Adventism’s Blind Spot

If you grew up Adventist in a certain time, you remember the AY (what was then the MV) motto: The Gospel to the World in This Generation.

It was a worthy motto. Indeed, it had been a worthy motto since the beginning of the youth work in the late 1800’s. When I first recited it, in the late 1950’s, something seemed a little strange about it, but I didn’t know what it was.

My generation, the Baby Boomers, were glutting churches and church schools, and it looked like our generation just might accomplish the job. Every year, there were a series of new books for our progressive classwork–wonderful stories of Christian heroes around the world.

I became a teacher in an SDA school in 1969, and quickly rose in the profession. My family had deep roots at Union College. My mother, several aunts and uncles had attended there. One, Aunt Genevieve Dickerson, “Aunt Gen” to the likes of me, was associate dean of women at Union for many years. (For those interested in Union College trivia, her friend and long time dean Hilda Fern Remley was affectionately known to me and my multitude of Dickerson cousins as “Aunt Remley” Anyone really interested might like to hear about tiny hamburgers and a ukulele. But I digress).

Time went by. When I went to my 25th class reunion at Oak Park Academy (Oak Park is long closed), I discovered few of my classmates still attended church, and many were divorced. When I went to Oak Park, and toured the state for choir and band concerts, there were something like 14 church schools in the state. Today there are four. Membership in the now Iowa-Missouri Conference is around 10,500, and the median age I estimate to be around 65. In the 1960’s, Iowa alone had 8500 members, and ‘median age’ was a term I never used.

The church has withered, shrunken, and aged. In North America, demographic studies tell a similar tale. If you don’t live near a large Adventist institution, your church is pretty small in numbers, and graying.

I believe strongly in the Adventist movement, in the Elijah movement. But I believe we are suffering from a life-threatening blind spot. A blind spot embodied in that otherwise worthy motto I listed at the beginning.

The Gospel to the World in This Generation.

Adventism has always been about this generation. This generation. This generation. For five, six, and soon seven and eight generations, Adventism has never allowed itself a time horizon beyond this generation.

This has been strategy of diminishing returns. Yes, the church has grown numerically, but at the cost of many, so many, of our own children. I cannot believe that is God’s will.

I would like you to listen to this song:

For those concerned that an increasing focus on retaining our children will result in an abandonment of central tenets, read these lyrics.

We Won’t Bend and We Won’t Break
We Won’t Water Down Our Faith
We Won’t Compromise in a World of Desperation
What Has Been We Cannot Change
But For Tomorrow and Today
We Must Be a Light For Future Generations

I am not contented to win the throngs of the third world and lose my own children. As Jesus said in a similar situation, “This you ought to have done, and not left the other undone.”

For reasons which I will elaborate in future blogs, I don’t believe this is an either/or proposition. Indeed, I believe our children who are disinterested and leaving are the canaries in the mine: their distress warns of danger for all.

Please, I implore you, pledge to be a light to future generations. We need not give up hope in the soon coming of Jesus to realize that it may still be some generations in the future. And we must not sacrifice them to our blind spot.

The Challenges We Face–intro

I receive many inquiries on how to retain young adults, since our church plant has been successful in returning and retaining them. The median age in our church is around 28, as compared with over 50 in many churches.  A significant portion of our membership were either already out (that is, emotionally detached from and not attending regularly), or headed there rapidly (attending only on social pressure from parents, spouses, etc.).

Recently, I received an inquiry concerning “how” we do this. What follows is a redacted version of that personal reply.

Ordinarily, in our denomination, when it comes to ‘how,’ we come out with a new program, a new publication (like the college quarterly), or a new ministry. Our institutions and ministries have become the frame of reference for how we approach a new situation, people group, whatever. So “Amazing Facts” develops a new set of evangelistic sermons; the GC sets up a study center (in this case centre for secular postmodern studies). Meanwhile, nothing happens.

The Militant-Evangelism complex baptizes several hundred people (all over North America), and declares that evangelism (by which they mean techniques originated in 1831) still work as well as ever. Which may, sadly, be true. Meanwhile, we continue to bleed young adults. At a recent church summit concerning this topic, the estimate is that we’re losing somewhere close to 70% of young adults.

The changes–the ‘how’– generally proposed so far cannot succeed, because they are of the nature mentioned above. A new program, series of topics, even changing the music–though it might help–will not be sufficient. Changes need to be much more comprehensive.

Let me give you an analogy. Suppose you have an aquarium. It’s full of guppies, mollies, swordtails, etc. Then you decide you want to include some clown fish. So you enlarge the aquarium, add nooks and crannies for the clown fish to hide in, buy the proper food, etc. But no matter how you go about it, the clown fish simply don’t survive for more than a few minutes or hours.

The reason is simple. Guppies, mollies, etc., are freshwater fish, the clown fish lives in salt water. Obviously, no analogy is perfect. Young adults don’t literally die in our present churches. They flee instead. And those in the current congregations would not die if we changed the ‘water.’ The question and choice facing the church is this: are the currently contented members willing to change (to adapt to salt water), in order to keep the young adults? Or are we going to insist that the young adults, and the affluent secular world in general, adapt to our ‘freshwater’ environment, and say goodbye to those who won’t?

Why this Blog?

From our earliest days, Adventists have identified themselves with the prophet Elijah. Indeed, Adventism, which grew out of the Millerite movement, often speaks of itself as “the Advent movement,” and used to — although I seldom hear it these days — refer to ourselves as “the Elijah movement.”

Shortly after the disappointment on October 22, 1844, several Adventist writers expressed their conviction that the restoration of the biblical Sabbath was basically similar to the restoration of Israel’s worship under Elijah in a time of general apostasy.

Hans K. La Rondelle, “Prophetic Basis of Adventism,”Adventist Review, June 1-July 20, 1989

I don’t hear much about Adventists as “The Elijah Movemen” any more. It seems that, with all the controversy swirling around us in the church, – you know what I’m talking about — we spend so much time talking about modes of worship, women’s ordination, music, and others– it appears we may have lost sight of just how central this “Elijah consciousness” has always been in our mission and identity as Adventists.
As I speak to Adventist audiences, I find that this idea of being part of an “Elijah movement” is new to many of us. And very few of us have given it much thought recently.

So this blog has, as one of its main purposes, to rekindle an awareness of the Adventist church as a prophetic movement. Another main purpose is to examine what that means for us today–this is not just an historical exercise, but rather, an attempt to help restore a sense of identity. One reason that we lose so many young adults, is that they no longer have a sense of what this church is about. We know what it’s not about–that comes through loud and clear–but the identity and puspose of Adventism has been largely lost..

And, when we begin to understand our identity and purpose, the next step is to implement that vision. There may be more reasons added, or the existing ones may be further delineated, but for now, these three purposes are at the forefront.

1. Restore a knowledge and understanding of Adventism as the Elijah Movement, a dynamic, relevant mission.

2. Assist in understanding our identity and purpose, as heirs of the Advent and Elijah movements.

3. Begin to suggest ways to implement that mission and vision.

You may ask why I am one to take up this daunting task. In my next blog, I’ll offer an answer.