, Keith Colburn, Edmund Jones, John McLarty, Chuck Mitchell, Jim Nelson, Randy Roberts, Nate Schilt, J. Gordon Short, Dan Smith, James Stirling, Eldon Stratton, David Van Putten, John Vogt, James Walters r Ay mo n D F. 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Periodical postage As an independent press, Adventist Today relies on paid at Riverside, California, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Adventist Today, P.O. Box 8026, Riverside, CA 92515- donations to meet its operating expenses. To make a donation, go to www.atoday.com or mail to Adventist 8026. Copyright © 2008 by Adventist Today Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering open dialogue in the Adventist community. Today, P.O. Box 8026, Riverside, CA 92515-8026. Thanks for supporting Adventist Today with your regular tax- deductible donations! 2 ADventiSt today • sePtember-oCtober 2008 AdventistToday eDitoriAl the Other Way to Feel Empty Andy Nash “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with . .” Anne Lamott, and Thomas Merton—all of which This past year I’ve read about 40 memoirs as part testify to the fullness of a biblically grounded life of my doctoral wrap-up. Along with the classic in Christ. memoir writers—Elie Wiesel, Tobias Wolff, Frank When I turn from the harder stories back to the McCourt, Annie Dillard, Russell Baker—I’ve read church, it’s of course sad but not surprising to see a variety of contemporary writers, from the very plenty of familiar images: sex outside of marriage, secular to the very spiritual, who try to make sense recreational drinking, gambling (in all its forms), of their lives: greed, career over kids, panting after pop culture, What legalists Augusten Burroughs, whose lifestyle of alcohol embracing other gods. and immorality keeps a talented writer from being What’s surprising to me isn’t the presence of sin and libertines in the church (not exactly a headline) but what what he could be. have in Elizabeth Andrews, a bisexual writer who grew seems to be a changing attitude toward sin: whether up Christian but who now broadens the sacred to it’s confessed or celebrated. When Paul sent his common is a first letter to Corinth (a church estimated at 55 include all religions—as well as Stonehenge. looking to self Kim Barnes, so desperate to get away from a members), he expressed exasperation not just at the heavily conservative Pentecostal upbringing that she sin but at the laissez-faire attitude toward sin: “A for fulfillment. panted at most everything else. “Better to risk body man has his father’s wife. And you are proud!” (1 and soul,” she writes, “than to be imprisoned by the Cor. 5:1, 2, NIV). tyrannical laws my father and the church imposed. That’s the sense I’m getting more and more. It I was hungry for a world I had never known. I used to be that when church members sinned, we spent my fourteenth year in basements and back at least felt bad about it—or if we didn’t feel bad, we alleys, in the blue glow of black lights, listening to left the faith community. Now, some of us are doing Led Zeppelin, learning how to French-kiss, smoking neither. We’re sticking around, even leading out, dope, dropping mescaline, waiting for a vision that with an arrogance matched only by those who think might change it all.” we can earn our way to eternal life. A beautiful girl, Barnes got so heavily involved What legalists and libertines have in common in sex that it became her whole identity; when a is a looking to self for fulfillment. Both groups guy didn’t ask for intimacy at the end of a date, take a low view of Scripture, which teaches that we she felt like her whole person had been rejected. find neither joy nor worth outside of a bibically She eventually gave herself over to a truck driver grounded life in Christ. who took her to seedy locations and rented her Everything else is a merry-go-round around out to other drivers. By the end of her story, she a merry-go-round around a merry-go-round. summoned the courage to boot him out, restore a Everything else is a well that never satisfies.