Should Some Things Change?

Increasing numbers of the members of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination are coming to understand the perils of our traditional governance structure.  The 19^th century model for managing our denomination has no chance of sustaining our global network. What got us to where we are today is not what will move us to where God intends for us to be in the future.  For too many decades we have treaded water with some kind of wishful thinking that everything will self sort because it is God’s work.

Our God is the creative God who has endowed his creation, humans, with the power to think and innovate, to will and to do. He not only equipped us with these gifts but he placed responsibility on us initially to have dominion and to rule. When here in person he commissioned us with a mandate that is a moral imperative to—go—make disciples—baptize them—and teach those disciples to observe all of what he commanded.

While obedience to this commission has been given voice, and even action in our denomination, today, in a 21^st century world, the system of governance meant to expedite the gospel commission is hampering mission fulfillment, and is at risk of killing it altogether.  The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s utilization of resources in today’s world is immoral if the gospel commission is a moral imperative.

The following data was gathered from the 2013 Annual Statistical Report, which was reporting the statistics as of Dec 31, 2011, prepared by General Conference Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research.  According to their global data there are 26,859 “Evangelistic and Pastoral Employees” and 27,788 “Administrative, Promotional, Office and Miscellaneous Employees”.   These are Full Time Equivalent employees. 

There is the ever continuing call from denominational leadership for greater financial faithfulness from the membership as the primary answer to church economics. There is no doubt that across our denomination members should continually be challenged to honor God with their money.  Also, there is little doubt that almost all of us could be more generous.

But with that said, a system that has a bureaucratic structure with these office to field ratios is not only unsustainable but should be unsustainable.  It would be unimaginable to visit any business anywhere in the world and have a manager standing behind every online worker.

A simple, and I realize it isn’t so simple, change of those ratios could serve as a means for becoming more faithful stewards of the resources we manage on God’s behalf.

Consider the possibilities based on the following assumptions:

• ·      An annual average cost of $50,000 per FTE
• ·      Office to field ratios shift from approximately 1:1 to 1:10
• ·      Give each office FTE 2 FTE assistants
• ·      New office to field is then  3:10

This would mean an annual savings of  $941,750,000.00!

If we only gave each office FTE 1 full time assistant the savings jump to  $1,090,950,000.00 in annual savings!!  Yes, that is one billion! And remember this isn’t a one time savings but an annual opportunity for reinvestment in fulfilling the Great Commission.

The amazing miracle of God’s blessing is that even with our current supervision ratios we are still managing to grow and somewhat maintain the denomination. But the clock is ticking!

May God inspire, give vision and courage that we might be faithful in making the tough decisions necessary now to be able to look back from a future vantage point and know that God’s work is stronger, healthier, and more just because we did the hard work necessary to be a God honoring Seventh-day Adventist Denomination.

Andy McDonald