{"id":23980,"date":"2025-07-04T21:12:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/?p=23980"},"modified":"2025-07-07T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T13:40:22","slug":"erton-kohler-elected-gc-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/erton-kohler-elected-gc-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Erton K\u00f6hler Elected GC President"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 July 2025 | St Louis, USA [Vanesa Pizzuto]<\/p>\n

Delegates at the 62nd General Conference Session elected Erton Carlos K\u00f6hler to serve as President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, on Friday, 4 July, in St Louis, USA.<\/p>\n

The Nominating Committee began deliberations at the start of the business day and returned to the Dome of America’s Center Convention Complex ready to report at around 3:00 p.m. Upon receiving the proposal, delegates used the electronic voting system, ElectionBuddy<\/i>, to cast their votes.<\/p>\n

Of the 1909 delegates voting, 1721 voted in favour of K\u00f6hler, who has served as General Conference Executive Secretary since April 2021.<\/p>\n

Addressing delegates and guests, K\u00f6hler said, \u201cNobody is prepared for this moment. I am speechless!\u201d Sharing from his family worship time on Friday night, he continued, saying that God had given him a Bible verse \u2014 Isaiah 41:10: \u201cFear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand\u201d (NKJV).<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is no time for division. Our mission will be accomplished when we are together,\u201d he continued. \u201cI believe in integration\u2026 Moving forward together is the call we have received from the Lord\u2026 We appreciate all opinions, because we are one family.”<\/p>\n

\"Erton
Erton K\u00f6hler with his wife Adriene and family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Expressing gratitude to the global Church, and to Elder Wilson and his family for their service, K\u00f6hler concluded, \u201cWe need, as a Church, to move forward\u2014strong, united, and focused\u2026 [through] communion with the Lord, unity, identity, and mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

K\u00f6hler, a Brazilian of German descent, was born in 1969. Following in his father\u2019s footsteps, he became a pastor and served in S\u00e3o Paulo from 1990 to 1994. Over the past 30 years, he has held various leadership roles within the Seventh-day Adventist Church.<\/p>\n

He is the first South American to be elected as President of the General Conference \u2014 a position traditionally held by an American. K\u00f6hler speaks Portuguese (his native tongue) and is also fluent in Spanish and English.<\/p>\n

He holds a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Theology and a Master\u2019s degree in Pastoral Theology from the Brazilian Adventist University, and is currently working on a Doctor of Ministry degree from Andrews University.<\/p>\n

K\u00f6hler is married to Adriene Marques, a nurse, and the couple have two children.<\/p>\n

\n

Featured image: [James Botha, Adventist Media Exchange]<\/p>\n

Photo: James Botha<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first South American to hold this position<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1576,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership-development","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23980"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24076,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980\/revisions\/24076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}