The Nose of a Camel

[Gregory Matthews]

Edward Reifsnyder has written a  modeately long response on the Spectrum website in reaction the the General Conference attempt to deal with female ordination in the name of denominational unity.  The following is a short piece of one aspect that he addressed.   To read the entire response, please go to the Spectrum website.

You may view the entire comment at:  http://spectrummagazine.org/article/2017/01/27/camel-trojan-horse-and-other-shoe

 

 

Quote

So I believe that inside the “unity” Trojan Horse are behaviors intended to advance the authoritarian agenda.

 I have experience with a small manifestation of this authoritarian tendency. As a partner in FaithSearch Partners, I manage executive searches for faith-based organizations. In one of our recent SDA higher education presidential searches, we encountered an unexplained delay in getting started with the project. It finally emerged that the General Conference president had inserted himself into the decision-making process of the university and its board chair, the president of one of our large unions. The GC president instructed that they should not use search consultants, but to follow a process he specified. This interference had created a delay.

 I was astounded that the president of the GC would insert himself into the decision of a university board—a university operated by a union conference—as to how they would select their next president. My reaction was that this was a vast overreach, a blatant attempt at micromanagement and a display of authoritarianism. I suggested to the union president that I hoped he was quite perturbed. He was. And to his credit, he rebuffed this gambit.

 In my view, the president of the General Conference is not the chief executive officer of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The president is just the chief executive officer of the General Conference, a corporation, a service organization that manages certain activities for the benefit of the wider church body because that is the most efficient way to do it. The management of money. Retirement plans. Benefit programs. Departmental support. The flow of missionaries. The oversight of accreditation of schools. Providing governance to a few GC institutions. Arranging and facilitating the gathering of the church every five years to do its collective business. Providing inspiration and creating a tone. These are the matters for the GC. But in my view, the GC is not a controlling corporate entity, nor should it be.

 Power in our church is distributed. Intentionally. Our Church in 1901 made a very conscious decision to distribute the power precisely to prevent overreach by the GC. And now, lurking inside the Trojan Horse, seemingly lurks a compulsion to change that arrangement.[/quote[

 

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Edward Reifsnyder is a healthcare consultant, president of The Reifsnyder Group, and senior vice-president of FaithSearch Partners. He and his wife Janelle live in Fort Collins, Colorado, and have two daughters.