Blog

26 Apr

WORD GENETICS: A PODCAST SERIES ON THE IMPACT OF SOCIETY ON ADVENTIST YOUTH

In

RMCNews – Loveland, Colorado … What started as a simple seed of inspiration has grown into a multi-episode podcast titled Word Genetics exploring the foundations of everyday conversations and interactions of today’s Adventist youth. Campion Academy senior Tiffany Mogaka, founder and host of the podcast, brings in her teen peers to cover “the fun, the serious, and everything-in-between” topics affecting youth in an open-forum style podcast.

“When we met with Jill Harlow, Campion Academy communication director, a few weeks ago, she wondered if RMC communication would be interested in showcasing the creativity and engagement of her students in media. After receiving Word Genetics, we were truly impressed by how grown up the conversation was. Likely, you will enjoy these episodes and more are to come,” said Rajmund Dabrowski, RMC communication director.

Get a peek into the thoughts and concerns of Adventist youth and their early walk with God in this ongoing podcast series. They have a lot to say, so we will let them do the talking. Listen today by clicking on the episode titles below.

Podcast Introduction

Episode 1: A Cheap Click at What Cost

Episode 2: Imposter Syndrome, Beauty Standards, and Insecurities

—RMCNews. Graphic supplied.

25 Apr

CAMP CONNECTIONS

In

Brandon Westgate – Denver, Colorado … The youngest members of our church are currently making plans for the summer. For many of them, the choice to spend a week (or two) at summer camp is a high priority. You might wonder why spending a week in a rustic cabin in the mountains disconnected from internet, social media, and cell phones would be so appealing. The answer is that when our campers disconnect from those things, they make new connections, “camp connections,” if you will. So, what are some of these camp connections?

CAMPERS: Our campers make connections with their fellow campers. They laugh together, eat together, play together, worship together, sing together, and are just present together. Without the distractions of a screen, campers spend actual face time with each other. They discover that many of their peers are struggling with some of the same issues they are. They find that they can have honest conversations about faith, doubt, social issues, and a variety of other topics. They build friendships and feel a sense of commonality that they may never experience at home or church or school.

COUNSELORS: Our campers connect with their counselors. The entire staff at camp is a counselor by title or by proxy and is dedicated to the safety and spiritual growth of our campers. They are trained and committed to pouring the love of Christ into our campers. They accomplish this by listening, being present in the moment, offering counsel when needed, setting an example, and creating an atmosphere of acceptance. When young people feel heard and appreciated, they feel safe, and these safe spaces lead to candid conversation and connections between counselor and camper. Our counselors then point our campers to Christ in hopes that the counselor-camper connection becomes a counselor-camper-Christ connection.

CHRIST: So how does that happen? Well, worship isn’t an event at camp, it is a part of the culture. We endeavor to keep our minds upon Jesus resulting in impromptu conversations about faith, sporadic outbursts of praise through singing, and random formation of prayer groups. Our purpose at camp is to make it easy for our campers to know God. The presence of God becomes palpable as we engage in high energy worship and pray for the Lord to invade our hearts as our pastor shares a message of grace. Our campers and our staff make a connection with Christ that can result in paradigm-shifting transformation or a deepening of a faith that just needed a boost!

COMMUNITY: Throughout the summer, as our staff and campers spend time building relationships, we unwittingly create a community of safety. It is a community that values them and welcomes them to be the person Christ is calling them to be. The camp community is a safe space to inquire, to give an opinion, to share a present life challenge that is threatening to overwhelm, and to receive encouragement and assurance that God is ultimately “for” us, and not against us. This community is only possible because of the connections that are made between campers, counselors, and Christ.

The result of the camp experience is campers feeling connected to something bigger than themselves and to an indwelling God who loves them with an everlasting love. Connection is something every person innately yearns for, and connection is the thing that we strive to facilitate during summer camp and beyond.

—Brandon Westgate is the RMC youth department director. Photos supplied.

Summer camp registration is open! Click here or scan the QR code below to reserve your spot today.

25 Apr

COMMENTARY: I SAW JESUS … ON THE PLAYGROUND

In

By Micheal Goetz

 

From the high side of the parking lot that the church sits on, I get to look across and watch the fun. Many an afternoon one would be able to see the World Cup or Super Bowl unfolding out in the grass. That’s not all, over on the playground great feats of daring and exploration or a full throttle game of tag are taking place. It’s a busy place. But in the hurry and scurry of the recess periods come beautiful moments that lodge themselves in your heart.

 

The time a young girl, realizing that if she stayed on the swing another student wouldn’t get a turn, leaps off inviting the other to take her spot before running off in search of another thrill. Or at that same swing set, an older girl took her precious free time to push a younger student.

 

The time that the “it” in the game of tag took a break because the “pursued” requested a timeout to catch their breath.

 

The time the boys encouraged a younger and slower student to join in the game of football just because no one should be left out.

 

Certainly, there is still times homework isn’t done or patience gives way. We are talking about little humans, right!? But it’s in these times, these unassuming acts, that I have seen Jesus on our school playground. And in a world that is broken in every way possible, our playground speaks to me of a reality of hope.

 

—Micheal Goetz is the senior pastor at Campion Adventist Church. Reprinted from HMS Headlines e-newsletter. Photos by Kari Lange and Aubrey Nelson.

25 Apr

JUNIOR DEACONS: CREATING NEW LEADERS IN THE MINISTRY OF SERVICE

In

Liz Kirkland – Littleton, Colorado … There are people that “work behind the scenes” at every church to handle its functions and operations. Most of their efforts and numerous hours are unknown and unnoticed. One such group are the deacons and deaconesses, called to a ministry of service and following Jesus’ example of meeting people’s physical needs and then their spiritual ones.

While traditional roles have generally included greeting and ushering, church property maintenance, security, baptism, and communion assistance, and caring for the physical necessities of the congregation, many churches have expanded the role to use their spiritual gifts. It can become a ministry tending to the emotional and social needs of the church.

Deacons and deaconesses have joined pastors and elders visiting church members and those in need and are a place of support in the cycle of life and death. And, with the demands on today’s pastors’ time and energy, they have become a support team for those who have given so much to tend to God’s children. And this legacy of service and support is being passed onto the next generation of church leaders.

At Littleton Seventh-day Adventist Church, junior deacons and deaconesses have been called into action in the ministry of service. At each Sabbath service, the junior team works along side the adult team. Wandee Kirkland, head deacon at Littleton Church, recalls watching his father act as deacon in the Potomac Conference as a youth in the church. His father’s example set the path for his leadership role as he became an adult and a father.

He shared this about his time as a deacon: “Anyone can be a deacon. It is just about service and doing God’s work. It is, however, more than just a title, collecting offerings, and setting up events. It’s meeting the needs of the congregation and church staff. The pastoral staff are the shepherds, and we are the sheep dogs. My two sons, Turi and Didrik, are junior deacons at the church, and I am proud to watch them heed the call of service.”

The Kirklands are not the only ones sharing the family legacy of service. Deacon duties for Sabbath service on April 22 were held by Kris Fritz and his son Owen and Gary Treft and his son Spencer.

Kris Fritz shared this when asked what his time as deacon has meant to him: “It has created a community of men in the church that may have never connected otherwise.” He has involved his son to get him active in the church and learn responsibility.

Gary Treft, when asked the same question, said, “My gifts are not to be upfront but to help out as I can.”

The impact of the duty is not just felt by the adults. Littleton Church junior deacon Turi Kirkland said, “There are always things going on in the church that need help from junior deacons. I feel proud to help and not just be a spectator.” Turi shares the junior deacon role with is younger brother Didrik who said, “What I like most is that I am doing something to help that God would like rather than me just running around with my friends.”

Junior deacon Owen Fritz said, “I like to be there and help. It’s fun to count the money.” When asked what his favorite part of deacon duty was, Spencer Treft said, “My favorite part is cleaning up.”

We are reminded in 1 Corinthians 12:12 that “For even as the body is one yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” We give gratitude to those who have heeded the call, both young and older, to be this part of the body of Christ working toward the common goal of the church of making disciples of Jesus Christ.

—Liz Kirkland is the RMC communication assistant and a member of Littleton Seventh-day Adventist Church. Photos by Liz Kirkland.

Spencer Treft (far left) and Owen Fritz (far right) demonstrating their greeting skills with head deacon Wandee Kirkland.
24 Apr

ALL THOSE TIKTOKS AND STUFF

In

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack
A crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

– Anthem, Leonard Cohen

 

His demeanor displayed anger as he said, “Our young people are heavily influenced by today’s culture. All those TikToks and stuff. It takes them away from the church.”

As usual, when something goes wrong, it’s the messenger that gets a black eye.

There was a day when I was learning what it meant to be in the world. It was my own church where I was growing up that made sure I heard it loudly and clearly. Years later, I thought of it as an upside-down education. There was an extreme lesson in the way a church elder made sure that girls would not be allowed inside the sanctuary in miniskirts. He stood by the door on Sabbath morning with a ruler.

As I was on my way to study in England in 1966, my own father was worried that I might walk off the Adventist “straight and narrow” road. “You are inclined to imitate those beatniks,” he often said. He asked one of the church leaders living in England, Bert B. Beach, to look after me. Obviously, I needed a chaperone.

My dad told him that I tended “to enjoy too much of that pop music,” which was partially true, and my hair was longer than what Adventist youth ought to have. “You look like one of the Beatles,” he would tell me. A few years later, I was nearly sent home from university unless I got a haircut. It was regarded as a bad influence on other students in an Adventist school, so I was told. Much, much later, Bert jokingly remarked, “You enjoyed that music, didn’t you? Today, I must admit,” he said, “their music is closer to what I imagine we will hear in heaven.”

When talking about culture, through which all of us meander, whether it is art, music, literature, or fashion, my own experience with it was an expression of who I was. My own Bible study made me realize that my religion is not expressed by the volume of religious words I use. Such words and concepts come when they are needed. Christian presence and its media content makes a difference when motivated by the values of one’s faith.

If I were to evaluate the capital of my spiritual country, it would have to be Scripture. The location of my geographical bearing is centered in the Holy Word. And Scripture is at the foundation of the culture by which I am surrounded, that I know and respect.

There was a moment that made the Scripture meaningful for me, and meaningful in ways that charted each of my todays and tomorrows.

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, I was involved with the life and work of Poland’s premier artist, Czesław Niemen. He was a composer, a singer, a painter, a poet, and a friend. I helped him with his professional activities, traveled with him, even organized a tour or two, translating into English some of his lyrics. I will dare to say, what Bob Dylan is to America, Niemen was to Poland …

Niemen’s art was serious. His was a spiritual presence for the nation—a contemporary expression of who the Poles are, coupled with a call to continue to revise our lives. He sang: “Strange is this world, a world where a man hates his fellow man …” He called for a revival where values are reclaimed. Where we move toward each other and respond to our common needs. Niemen’s faith and his religious background made him a bridge builder between the world of needs and the world of God’s compassion.

Enter a day when I decided to share with him my personal worldview, a view described by singularity of purpose as defined by my Bible. Niemen was raised in a home and community where a priest read what he chose from the Scriptures. I introduced Niemen to my Bible. I said: “Czesław, read it for yourself.”

It was a few days after I gave him a brand-new translation of the Bible that I saw him again and he said: “Why did you hide this treasure from me for so long? Are you serious about what you stand for? Listen to this.” He opened the Book of Job, chapter 29. I’ve never forgotten to go back to that passage again and again. From that day in 1979, I was given my marching orders … Niemen impacted my life by pointing to an alignment of the internalization of practicing and sharing what God says in His Word.

“Good faith Christians are rounded in Scripture and practice the art of seeing people,” words that polish my Christian attitude and put me where I am.

Our culture always gets richer when we base it on God’s Word. It takes practice to make a difference. It requires creative relevance. Consider the attitude of Apostle Paul: Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. … I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it! (I Cor 9:20-23 MSG).

Rajmund Dabrowski is editor of Mountain Views. Email him at: [email protected]

24 Apr

A CULTURED VERB

In

In my head, there is a difference between a “reason” and an “excuse.”

A reason is a good excuse. An excuse is not always a good reason.

I like reasons, but I don’t usually like excuses. Although, I will acknowledge respecting a well-crafted and clever excuse even if I don’t believe it to be a valid reason.

Also, a reason is something that prevented us from doing what we set out to do. An excuse is what we provided to get out of doing something we needed to do but didn’t want to do.

Or an excuse is what we told ourselves so that we could justify doing things a certain way even if there wasn’t a true reason to do so.

The dog ate my homework. I caught all the stoplights. The cops were really out in force today. I was hangry. This is a therapy animal, I swear. All common excuses for something we didn’t get right. Sometimes they are technically true, and sometimes they are complete fabrications.

Which brings me to the last difference between a reason and an excuse.

One is honest and true, and the other one is a lie by intent whether technically true or not.

Unfortunately, I have been guilty a time or two of leaning on excuses when I didn’t have a good reason.

And now that I have clarified for you how I see these two concepts in my own head, I want to use this as a segue to what this article is really about, which isn’t reason or excuses specifically.

When I was a kid in church, I remember sitting through the Mission Spotlight videos that they used to show a lot. I’m sure some churches still do. They were stories of missionaries going to some country and starting churches and baptizing people as converts from some version of tribal paganism. And I remember thinking, even back then, that there were always some similarities between all the recorded stories even though I didn’t really understand what it meant. As an adult, however, I see those stories very differently.

The missionaries would do their work and the video would show their success. And their success was all these former tribes sitting in rudimentary churches on rudimentary pews singing American church songs (sometimes even in English) wearing shirts, ties, and, sometimes, full-on suits and American style churchy cloths.

I’ve had this conversation several times with other pastors and chaplains, and we’ve all recognized some of the same things. What many of these missionaries were doing wasn’t simply teaching these people about Jesus, they were attempting to change their culture. We know this because there isn’t one good reason to make them dress like us when they weren’t already. And they didn’t need to learn English to sing songs about God. They didn’t need to adopt the American Adventist order of service to worship God, and they didn’t even need to do it in any overtly church oriented way.

These people had a culture. They didn’t need to look and act American to meet God. As a result of these practices, we have found that when some of these converts eventually come to America, they are disappointed that we aren’t all like what the missionaries said. Because, as it turns out, the missionaries weren’t all using accurate theology and, instead, were teaching them a version of Adventist cultural Christianity as opposed to introducing them to Jesus.

Ask any pastor how difficult navigating imported theology is within their church.

Now, I want to be very clear here. I’m not against missionaries. I’m not against cultures being altered to create better environments for people to be healthy and thrive.

But there is a difference between helping lift a people up and simply imposing our comfort level upon them.

And now, 630 words in, I get to the actual purpose of this article. What are we actually doing as Adventists to contribute positively to the world around us, including here in our own country?

To Adventism’s credit, we have a lot of hospitals here in America and have done health work around the world. We do have an education system that has done some good as well. I want to acknowledge these things. These efforts aren’t perfect, but no effort is.

But neither of those are large culture impacting phenomenon.

Adventists are known for a couple of things primarily by those who are not. Sabbath keeping and vegetarianism.

Adventists have been leaning into vegetarianism since the late 1800s. And yet we had almost nothing to do with huge rise in vegetarianism in America that has taken place over the last 25 years. That has been driven by other forces. Eastern spiritualities account for some of it, and a combination of better mainstream health research combined with companies willing to cash in on it by utilizing better science to create quality non-meat foods.

Other factors are in play as well including counterculture reactions against excessive lifestyles and the accumulation of material things. The need to live a simple, stress reduced, and healthy life. The roots of some of this can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s in the peace and love era.

Where it doesn’t trace back to is Adventism. We’ve been making and selling vegetarian foods for well over 100 years that anyone can buy … as long as they weren’t looking in any mainstream grocery stores. In fact, you usually couldn’t find any of it outside of a conference office or local church, with some rare exceptions.

Adventism had a useful health message the whole time, and we did nothing but try to use it as a tool to get baptisms. Health became a spiritual test as opposed to simply trying to alter the culture of our world’s health.

This is simply an example of how Adventism has approached culture. We somehow took the idea of being “in the world, but not of the world,” a saying that does not actually exist in the Bible but is an interpretation of a broader point, and instead just said, “stay out of the world.”

We interpreted it in an ostrich head-in-sand sort of way. This mentality resulted in us using missions and evangelism to try to change culture into Adventist culture by pulling people out of their own culture.

When we try to impact culture what we are really doing is trying to make people like us and bring them to us so that we don’t have to change ourselves and go to them. And by “go to them” I don’t mean travel to their country. I mean live with them. Be a part of their lives. Lift them up to be the best they can be in their setting, instead of forcing them into our own setting.

This is why I don’t like the term “culture” as we use it. It’s a noun. It has a static definition. It’s about preserving what was. It’s an excuse for being a certain way and not moving forward to become more. It promotes stagnation and stagnation promotes death.

But culture is also a verb. In this usage it’s about creating an environment where growth can happen. It’s how live bacteria are created that we use to benefit digestion, for example. It’s a biochemical process.

Maybe instead of impacting culture or changing culture, both noun realities, we could instead culture our people and our towns and our cities and our churches and our communities. What if we fostered an environment where people could grow uninhibited and healthy without someone holding them back and tethering them to the past? Anchoring them to bad theology and isolated, controlled realities?

Until we change the Us vs Them mentality that drives us organizationally, we will never truly be relevant to the culture around us because we will never have anything meaningful to contribute to the growth of humanity. We will be too busy fortifying our walls.

But if we could change our corporate mindset, we might stop making excuses for not truly being a part of our communities and as a result might finally have a good reason for existing
as a group.

And I do like good reasons.

Tony Hunter is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and a hospice chaplain working for Gateway Hospice in Northern Colorado. Tony, his wife Nirma, and daughter Amryn live in Firestone, Colorado. Email him at: [email protected]  

24 Apr

CHURCH AND CULTURE: REACTING OR RESPONDING

In

Recently, I was stretched. If you have ever been there, you know what I am talking about. I was in a situation where it felt like I was possibly (probably) in over my head. It was one of those moments when I felt like something had to give, someone needed to do something. I didn’t know exactly what to do or how to respond, but I felt compelled to do something. I realized that in the act of preparing to respond and then ultimately responding, even though it was not an easy situation to deal with, I grew.

But maybe that is the point of being stretched. When we are challenged to think outside of our wheelhouse and engage with a situation or a topic that we are not comfortable sorting through, we create a fertile place to cultivate new thoughts on the issue in a way that allows for the creation of new conversations.

I was stretched when asked to share my thoughts on the topic: “How is the church today impacting the culture?” In the interests of transparency, I need to say that my initial reaction was a negative thought. I said to myself, is the church impacting the culture? I think it would be a much easier article to write if the question was How is the culture impacting the church?, which is exactly what came out of my mouth to the person who asked me to write the article. It was my reaction to the request. But as I have considered the question, and pondered it for a few weeks now, I wanted to respond to this important question instead of reacting to it.

I find that many of us tend to react instead of responding. We hear a question and we already have an answer before we have really thought through all the ramifications of our answer. We react. A healthy response generally takes time and thoughtful consideration.

So, how is the church impacting the culture? For purposes of clarity, the “church” in this article is not viewed as some institution or organization. The church in the context of scripture and in this article is, at its core, a people who have a faith relationship with Jesus. Also, for clarity, I am only addressing specifically how Seventh-day Adventist people are impacting the culture.

As Seventh-day Adventists, per our statement of beliefs, we have a couple of definitions when it comes to describing the “church.” One of those is the Seventh-day Adventist Church organization, the other is much broader. Belief number 13 of the 28 fundamental beliefs begins with the opening sentence, “The universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ … .” So, we believe in a universal church, or group of people who have a faith relationship with Jesus, regardless of what denomination they claim as their faith identity. Since that group covers a wide array of beliefs and practices, I will limit my article to how Seventh-day Adventist believers are making an impact on the culture in which they live.1

From the inception of the Seventh-day Adventist church in 1863, and as we celebrate 160 years of organization on May 21, 2023, its people have been advocates for cultural change where it was needed. Ellen G. White, Joseph Bates, and many other of our pioneers were staunch abolitionists in an era where slavery was an accepted practice. It was not popular to speak against such a powerful cultural institution, yet they did so with bravery and wisdom. The temperance movement also helped shape our fledgling denomination as many church members were speaking out against vice and teaching their neighbors about the benefits of healthy lifestyle choices. They spoke to issues of violence as well.

Fast forward 160 years and some of those same issues that the church was combating then, we are still combating now. Instead of tobacco, which has mostly lost its attraction to the culture today, we now are dealing with a Fentanyl epidemic. Instead of open slavery, we have human trafficking. Statistics tell us that there are more people enslaved today, estimated at 40 million people, that at any other time in human history.2

So, how is the church responding to these crises? Regarding the drug crisis and addictive behavior, we could react by saying something mean-spirited about how people just need to make better life choices, which would not be helpful. Or we could get together and do something big. I am proud to share that, as a church, we responded to the challenge instead of reacting and have established a global network of support. Local worship centers can establish a recovery group in their area to offer personal support to help those in their sphere of influence find a path to wholeness.3

Regarding domestic and other forms of violence, our church is responding as well. The global initiative End it Now, extending to more than 200 countries, is our effort to raise awareness and advocate for the end of violence around the world.4

There are many other ways that the church is impacting the culture as well. Things like food banks, assisting people who are experiencing homelessness, chaplaincy care, health seminars, educational scholarships, and, of course, offering spiritual guidance in local worship communities.

But there is always a tension that exists that we tend to not talk about. How should we respond to some of the issues we face in the context of a soon-coming Jesus? If the world is soon to end, and we believe that it will only get worse before it gets better, then how involved should we get with these issues? Are these things merely distractions that pull our time, efforts, and resources away from our core mission? I believe those questions are worth considering.

A reaction statement may be that we should just focus on sharing the gospel. A thoughtful response may consider all these questions and ask another question. Could it be that finding a way to get more involved with the people impacted by these issues is what our mission truly is at its core, to love God and love people? I believe it is.

How will we respond to some of the many other cultural challenges moving forward is yet to be determined. I pray that we respond like we have historically, from a place of deep love and commitment to God and the Great Commission, and with an abiding and deep compassion for people who are struggling to sort through this thing we call life.

Brandon Westgate is the RMC youth director. Email him at: [email protected]

1  https://www.adventist.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ADV-28Beliefs2020.pdf

2  https://50forfreedom.org/modern-slavery/

3  https://www.adventistrecoveryglobal.org/

4  https://www.enditnow.org/

24 Apr

SABBATH – A GIFT OF COUNTERCULTURAL TIME

In

On Monday, January 2, 2023, The Guardian Online published an Op/Ed piece entitled “Is America suffering a ‘social recession’?” by Anton Cebalo.1

He examined how recent polling and studies have shown declines in all social relationships, a rise in mental health issues, and that we are witnessing the first declines in U.S. life expectancy since 1915-18. Conversations I have had with friends also make me see that many people are experiencing exhaustion, alienation, and loneliness. To me, this now seems to be an endemic societal problem in 2023.

This story from The Guardian and my experience of friends and colleagues expressing their own difficulties leads me to believe our current world finds itself deeply troubled as we humans forget to pay attention to time, and our need for rest, renewal, and thankfulness.

In our Seventh-day Adventist heritage, we have the Sabbath. And it can be a powerful antidote to this sense of exhaustion and alienation.

I think, however, that in part, the Sabbath’s value in counteracting what ails our society depends on how we embrace the Sabbath and its message. I have found that when I properly value and embrace the Sabbath’s vision of remembering time, intentionally resting, and cultivating gratitude, the Sabbath helps me create the sort of balanced life that can be an answer to the exhaustion and alienation described in the Guardian’s story.

I invite you to meditate briefly on each of these three glimpses of Sabbath blessing.

Let’s start with the question of remembering time.

Swedish author Bodil Jönsson describes a developmentally disabled man she met.2

His mind had a very difficult time with abstract ideas, and, until he was 50, she inferred that he seemed to have lived in an eternally present and undifferentiated “now” with no future or past. Couldn’t really learn or interact with anyone. Then he received a digital assistant with small digital photographs that he could understand. He spent hours starring at them intensely and, suddenly, his world expanded. His vocabulary exploded, and his inaction with others suddenly expanded. For the first time, he had found a way to grasp time and its passage—and his mind suddenly stretched to include past, present, and future. The awareness of time and its passage revolutionized his life.

The first chapter of Genesis reflects our God-implanted need to understand and mark the passage of time. Genesis 1 unfolds as a stately, measured progression of time, carefully marked, and observed: And there was evening and there was morning, the first day (Genesis 1:5, NRSV). This stately progression culminates in God establishing the Sabbath. Indeed, we read in Genesis 2:2, And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done (NRSV).

Imagine a scene with me. It is the fall of 1991, and the sun is sinking in Lincoln, Nebraska. I am laying aside Prosser and Keeton on Torts, 5th Edition and leaving the University of Nebraska Law Library. I see classmates huddled in the glass study rooms—lots of shoulders tense from studying for our fast-approaching final. Some look up, puzzled. What am I doing leaving so close to the final?

It is Friday night, and I am off to Vespers at Union College. Friday night called me to pay attention to the sun sinking below the horizon. Suddenly, after a week in peril of sinking into an ageless morass of continual studying and reviewing, God rescued me by asking me to remember time. This is how Sabbath restored rest to a nervous, first-year law student.

Next, consider how Sabbath rescues us from multitasking. The prophet Amos has a spectacular ancient example of multitasking: In Amos 8:4-8, the wealthy are grumbling because they want the Sabbath to be over so they can get back to commerce. Amos asserts God does not approve of them spending their time during the Sabbath planning what they will do once the sun is down (which essentially boils down to dreaming up new ways to cheat the poor).

In Sabbath as Resistance3 by Walter Brueggemann provides what I regard as my favorite story in a chapter called “Resistance to Multitasking.” Every week, as Walter was growing up in rural Saline County, Missouri, the town’s grocer would ceremoniously get up and leave church while the pastor was still preaching, heedless of the disruption he and his wife caused as they walked down the long aisle and out of the church while the pastor was still speaking.

Why did they do this? Simple. The grocer didn’t want to miss out on the post-church commerce from the other church in town, which ended their worship one half hour before his own church ended worship. The grocer would rather miss the end of the sermon and disrupt his own church service than potentially miss out on the Missouri Synod Lutherans’ grocery business. His mind was clearly more on commerce than worshiping Jesus.

Brueggemann points out that the same issue Amos protested was still happening in his own childhood church. Even if no cheating was occurring, commerce was still replacing God. Priorities were skewed, and it was affecting the quality of their rest and worship.

For me, growing up, sometimes it seemed as if the more galling part of Sabbath was the general things I couldn’t do rather than the Sabbath-specific things I could do. Yet, now, and in retrospect, the things I truly celebrate and remember with fondness are those things that were unique to the Sabbath when we were treating it as Sabbath. Not only worship, but things like being with our dad enjoying nature (which in my family, we often called “God’s Second Book”) or driving to see the aspen turning gold in the fall, while spending time with our grandmother.

When our focus was on God, and on Sabbath-specific ways of experiencing God’s blessings, I had a much more memorable Sabbath rest than when I was chafing about whether or not I could go to the mall. God was rescuing me from multitasking and helping me avoid missing the point of the Sabbath.

I found a similar celebration of avoiding multitasking and focusing on the Sabbath-specific joys in Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s 1951 book, where he calls the Sabbath A Palace in Time.4 It is a palace because we leave behind the many work-a-day mundane distractions of the other six days, and instead, spend our time focusing specifically on what the Sabbath brings us. We avoid multitasking.

In thinking about how the Sabbath has brought me both closer to God and to my family, the final point is remembering how my parents used the coming of Sabbath to model joy and gratitude to their children. As I see it, it was in that joy and gratitude that we began to see the full value of the Sabbath.

Return with me to the early 1980s in Boulder, Colorado. Join me in imagining that it is Friday night at the Nowlan residence.

The sun has slipped behind the Flatirons. The TV has been turned off. More importantly, I can smell my mom’s special Friday night soup, and there are candles burning on the family table. My dad asks each of us, “What are you thankful for this week?”  We spend time enjoying the soup, listening to each other, and decompressing from a week of school and work. The candlelight shines in the windows around us. We pray. We look with deliberate gratitude at the week just past and turn with intentionality into the Sabbath time of rest.

When I think of the Sabbath in these terms—reminding me of how God’s time is unfolding, reminding me that we are leaving behind the week’s multitasking, and reminding me of God’s blessings over the past week—then Sabbath becomes something rich and meaningful. And this meaningful gift is something we can share with the anxious, alienated world. I wonder, could this be a partial answer to the issue on which the Guardian was reporting in January?

Shawn P. Nowlan is an attorney currently working for the federal government in Denver. He is a member of the Boulder Adventist Church. Email him at: [email protected]

1  Cebalo, A. (Accessed Feb. 17, 2023). “Is America Suffering a ‘Social Recession’?” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/02/america-social-recession-less-friends-sex-mental-health

2  Jönsson, B. (2001). Unwinding the Clock. Harcourt, Inc. p. 54-56.

3  Brueggemann, W. (2017). Sabbath as Resistance: New Edition with Study Guide. John Knox Press.

4  Heschel, A.J. (1951). The Sabbath. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

24 Apr

A BIGGER FOCUS FOR A BETTER FUTURE?

In

For two significant reasons, I have been thinking and talking a lot about race and racism over the past few months. These are important issues and something we should be talking about in various contexts. But these discussions have also given me opportunities to observe how our church tends to respond to big issues in the society and culture around us.

The first context in which I have been talking about this topic has been the launch of a book exploring what in our Adventist beliefs, faith, and history can contribute to addressing race and racism.1 While talking about the book is part of promoting the book, raising awareness of it and hoping to sell a few copies, the book also acts as a prompt for talking about the topic. So, over the past few months, my co-editor and I, often with other contributors to the book, have used the book as a launching pad for important discussions on podcasts, online panel conversations, and in-person events. Some of these I have been part of, and some I have been able to watch from the other side of the world.

One thing that has taken us by surprise—and that we have commented upon among ourselves—is how often questions surrounding regional conferences have been brought into these discussions, particularly surprising given that the book spends little time on this thorny subject. Of course, in talking about difficult topics, we would do well to heed Jesus’ instruction: Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? (Matthew 7:3, New Living Translation). In addressing the evils of racism there are plenty of logs for everyone—and we do need to be conscious of our own historical and organizational shortcomings and failures.

But I also wonder if this might be something of a diversionary tactic. We can note our awareness of the problem even in our own midst, recognizing that it is complex and perhaps not something we can easily resolve, but at the same time cutting the issue down to Adventist-size. In so doing, we might avoid confronting the enormity of racism in our cultures, but we also miss the opportunity for the best of our faith to speak to this kind of burning issue in the wider world.

In a book tracing how development work is different—or should be different—when undertaken by faith-based organizations, one of the key relationships to be negotiated is the relationship between the organization working for justice and opportunity, and its supporting church or churches: “There is a risk of partnering with the church when its strongly pietistic, priest-centric, and mystical beliefs give it a largely inward focus.” 2

Adventists tend to focus on personal piety. We might not call them priests, but we have spent quite a lot of our communal energy on arguing about ordination in recent decades. And we have a strong tendency to spiritualize much of our faith, even if we are wary of “mysticism.” And, despite our strong focus on mission, we tend to do this in a self-referential way—focused on what we want to tell people, rather than responding to the needs and culture around us.

So perhaps it is not surprising that we begin talking about the big challenges of racism in our world today and how Adventist insight and faithfulness might matter to those challenges—and then we are soon talking about anomalies of our organizational structures in some parts of the United States. As important and as difficult as this topic might be, given our temptations to inward focus, is it a way of avoiding more important, larger, and seemingly intransigent injustices in the world around us?

The second context in which I have been having these conversations over the past few months is that of the planned referendum for recognizing Australia’s First Peoples in our national constitution and including a mechanism for these Indigenous voices to be heard in our political structures. Amending a national constitution should be a difficult process but should also be a way of addressing deep historical injustices in our culture and society. With a national vote planned to take place later this year, I have been following the political debates, reading much in the history and background to this, listening to Indigenous colleagues and leaders, and talking with leaders of the Adventist Church in Australia about our church’s response to this issue.

Of course, there is a spectrum of views and opinions among Indigenous people and among non-Indigenous people. But as I have listened to Adventist leaders giving their own opinions and reflecting on some of the views expressed to them by church members, I think we have a profound barrier to engaging meaningfully with an issue like this in our society and culture.

The referendum question and proposed Indigenous Voice mechanism has come through a decades-long process seeking recognition and reconciliation that reached a high point in a constitutional convention of Indigenous peoples—hosted at Uluru, the big rock in central Australia, in 2017—which formulated and endorsed a statement known as the “Uluru Statement from the Heart.” It is a gracious and generous invitation to the Australian nation from its Indigenous peoples “to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.” 3

As I was re-reading this statement recently, it occurred to me that whatever our various political views about the history of colonization, displacement, and ongoing disparity and injustice affecting our Indigenous peoples, this final invitation might be the largest stumbling block for Adventist support. Put simply, because of our assumptions, we lack the theological and culture resources to imagine a better future. We call it hope, but we do not hold out hope for the culture around us. Instead, we expect that everything gets worse—and find some perverse vindication in observing this—until a few of us are rescued. Sometimes it seems we can barely bring ourselves to imagine a future, much less a better one—or we feel guilty about doing so.

By contrast, Paul concluded his most grand and eloquent defense of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of our future resurrection and re-creation with a call to engage in the world here and now in the name of this resurrected Jesus: So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Because we believe in the resurrected Jesus and His promises, we can imagine and work toward a better future. We expect our thinking to take us beyond ourselves and the issues within our church community, as important as they might be. And we turn back to the culture around us, with a renewed appreciation that working for justice, goodness, peace, and a better future now is working in harmony with God’s intentions and resurrecting power.

We resist the temptation to reduce the issues around us to a manageable, self-contained size, which we might then safely shelve. Instead, in the best of our understandings and practices of faith, we recognize that we have resources from which we can listen and speak, read and write, wrestle and respond, lament and hope amid the biggest and most challenging issues in our world, our societies, and our culture. And we expect to change them.

Nathan Brown is a writer and editor at Signs Publishing in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. Nathan recently launched Thinking Faith, a collection of his articles in Mountain Views over the past few years, as well as being co-editor of A House on Fire: How Adventist Faith Responds to Race and Racism. Email him at: [email protected]

1  Jackson, M. and Brown, N. (2022). A House on Fire: How  Adventist Faith Responds to Race and Racism. Signs Publishing.
https://adventistbookcenter.com/a-house-on-fire-how-adventist-faith-responds-to-race-and-racism.html

2  Mitchell, B. (2017). Faith-Based Development: How Christian Organizations Can Make a Difference. Orbis Books. p. 116.

3  https://ulurustatement.org

24 Apr

IN THE WORLD, NOT OF THE WORLD, SENT TO THE WORLD

In

How effective is the Seventh-day Adventist Church in revealing the principles of God’s kingdom of grace in contemporary society through the committed integration of its members in the life of communities? Are the church members acknowledged in their cultural milieu as “people who are always talking about Christos, the Christ people, the Christians”?1  How do Jesus’s words I have sent them into the world (John 17:18) align with the main focus of the church’s mission?

Sent to the World

In response to Christ’s challenge in Matthew 24:14, the Seventh-day Adventist Church solemnly proclaims the gospel with ardor. The task’s urgency generates an ongoing drive toward innovative programs, alternative methodologies, and tireless efforts to reach people’s hearts. The command to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) signifies its reason for existence and the pinnacle of the church’s mission. Consequentially, the church engages in spirited activities to produce numerical growth as justifiable evidence of its organizational success.

However, Jesus’s imperative command “to go” calls for a more profound sense of engagement. While it directed the disciples’ minds to a precisely defined future responsibility, the same phrase, to go, in Matthew (28:7; 28:10) challenged the disciples to experience a retrospective reflection of lost vision, a journey toward a renewed commitment to the resurrected Jesus and a revitalized meaning of His death and resurrection. Before they could cross cultural boundaries and engage in the mandate of making disciples of all nations, they had to grasp the nature of God’s mission to the world expressed by Jesus (see John 3:16). The instruction was clear: Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me (Matthew 28:10). In this post-resurrection encounter, the disciples would recapture the crux of the gospel, the living Savior whose relational presence heals the pain of shattered dreams.

The heart of God’s mission to the world entails more than sharing a tantalizing story. Kraft asserts that “[t]he fact that God became a human being to reach human beings is not only relevant as a technique for putting his messages across […] Christianity is Someone to follow, not simply information to assimilate. And that Someone came in love and power, demonstrating God to humans.” 2 In other words, Jesus is the focal point of God’s mission to the world.

For this purpose, Jesus framed the designated task of sending disciples to the world in the context of God’s designed purpose. Jesus prayed, As you [Father] have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world (John 17:18). In Matthew’s narrative, the use of the word “go,” in both its imperative command and reflective context, modifies the church’s urge toward frantic activities driven by responses to cultural and societal demands and values and often self-glorification. It calls for renewed reflection on the church’s purpose in the world. Lesslie Newbigin reasons that “[t]he church exists not for itself and not for its members but as a sign, agent, and foretaste of the kingdom of God.” 3 In this context, the news about the resurrected Jesus is not a neatly packaged Christmas story to be placed habitually under the glittering lights of the Christmas tree. It stands for life, a different quality of life wrapped in hope, acceptance, forgiveness, restoration, identity, and purpose. To go means to absorb the full passion of God’s heart, with which “it is impossible to give faithful witness to the gospel while being indifferent to the situation of the hungry, the sick, the victims of human inhumanity.” 4 It means to serve the world as Jesus served: in the marketplaces, businesses, places of education, people’s homes, and even on the streets.

A few years ago, a secular-minded respite nurse who attended my aged and blind mother-in-law discussed the purpose of Christmas festivities with my wife. Brenda shared with her the Christmas story—the Jesus story. To her surprise, the nurse asked, “But who is Jesus?” Her response awakened the realization of our lack of awareness to understand the reality of the existing cultural barriers.

The members of the church who are invited, as were the disciples, need to step bravely into the depth of human ignorance and brokenness with a refreshed passion discerning the cultural beat of people’s hearts, songs of lost dreams, and respond with “the same relational message he [Jesus] carried—to love as he loved, to accept as he accepted, to free people from demons and other types of captivity as he freed, to speak as he spoke.” 5 In other words, the church is not called to just disperse doctrinal information about God, but to integrate the principles of Jesus’s life in every facet of life experience—to be in the world, but not of the world and to make Jesus known.

In the World? Really, What Have We Missed?

A reflective analysis of the church’s influence on contemporary culture in the Western world exposes a challenging disorder in its missional pursuits. A recent report on “Community Perception of the Seventh-day Adventist Church” in Australia and New Zealand highlights the nature of the problem.6 The results of the study are staggering. One-third of the survey participants said they knew nothing about the Adventist Church. Despite all the efforts to evangelize and share the good things Adventists offer in education, health, and service activities, the church struggles with community awareness.

When asked what three words came to mind when thinking about the church, most participants were baffled, but the most common response was “none,” followed by “unfamiliar” and “different.” Further, 70 percent of New Zealanders and 66 percent of Australians believe that the Adventist Church emphasizes doctrine more than relationships.7 In the report’s opening statement, Tracey Bridcutt asserts that the “Adventist church has a significant identity issue and needs to seek opportunities to help people understand its relevance.” 8 In the report, the South Pacific Division President remarked, “Our God and His message do need to connect with people.” 9

How can the church maintain a distinctive identity and, at the same time, enhance its connection with contemporary culture? Suffice it to say, the problem is not a lack of missional activities through various programs, the production of resources, or claims of accomplishments. Still, maybe amid all the haste and well-intended activities, the church has lost its focus on the nature of God’s mission.

Not of the World

Jesus’s prayer in John 17:1–25 confronted his followers with a challenging pragmatic paradox; namely, the vision of a Christian life immersed in a world of different values, behavioral principles, and cultural practices, but a world that Jesus inundated with the qualities flowing from God’s kingdom of grace. Jesus’ announcement about his departure, I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world (John 17:11), placed his followers in such an existential reality, but with a sense of a revived identity entrenched in God and Jesus. So, Christians are not of the world, but as Christ’s followers, they are entrusted with a unique message.

As Kathy Howard observes, “Our goal as the followers of Christ is to actively engage our culture with the Gospel without allowing the culture’s ungodly morals, values, attitudes, and behaviors to infiltrate our lives. Unfortunately, many Christians struggle to get it right.” 10 Others tend to isolate themselves from the cultural influences hiding in spaces of holiness, assuming it is easier to live by God’s standards.11

One may ask, “Is it then possible to consider that the lack of an expressed secure identity generates a cover-up in the form of overactivity and attempts to define the passion of God’s heart in terms of doctrinal purity and theological arguments?” Leon Morris maintains that “to know God means more than knowing the way of life.” 12 In other words, it means more than providing a chart of alternative views. He argues that “[t]o know Him transforms a man and introduces him to a different quality of living. Eternal life is simply the knowledge of God.” 13  The heart of the Christian identity and empowerment for discipleship and mission flows from God’s heart (see Romans 5:1–5).

Conclusive Reflection

Jesus’s invitation to go and make disciples of all nations, framed in the experience of a retrospective reflection of the lost vision, challenged his followers to recapture the joy of His presence, a restored sense of forgiveness, identity, and acceptance. Jesus said, I am still in the world so that they may have a full measure of my joy within them (John 17:13). The refreshed vision of Christ’s incarnational mission, raised in the disciples’ minds a view of a “journey to unknown places where they encounter God’s presence in a new way.” 14 In this spirit, Jesus inspired them to cross the barriers of relational and religious isolation, doctrinal purity, and cultural and national differences to build bridges of trust, unconditional friendship, and acceptance in places where God’s Spirit is already at work—the everyday cultural marketplaces where people walk and talk. Perhaps this is the lost vision the Seventh-day Adventist Church needs to reclaim and restore.

John Skrzypaszek, DMin, a retired director of the Ellen White/Seventh-day Adventist Research Centre, is an adjunct senior lecturer at Avondale University College, Coranboong, NSW, Australia. Polish by birth, John takes a keen interest in heritage, spirituality, and identity studies. He is married to Brenda and has two sons Raphael and Luke. Email him at: [email protected]

1  Bruce, F. F. (1979). Commentary on the Book of Acts. Eerdmans, p. 241.

2  Kraft, C.H. (1999). Communicating Jesus’ Way. William Carey Library, p. 47.

3 Newbigin, L. (1989). The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society. Eerdmans, p. 136.

4  Ibid.

5  Ibid.

6  Bridcutt, T. (2022, October 14). “Community Perception of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.” Record. https://record.adventistchurch.com/2022/10/14/community-perceptions-study-highlights-areas-of-opportunity/

7  Ibid. The study was commissioned by the South Pacific Division and was been conducted over a decade ago by McCrindle, a Sydney-based research company.

8  Ibid.

9  Ibid.

10  Howard, K. (2022, June 24) ”What does it Mean to be in the World but not of it.” Crosswalk. https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/what-does-it-mean-to-be-in-the-world-but-not-of-it.html

11  Ibid.

12  Morris, L. (1971). Commentary on the Book of Acts. Eerdmans, p. 719–720.

13  Ibid.

14  Hirsh, A. (2006). The Forgotten Ways.  Blazen Press, p. 221.

1 … 56 57 58 59 60 … 232