3 July 2015 | San Antonio, Texas, USA [Victor Hulbert, tedNEWS] If you work in Secretariat, it pays to have a sense of humour. Dr Ng, Executive Secretary of the Seventh-day Adventist World Church has it in bucketfuls. Just as well, since a report packed full of facts, figures and statistics might otherwise be seen as one delegates want to skip.
More importantly, it engaged Samara, the 14-year-old daughter of another TED delegate. She stated that she found the report was very interesting and engaging.
What caught Samaras attention? Perhaps the humour: Is the report simply a time to allow delegates to sleep, or a time filler before the nominating committee? Dr Ng jokingly gave delegates five false choices before sharing the real purpose, “To remind ourselves that Mission is not something we talk about, it is the reason for the existence of the church.”
Was it the practical emphasis that statistics should help us determine the strengths and weaknesses of the church? Certainly those came through before the end.
Was it the significance of certain milestones of growth? They certainly engaged!
Dr Ng noted that membership growth hit the 18-million mark for the very first time in 2013. He quoted Christianity Today that the Adventist Church is now the “fifth-largest Christian communion worldwide, after Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Assemblies of God” (Christianity Today, Feb. 22, 2015).
With 18,479,257 Seventh-day Adventists worldwide, the church has grown by 1,556,0181.55 members over five years. Baptisms have averaged 3,199 per day.
All of that is interesting but it is the comparisons that started to bring lessons home. Growth patterns have transformed the dynamics of the church, particularly with a rapid increase of baptisms in the global south balanced by a decline in the global north. This may have implications for the future.
Dr Ng stated, “In 1960 baptisms in the Global North represented 31 percent of the total, and in the Global South 69 percent of world baptisms, respectively. By 2014, 97 percent of world baptisms came from the Global South and 3 percent from the Global North, an epochal development indicative of extraordinary church growth on one hand, and decline on the other.”
There was one more concern – and one that impacts Samara’s age group more than most. The ‘leaking bucket syndrome’. Four every 100 members that joined the church in the past four years, 60 disappeared. Pastor Tremear wondered if the statistic was even worse since it did not include youth brought up as Adventists but who never physically joined the church. It is something he would like to see explored in more detail.
Why? Simply because as a historian and statistician, David worked through the logic of why, over a five year period (1995 – 2010), the Adventist global mortality rate was always less than that of the general public. “It has to be more than healthy eating”, he stated. He noted that Adventists have 3.39 deaths per thousand members compared with 8.55 in the general population. His logical conclusion? Our membership is overstated. Deaths and leavers have been underreported and the reality is something like a 39.29% loss rate over the past 50 years.
Those may be the facts. The result must be a call for action. Churches need to get their books in order. The development of the Global Membership Database system (of which TED would like to be a part), need to move forward for easier accountability, and church members need to learn lessons in retention and discipleship. If we don’t, the eager and fascinated Samara may just end up being another statistic. Dr Ng would not be pleased.
You can read his full Secretariat report on the Adventist News Network website. David Trim’s analysis is available from the Adventist Archives website. [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS Staff: Miroslav Pujic, director; Deana Stojkovic, editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ted-adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division.
You are free to re-print any portion of the bulletin without need for special permission. However, we kindly request that you identify tedNEWS whenever you publish these materials.
