Stan Posted June 26, 2007 Posted June 26, 2007 ANN Bulletin Adventist News Network Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters June 26, 2007 Please send story leads to adventistnews@gc.adventist.org for consideration. In This Issue: --------------------- * Hopes, Growth Riding On Small Evangelism Meeting In Egypt * 15 Million Adventists, Who's Counting? * You Have A Job Evaluation; Does Your Minister? * ADRA Observes World Refugee Day * Adventists Around the World --------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Hopes, Growth Riding On Small Evangelism Meeting In Egypt Cairo, Egypt .... [Taashi Rowe/ANN] ------------------------------------------------------- Seventeen people who have committed to joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Egypt at an ongoing evangelism meeting are providing at least some hope for the church's future here. The six-week series in Cairo has brought attention and new interest to the Adventist Church in Egypt -- which the church's president for the country, Samir Berbawy, describes as dying. Officially there are 840 Adventist Church members in Egypt, but Berbawy says in reality about 200 members are active in the country of 75 million people. Meetings at the Heliopolis Adventist Church in Cairo have drawn an average of 100 attendees with Egyptian, Filipino and Sudanese backgrounds. "This is a significant number of people," says Berbawy, a former United States high school principal who grew up in Egypt and Lebanon. "We have not had people make decisions like that for years," says Berbawy, who took up his post as president last year. "This has also been helping with the awakening of our local members." The evangelism series, titled "Revelation of Hope," has garnered positive publicity for the small church in Cairo. Newspaper advertisements for the series prompted calls from other newspapers interested in the church's mission. "Other newspapers started asking us to publish our beliefs," says Berbawy. "We have very limited Arabic publications in Egypt and we haven't been able to circulate our beliefs. This has definitely helped us in the public eye." Each evening's message was written especially for the series by Mark Finley, an Adventist world church vice president. The sermons were translated into Arabic and used in a computer slide show program. Ted Wilson, a vice president of the Adventist world church, led the meetings for four nights each week. Berbawy picked up where Wilson left off and is now leading the meetings for two nights a week until the series finale July 6. Berbawy says one of the biggest challenges facing the church in Egypt is the lack of young people prepared to lead the church in the future. While there are many children in the church, he estimates there are only 40 to 50 people between the ages of 15 and 25. "We have no leadership in place for the future," he says. "Young people have been leaving the country to seek their future goals because there is nothing for them here." Former Secretary-Treasurer for the Adventist Church in the Middle East, Homer Trecartin, says many young Adventists leave the country to avoid being drafted into the required three-year military service and taking university classes and exams held on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath. Berbawy says other challenges include reaching a country of 75 million people with only eight pastors. Traditional evangelism methods are outlawed in the Arabic country and only eight of the Adventist Church's 24 buildings are in good enough shape to be called houses of worship; many have been neglected and are in need of major repair, while others need to be torn down. But the series is one of a few points of hope for the church in the country, church leaders say. The Adventist Church in Egypt is applying for a permit to launch a college to train future church leaders. The theology college, which the church is allowed to run without governmental interference, will provide Nile Union Academy graduates with a recognized degree in Egypt. "We just need everybody's prayers," Berbawy says. "The challenges here are great." ------------------------------------------------------- 15 Million Adventists, Who's Counting? Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [Elizabeth Lechleitner/ANN] ------------------------------------------------------- Church membership records at the Phoenix Camelback Seventh-day Adventist Church in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, top out at a weighty 1,000. But weekly head counts in the pews reveal an average Sabbath worship service draws only between 350 and 400 members. The church's senior pastor, Charles White, admits the church's membership roster hasn't been updated for 15 years. "There's a lot of dead wood in the books," he says. Church officials say it's common for only 30 to 50 percent of a church's membership to regularly attend services. Last October, the church's Office of Archives and Statistics (AST) reported there were nearly 14.4 million baptized members of the Adventist world church. The church estimates that number reached 15 million early this year, a figure AST director Bert Haloviak says is "fairly accurate." Not so in 2000, when, despite glowing reports of church growth worldwide, church officials suspected the books might be padding the truth. "We had relaxed on membership audits for many, many years," says Matthew A. Bediako, world church secretary. "You expect that the secretaries' reports are accurate, but when we looked closer we found unreasonable statistics." G.T. Ng, associate secretary of the world church, believes the church is morally obligated to accurately report membership. "If membership is bloated, who are we fooling? Ourselves?" Back in 2000, Ng worked as secretary for the church's Southern Asia-Pacific region, an area at the time fraught with sketchy statistics gathering. He welcomed a call from world church headquarters to conduct comprehensive membership audits of the church's 13 world regions -- a "painful, painstaking process," Haloviak remembers. Ng recalls the church asking regional secretaries, "Please don't give us any more lies; give us honest, realistic figures." Hendrik Sumendap, secretary for the church's Southern Asia-Pacific region, says audits there resulted in a "very discouraging" loss of 300,000 people. In 2002, Haloviak says such results began showing up in the church's statistical reports, steadily chipping away at the church's annual growth rate, which dropped from 5.42 percent in 2001 to last year's 3.32 percent. Early reports for 2007, however, indicate a climb to a 4.98 percent growth rate. Seven years after the major membership audit push, Haloviak says some regions still haven't cooperated, tempering the recent rallying of church growth rates. "If you look at their statistics, it's beyond obvious their numbers are way out of line," Haloviak says. "It's clear that when the secretaries of some of these regions are told to do audits, it just doesn't register." Separate from 2000's sweeping membership audits, each of the church's regional secretaries is supposed to submit quarterly membership updates to church headquarters. These reports keep track of baptisms, membership transfers, deaths, missing members and losses. Kathleen Jones, who handles general statistics for the world church, says figures aren't always accurate. "Sometimes the columns don't even add up," Jones says. In other cases, entire conferences fail to report anything for an entire quarter, sometimes due to staff shortages. Jones says she wishes the church offered more incentives to get people to cooperate. Church statisticians estimate at least 10 people die per group of 1,000 every year. When one regional secretary reported 0.6 deaths some years ago, Haloviak remembers the excuse the secretary gave for such a "preposterous" statistic: "'He didn't die; he just had a really bad headache.'" Ng believes individual churches should be "cleaning the books" on a yearly basis, as recommended by the Church Manual. But deciding when to remove an inactive member from the records is agonizing, he admits. "The purpose of audits is to redeem, not to cut people off." Harold Wollan, secretary for the church's Trans-European region, agrees. "We do not encourage just dropping members for not showing up [sabbath morning]." Ng worries that some churches, hoping to accelerate the audit process, will in one fell swoop remove all missing or inactive members from the record. "There are no shortcuts to a proper audit," he says. In North America, 53 of the region's 58 conferences use eAdventist, a secure computer software program implemented in 2003 to streamline accurate record keeping. Church clerks can enter membership votes electronically, replacing traditional paper records, says Nancy Lamoreaux, the church's North American director of Information Technology Services. Sherri Ingram-Hudgins, eAdventist programmer analyst, says eAdventist's role is limited to recording votes taken at the local church level. "There's no giant behemoth out there going around arbitrarily wiping people off the records." What Ng calls the "sacred job" of accurately managing membership is ultimately up to local churches. White, the Phoenix Camelback church pastor, says inaccurate membership records are inevitable. Without an associate pastor or membership committee, he says tracking every lapsed member is simply out of the question. "I've become more diligent in keeping up with members over the seven years I've been here, but there are a lot of people who have been absent for 10, 15 years," White says. Church secretary Cheryl Oberlick says when elders visit such members, positive reception is rare. "We've found people as a rule prefer not to be contacted," Oberlick says. "If there is any contact, they want to initiate it." White agrees efforts to keep current with church membership are important, but far from top priority. "It's a matter of time management; we would rather get our active, current members involved in ministry and small groups," he says. Sometimes, however, Ng says inaccurate records are deliberate. "I can think of instances when local administration told a church, 'Don't you dare do a membership audit.'" Ng says he can understand the motivation: when membership drops the pastor can look bad. And, he adds, because representation in elected church positions is based on membership, no pastor or conference worker wants to stymie his chances of election. Ng and other church officials have observed that when leaders take an honest look at membership, they help ensure the church's credibility. Regional secretaries such as Barry Oliver, who works in the church's South Pacific region, also report audits result in a dramatic shift in church focus: from ratcheting up baptism rates to nurturing and retaining active members. Ng agrees. "Baptism is important, but when you look at the [bible], you see the goal is not only to baptize, but to make disciples." If the church more diligently practices "responsible evangelism," he says, the need for membership audits will decrease significantly. ------------------------------------------------------- You Have A Job Evaluation; Does Your Minister? Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [Taashi Rowe/ANN] ------------------------------------------------------- Last year in Canada several of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's administrative units attempted to entrench annual performance evaluations for pastors into the Church Manual, the church's policy handbook. But many clergy balked, becoming openly defensive in meetings. Others started e-mail chains against the proposal, while some accused administrators of protecting the church "at the expense of the little guy." The evaluations were nothing to fear, says Dan Jackson, president of the Adventist Church in Canada. Instead, job evaluations were designed to protect the church from disgruntled employees who were fired and protect pastors from potential egregious actions from administrators. Only one conference, the Maritimes Conference on the East Coast, implemented the change. "I don't know of any pastor who was relieved of responsibility as a result of an evaluation," Jackson says. "That's not the point of an evaluation. It's supposed to build up our pastors, not to bring them down." Although the church's Ministerial Association provides an evaluation manual for helping pastors, churches and administrators with the evaluation process, job evaluations for pastors are not required by the Church Manual. In the last three years, Jackson says four fired pastors have filed suits requiring the church in Canada to shell out as much as CN$100,000. The cases were all settled out of court. Tying a performance evaluation to an employment contract could have protected the church from the suits, Jackson says. Ricardo Graham, secretary for the church's Pacific Union Conference in the western United States, can only recall three out of 130 pastors being fired in his 11 years as an administrator in that region. But those dismissals were not related to job performance evaluations. "So as long as there was progress we were willing to work with pastors," Graham says. "We even paid to have some of them retrained." Jackson says those who were let go from the church in Canada lost their jobs because of impropriety, laziness or fraud, and not because of a bad evaluation. "We want to hope such things don't exist in our church but the fact is we have had illustrations of every one of those things," Jackson says. In North America evaluations are usually a local issue because pastors are hired by local conferences, church administrators say. With the Adventist Church having more than 500 local conferences and missions worldwide, the differences in handling evaluations can vary. Some conferences allow their church members or board members to evaluate their pastors. Others ask their pastors to evaluate themselves. In some regions of the world there is no check at all. Some argue an evaluation doesn't have to exist solely for administration to cover legal tracks but could benefit the person being evaluated "I would be excited about being evaluated," says Walt Groff, pastor of the Sunset Oaks Adventist Church in Rocklin, California. "I believe in a formal evaluation but give it some teeth. ... Use this valuable tool to make our pastors the best in the world." In Canada, Jackson says he thinks pastors might have rejected a formal policy on evaluations because they didn't have enough time to adjust to the idea. He also believes pastors saw it as an attempt to move the role of ministers into "just another profession," and less of a sacred calling. Such a trend would be disconcerting for Mark Johnson, vice president of the Adventist Church in British Columbia, Canada. He believes sacrificing spiritual emphasis will result in ministry like "running a Wal-Mart chain." But good management skills are desirable in a pastor says Skip Bell, professor of church leadership and administration at the Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University and former president of the church's New York Conference. He says the school is equipping pastors with an arsenal of skills that puts them on the same tier as leaders who run successful businesses. "Spiritual and theological formation are key to the development of the pastor," Bell says. "That means pastors must develop characteristics that equip them for service." Qualifications, he says, should include effective preaching, empowering people, listening and caring, working well with different age groups, and changing the status quo. "We feel we develop people along these lines and don't believe we're asking too much," Bell says. "A well-prepared pastor has the potential of responding to the greatest leadership challenge in the world." While not everyone agrees with evaluations, Jackson says he feels all members have the right to expect a certain level of performance from church employees. "There has to be a way to ensure that," he says. Trevor Kunene, secretary for the church in Southern Africa, says the church there conducts regular evaluations of its ministers. "Evaluations are not about helping you keep your job," Kunene says. "They are supposed to help you improve your performance in helping prepare people for the Second Coming of God." ------------------------------------------------------- ADRA Observes World Refugee Day Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [Ansel Oliver/ANN] ------------------------------------------------------- The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) joined the international community June 20 in observing World Refugee Day, a day that honors the courage, persistence, and strength of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the world. ADRA's humanitarian initiatives reach hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs, both by improving their living conditions in camps and then by helping them reintegrate into their communities and reestablish their lives once they have returned home. A refugee, as defined by the 1951 Refugee Convention set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is someone who, based on a well-founded fear of persecution due to his or her race, religion, nationality, particular social affiliation, or political stance, is outside of his or her country of origin and is unable or unwilling to request protection from his or her home country. Internally displaced persons have also fled their homes, due to war, natural disaster, famine, or other emergency, but still remain within the national boundaries of their home country. In 2006 there were more than 14 million refugees and 24 million displaced persons worldwide, according UNHCR and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. ADRA is currently working with refugee and IDP communities that include Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Colombia. In the Darfur region of western Sudan, ADRA has distributed 35 tons of emergency supplies for more than 16,000 people. A project is underway to construct 450 latrines and 70 wells in southern and western Darfur to meet the water and sanitation needs in the affected regions. Helping to stem the spread of disease, ADRA has already built 3,500 toilets in camps and villages in western Darfur. An estimated 45,000 people in three IDP camps there have benefited from this initiative. In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, ADRA is providing microcredit and literacy programs to IDPs and has installed 300 hand pumps in camps and settlements. ADRA has provided relief assistance for camps south of Khartoum, in addition to building a farming school and implementing various water projects in the region. For more information on ADRA's work with refugees and IDPs, visit www.adra.org. ------------------------------------------------------- Adventists Around the World Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [ANN Staff] ------------------------------------------------------- Church's Southern Asia President Crosses 10-Year Mark For 10 years, Ron Watts has helped push leadership and infrastructure improvements as president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Southern Asia region. He still doesn't let anyone leave his office without a personal prayer. During his two terms the church has established new offices, schools and churches in the region, which includes Bhutan, India, the Maldives and Nepal. Additional training seminars and employee workshops have yielded better-equipped church workers in the area, church leaders said. New Principal for Adventist College in India Students at Northeast Adventist College in Meghalaya, India, have a new principal, alumnus Berun Sangma, the college's 25th leader since its establishment in 1941. Sangma, who most recently served as secretary for the church's Northeast India Union, holds a master's degree in theology. Northeast Adventist College is a Seventh-day Adventist-owned boarding school in the Khasi-Jaintiya Hills of Northeast India that offers college courses at the bachelor's level. ------------------------------------------------------- Correction: Our apologies to readers and Jonas Arrais for an error in the story “Editor Arrais Has Increased Lay Leader Magazine Subscriptions 20-Fold” in the June 12 bulletin. The story incorrectly stated there are 250,000 local Adventist churches. The number 250,000 should have referred to local church elders worldwide. There are about 123,000 Adventist churches and companies worldwide. ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2007 by Adventist News Network. 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA 20904-6600 phone: (301) 680-6306. e-mail address: adventistnews@gc.adventist.org. ANN World News Bulletin is a review of news and information issued by the Communication department from the Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters and released as part of the service of Adventist News Network. It is made available primarily to religious news editors. Our news includes dispatches from the church's international offices and the world headquarters. Adventist News Network is a registered trademark of the General Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Reproduction Requirements: Reproduction of information in this article is encouraged. When reproducing this material, in full or in part, the words "Source: Adventist News Network" must appear under the headline or immediately following the article. The words "Source: Adventist News Network" must be given equal prominence to any other source that is also acknowledged. 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