By Jim Wibberding

Before you take that title and sign me off as apostate, please hear me out. Oh, I’m not about to walk it back. I am convinced that we have lost our direction in too much of North American Adventism. I name that sad reality not to discredit the church but because I hold a deep belief in what it once was and can be again.

The Seventh-day Adventist faith emerged in the 1860s as a movement driven by a passion to speak God’s wisdom to the questions of its time. They called that pursuit an exercise in “present truth”—a phrase indicating both its developing nature and its contemporary potency. A pair of companion concepts that gave present truth its direction were life trans- formation and the Second Coming of Jesus. In sum, it was about the restoration of humanity, starting today and with that final fix in view.

This restorative bent led early Adventists to get behind correctives that would improve life for fellow human beings. In a time when education was hard to come by, health practices were debilitating, women were routinely treated like children, and alcoholism was the norm, Adventists started schools, built health centers, fought for women’s rights, and advanced prohibition. It wasn’t perfect but the purpose was abundantly clear: Partner with God to restore humanity.

Tragically, the end of Adventism’s first century found us still answering the last century’s questions without significantly expanding the pursuit of truth to the present. It also found us maintaining the early adversarial approach to institutions and ideas that inhibit the restoration of humanity, but with more focus on naming the enemy than on lifting people up. Moralism with little focus on love.

The next half century has moved us away from loveless moralism toward an uneasily generic Christianity. But, people don’t stay long in something without purpose. The vacuum will be filled with the nearest thing of substance or we wander away.

Many have wandered away, leaving North American Adventism with its first decline in the population to membership ratio since it began. Others have gravitated back to the moralism of the last century and redoubled efforts to answer the questions of that time. Larger numbers have adopted the wider evangelical political agenda, walking party lines on abortion, gay issues, the ten commandments in government, and the like.

To their credit, those who return to the moralism of yesteryear can claim a distinctive Adventist purpose. Those who parrot the current evangelical agenda can claim con- temporary relevance.

But . . . something is missing. The soul of the Advent movement is missing. That passion for the substantive restoration of human beings.

At a time when Jesus predicted that the love of many would grow cold (Matthew 24:12), we can’t afford to let our faith be a justification for cold treatment of sinners. At a time when big questions have been raised by the human struggle for a more abundant life, we can’t be passive either. We must learn to love first and to share God’s vision for a better life as an expression of that love.

How? The global solution is a local solution. It starts with loving those in our neighborhoods and those in our churches. Restorative love will lead us to the next steps and, within the warmth of those relationships, plenty of chances to share a better way will emerge.

So, unload that burden to decry someone’s sin from afar or to tweet about how Starbucks celebrates Christmas. Instead, love your neighbor and the restorative spirit of Adventism will begin to stir in you.

Jim Wibberding is lead pastor at Journey Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kelso, Washington. He writes at jimwibberding.blogspot.com. This article is used with permission.