Leaderboard

Church Leadership: The Adventist Today article below questions the competence of SDA leadership. I wrote an extended response to that article in which I suggested that the issue raised lies elsewhere. In short, I suggested that leadership should focus on supporting the ministry of the local congregation. If you wish to know more, read my comment following that article. https://atoday.org/aunty-why-does-our-church-have-such-poor-leadership/

Francis Dolphijn is a probably little little-known historical figure in Adventism. The following article informs. https://adventistreview.org/experiences/heritage/francis-dolphijn/

The Holy Spirit works with everyone, pointing them to God as Personal Friend for a relationship (i.e. God the Son) which leads to this all powerful God being our Lord and King (God the Father.) People are wired to be religious. Even "No religion" is a religion. All religions are a mixture of truth, superstitions and error. The idea of "One True Church" is NOT a "Hey, I belong to the right group therefor I'm a member of this club and thus saved." The idea of "One True Church" is that this group has within it's structure the opportunity to find more truth and thus an advantage in giving up more amounts of superstition and other errors. No matter which group we belong to, we are all free to accept or reject what the Holy Spirit places upon our hearts. Some with very little truth within their world view cherish what they know, while others who have a lot available to them choose not to take advantage of their situation. In the Bible we find the story of the one man or two men who were healed when the pigs ran into the sea. This was in a pagan area. They were not Jewish. They sat at Jesus' feet (how the rabbis ordained) and wanted to continue to study with Jesus. Sadly Jesus had 12 good reasons to prevent them from going with Jesus, but Jesus sent them as missionaries to the gentiles. I wonder how comfortable we would feel if we were to attend some of their meetings or to talk with them. They had very little of the truth, but they knew the truth giver and cherished what they had and shared what little they knew. The mother of James and John asked if they could sit on Jesus' left and right hand seats. This was the hierarchy of seating at Roman feasts. At the last supper John got to sit on Jesus' right side, but Judas was sitting on his left side. Judas choose not to allow himself to see the significance of where he was sitting. In the Near East, forgiveness tended to be associated with meals. In the prodigal son the father killed the fatted calf (which was for the elder brother's wedding) and made the meal of forgiveness. The elder brother is refusing to enter the room because of the table of forgiveness and the story closes with the brother trying to decide to go in or stay out. When Psalm 23 says that God prepares a table in the presence of enemies, it means that God helps to change my relationship with my enemies, for them to become friends and to prepare the table of forgiveness for them to feast together. After the Camp David accords, Egyptian and Israeli leaders met in the desert for the table in the presence of now reconciled enemies. Now, with this feast symbolizing the relationship between the two countries, many wondered about a personal situation between Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat. As leaders the two developed a personal hatred for each other. The two hated each other so much that they never would mention the other's name. If Meir had to say something about Sadat she would say "That Egyptian" and Sadat would only use "That Old Woman." People wondered what was going to happen when they met at this "table of forgiveness"? The moment came and Golda Meir simply said "Mr. President, what took you so long?" With that they both began laughing and laughing. Not only the relationship between the two nations changed, the relationship between these two people changed and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. The ultimate table of forgiveness did not really have food except to help relieve a little suffering. One was on the right side of Jesus and another was on Jesus' left. We don't know which was which, but one of these two men went over what they knew about Jesus in his mind, and after initially throwing insults at Jesus, he came to realize what was happening. He realized that he was one of the two men who were ultimately in the history of the universe being on Jesus' left and right hands. The other did not choose to look at the evidence and he died never realizing where he was, the great honor he had, and the reward that was offered. The one man did come to realize what was going on, and repented, and comforted Jesus and proclaimed the gospel that day. A "true church" is only a means of sharing truth with others around us. I understand it to be a pastoral role for others. I don't want to drop a name, but there is a very popular singer from the 1960s who has often come to the State Fair near where I live to give concerts. I've attended two of them. The first one was maybe seven years ago or so, and the second was two weeks ago. At the first concert he could tell that someone in the audience asked him a question. He repeated "Do I love Jesus? Yes, I do." then "Can I sing a Jesus song? I'm sorry, but I don't have any Jesus songs in my concerts, would it be ok if I give a little dance for Jesus?" and he did a little soft shoe and then told the audience "No one has ever asked me in concert if I love Jesus, but it is a very important question, and yes, I do love Jesus." he went on with his concert. After the concert he went to a tent to the side to meet people and sign autographs. As I was standing in line I heard some of the workers talking about this singers love for his fans and others. I went through line, but then I was at another display but where I could hear him with others. Now, he needed to catch a plane and when people came to him and said "It's time to leave" he first apologized to those left in line, but then said to his staff member "Give me 15 minutes, just 15 minutes" and continued to meet and greet. When the 15 minutes were up he then said "Just give me 5 more minutes" and 5 minutes later he said "Another 5 minutes." When the second 5 minutes had past he requested "just 2 more minutes" before finally leaving. I found this impressive. I googled him and learned that he is a Roman Catholic, but wanted to marry a practicing Jewish lady. While he could have just gone to a judge or marry some other way, he ended up requesting permission from the Pope to marry this lady. I recently read that they have one of showbusiness' longest and happiest marriages, and that their family contains both Christian and Jewish traditions. As I said I heard him again two weeks ago. When going to get the tee shirt and two more CD's autographed, because of what happened with the first concert i worked up the nerve to offer him a pamphlet I wrote titled "What Seventh-day Adventists Believe and Why It Matters." I was prepared for him to say "No Thank you" or "Thank you" and just put it aside, but I was not ready for his answer. It was "I like Seventh-day Adventists, so I'm interested in reading your perception." Salvation is NOT righteousness by belonging to the right group, and we as Christians especially need to know that it is NOT righteousness by vocabulary and the ability to give a history lesson (say the "right words" about Jesus and give a history lesson about what Jesus did on the cross.) Religions have their job and strong and weak points, but salvation is how we respond to truth and how we allow these truths to affect how we relate to God and fellow members. Please allow two, ok, three more stories: A few weeks ago a comedian I've enjoyed (no, never saw) Bob Newhart died. I found a 1 hour tribute to him on TV but sadly found it 35 minutes into it. In the last 25 minutes there was a short spot where Mr. Newhart talked about his friendship with Don Rickles, and how their friendship was based on their shared faith in and love for God; Newhart as a Catholic, Rickles as a Jew. Their families would attend worship together in the synagogue and church and celebrated the holidays of both religions. A few years ago I saw a movie about two brothers, at the end of the movie it was revealed that the one brother was actor comedian Ray Romano. They were Catholic. Ray's real life brother (like the actor in the TV show) was a police officer. Once he lead a raid where something went wrong. Ray's brother had barely enough time in for retirement and he was forced into early retirement. His retirement pay was very low and therefore his wife left him. Ray's brother took out his anger at God. He stopped going to church, stopped praying, stopped anything religious. Ray would try to encourage his brother to not give up on God and prayed for his brother and tried not to be nagging in his reaching out to his brother. Eventually Ray learned that a Christian high school wanted teachers to teach the students practical skills and Ray said to his brother that he could teach a class about police procedures. His brother took the offer. After teaching police procedures, they would apply these to stories of different people over history. His brother was still upset at God and considered himself an atheist. He saw that many of his teenage students were sharing the same doubts that he had, so he got an idea and made a suggestion to his class that they use these police procedures and investigate Jesus using the gospels. As he and his class investigated, the brother and most if not all his students were overwhelmed for the evidence that Jesus was all that he was claimed to be, and he returned to the Lord, and started to include the investigation of Jesus to his class every year and it has a powerful effect on the students. My family, especially my Aunt Judith and Aunt Dona were very active with the Cambodian refugee community from the killing fields. Aunt Judith would also take the Cambodians to church, and several became Seventh-day Adventists. One of these was a Dr. Chan, who had been a dentist in Cambodia. When he heard that the Khmer Rouge came to power, he knocked his glasses off his face and trampled on them, ran home and got his family and they fled to a part of Cambodia where they were not known and pretended to be illiterate peasants . They eventually were able to go to a refugee camp in Thailand. Baptist missionaries helped in the camp and the family, who were Buddhists, became Christians due to the work of these Baptist missionaries. Later they made it to the USA where Aunt Judith helped them, took them to church and they became Seventh-day Adventists, and Dr. Chan changed careers to become a social worker for other refugees. One Sabbath in church Aunt Judith noticed a strange reaction coming over Dr. Chan. He got up and ran out of church and Aunt Judith went out to see what was wrong. He found him standing and shaking repeating the words "It's HIM!" When she approached him to ask what was wrong, Dr. Chan replied "This may sound crazy, but ever since I was a child I knew that I had a dear friend. Now I could not hear him nor see him, but he is just as real to me as those I can see or hear. I believe that this friend has lead me through life. that when the Khmer Rouge came to power, I felt that it was him who caused me to break my classes and lead us safely away from people who knew we were educated, and to Thailand and to America. Even though I've been a Christian since being in Thailand, today for the first time I realized that this special friend, who has been my friend since childhood, is Jesus."