It would seem to me if we use numbers and percentages as you have, then Jesus was a failure in His day. We could use the story of Gideon as our guide and realize it is not numbers that count as much as the heart and mindset of those we will enter into battle with.
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Talk about controlling. 
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Points and percentages can be misleading…but it IS what the Adventist church uses when deeming any of its enterprises (baptisms, memberships, etc.) as “successful”. If you use their own yardstick then the Michigan Conf. is NOT a success. Perhaps it is the lack of spiritual attitude manifested by its leadership?
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This man sounds like he has his own deep issues that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, it spills out onto those who he feels are “fake Adventists…” (sounds like another leader or two who are in power right now). Adventists who don’t toe the doctrinal line as he and his colleagues determine are to be ostracized and banned. Lovely!
This seems born out of a shockingly reductionist, deficient, and anemic view of what comprises the church. As if the church and belonging is determined by nothing more than adherence to a series of doctrinal formulations. Such faulty vision leads to blind and hurtful actions.
Secondly, it simply breathes the spirit of intolerance and beastly behavior. Who inspires that? Not Jesus!
Thanks…
Frank
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If he has done so much harm to Michigan then he should not be allowed to harm any other conference; he should be retired or whatever it takes to get him off the payroll. Same with our GC president and a few who follow him.
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Last weekend my latest spiritual thought appeared in Spectrum at: Where Are The Ears?
“Where Are the Ears?”, a modern-day parable, based on a couple of parables of Jesus, speaks to one of the major problems in the SDA church.
From the end of calendar year 1991 (the first year that Jay Gallimore is identified in the SDA Yearbook as Michigan Conference president) to the end of calendar year 2016, NAD membership growth has been roughly 42.7 percent, whereas Michigan Conference membership growth has been roughly 14.1 percent. It is important to understand that population growth is not uniform across the NAD. And immigration, which we know drives membership growth, is concentrated more in a state like Texas than in a state like Michigan. My hunch is that the membership growth numbers in Michigan compare favorably to the membership growth numbers in other northern industrial states.
Gallimore deserves credit for the Michigan Conference’s continual operation of what appears to be a respectable boarding academy. Everyone should peruse the website of Great Lakes Adventist Academy. Gallimore looks pretty good in comparison to those NAD conference presidents who do not possess a meaningful commitment to the importance of Adventist Christian education.
I think Gallimore would be best served if he strived to remain within the ambit of his particular strengths. He, Ted Wilson, and a few others we can name could be effective in helping various Seventh-day Adventists transition from a traditional-folk type of Adventism to a learned form of Adventism. Ignorant and prejudiced Seventh-day Adventists will not listen to a scholar who teaches at Andrews University, but they will listen to Gallimore, Wilson, and a few others we can name. I regret my observation that opportunities to promote unity and provide helpful direction are being squandered.
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The Michigan Conference is condemned to have Gallimore as president for some time more because: 1) the people in the dying, little, churches in the towns with names that echo on Adventist ears vote for him at the conference elections, and 2) because no other conference would pass him a call even to be a pastor of a dying, little, rural church, much less to be the conference president. This is “vox populi.”
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over & over, i see the fingers of Calvinism creeping into our church’s conversation. So the academy is doing well because God is blessing them? Ask the church leadership just how many times the campus industries have had to be rebuilt. Ask the church leadership why they had to go to the LUC and get building renovation monies that are so excessive that the Union had to go beyond revolving loan policy.
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Actually the SDA church needs more Gillmores
It is time to purge the church of all that offends
Get rid of all the naby paby liberals and go back in time
to the middle 19th century new england mindset
Gillmore and Wilson are the way of the future for SDAism
If you don’t like it leave and be cast into outer darkness
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Leaving the SDA church causes one to be cast into outer darkness?
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I am relieved to learn in another Spectrum article that the president of the Michigan Conference was NOT elected to infect other state unions with his sense of what might better be described as ‘ownership’ of ‘God’s church’ !
Is he ‘God’ ? Is he that ‘Creator’, or ‘Author’, of that ‘creation-story’ he claims to support and defend ?
Of course not.
Yet, in 2006, I personally witnessed the public testimony of that very same man as he confessed to having ordered that all the canoes at the SDA ‘Camp AuSable’ in Michigan – God’s canoes, at God’s camp, in God’s Creation – be locked up on Sabbaths. The SDA church in Traverse City, Mi was full of witnesses that day. One of them was my father-in-law who had advanced Parkinson’s Disease, yet he insisted on struggling to church to see and hear that ‘President’ speak.
It seems that some of the visitors to the church camp – meant for ALL of the SDAs in Michigan to enjoy – had been seen horsing around in the canoes . . . on the Sabbath. So, the ‘President’ denied Sabbath canoe access to all, even to the greater majority of those SDA patrons who had no intention of misbehaving. Yet, God the Creator, did not ‘lock up’, even Cain, the first murderer. So, which god was the ‘President’ taking cues from, and which god’s Sabbath was he defending ?
But, this was not the worst of the humiliation of the Creator God and His Son to be very publicly delivered from the President at God’s Sabbath pulpit that day. In order to publicly defend his private decision to rob all of God’s children of Sabbath canoe access, he then partially quoted the story from Mark 3 about the healing of the man’s withered hand in the synagogue on a Sabbath day, by Jesus. I say ‘partially’, because he failed to finished a sentence, and therefore failed to recognize that he had just publicly condemned himself as a ‘Pharisee’, and therefore as a persecutor of Christ and His true church. Not merely that, but he committed the same sin as Moses did in publicly misrepresenting the whole character of God-in-Christ as merely ‘partial’, merely ‘angry’ toward the ‘sinner’, and not, simultaneously ‘sympathetic’ and ‘merciful’ for ‘the hardness of their hearts’, as well.
("Then, looking them over and feeling both anger with them and sympathy for them at the stoniness of their hearts, . . . .” Mark 3:5, excerpt from the Complete Jewish Bible).
Referring only to the part of Mark 3:5 –
“And when he had looked round about on them with anger, . . . .” –
amazingly, that President stopped short and insisted, ‘See, it’s OK to be angry about the abuse of the Sabbath day . . . .’ But, if he had merely and fairly finished the sentence right before him, he would have enlightened himself AND GOD’s FLOCK to the fact that he was editing and twisting GOD’s WORD – as well as twisting the roles within the context of the event Mark described – to defend his own un-GOD-like actions, even while raising himself to an equality with God in the eyes and ears of the ‘people’ – a sin which condemned and prevented Moses from leading God’s people into the Promised Land, even after 40 years of better service.
But, it gets worse !
The ruse worked !
All I heard in response to the ‘angry’ President from the Traverse City SDA congregation that strange Sabbath morning was a loud and sickening, "AMEN !"
Had the congregation even bothered to, ‘Turn in your Bibles, please, to . . . .’ ?
No ‘Berean’ spirit was evident, let alone a ‘Holy’ One, that Sabbath, in that place, just worship !
But, worship of whom ?
. . . of the invisible God ?
. . . or, of just the good-looking, charming one, standing right before their eyes and spouting partially-true lies at the pulpit ?
I have been a resident of Michigan for 59 of 60+ years, but my SDA membership is NOT now in that state’s Conference, nor will it be, as long as such an out-of-control rebel combination seeks to ‘rule’ in place of God in the hearts of the ‘people’. A few powerfully wealthy and/or influential ASI members who are partial to GC partialities seem to have much more influence than the Creators Themselves do, in Michigan – a ‘dark state’.
I refuse to support anything regarding the Michigan Conference except a call for either the repentance or removal from SDA membership of such ‘partial’, ‘partisan’ and highly-divisive ‘bullies’ and their evil influence. Until then, they remain free to lock or unlock whatever material possessions of God’s they choose to, but they cannot win my heart for their President, or their god – little ‘g’.
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2009 (and the few years before and since) were interesting times to be teaching at La Sierra. I remember well the dis-invitations of the University Chamber Singers while they were already en route to Michigan. The director at the time as well as the students told me that, despite the stress of the situation and feeling that they were being used as pawns in a political controversy, the tour ended up being one of the most meaningful and spiritually enriching experiences of their lives.
It is interesting that the concept of numerical/percentage growth as an indicator of “rightness” has come up again. I remember around 2009 the most vocal anti-La Sierra online commentators predicting that, due to the outing of our Darwinism/Relativism/Secularism/etc., God would withdraw His blessings, the people would know the truth, and enrollments would drop precipitously, “mark my words.” I indeed marked them, and when La Sierra immediately enjoyed five straight years of record enrollment growth these same commentators remarked “see? Friendship with the world is enmity with God!” If our numbers had remained steady over that period, I do not doubt we would have heard pontifications about Laodicean stagnation. Regardless of actual outcomes, detractors find a way to exit the field of battle victorious. I would happily disregard all such posturing except that it deeply and irreparably hurts real people.
Pax,
David
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Sad that the major controversial issue at LSU was evolution and not the fact they named a financial center in honor of a high performance abortionist and owner of a gambling enterprise.
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Maybe, but, like soap, you have to use it when needed… 
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Censorship is the enemy of truth!
Censorship is the enemy of truth!
Censorship is the enemy of truth!
It bears repeating.
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Our SDA founders were well aware of the dynamic nature of truth. Here’s a quote from Uriah Smith in 1857: “We have been enabled to rejoice in truths far in advance of what we then perceived. But we do not imagine that we yet have it all, by any means. We trust to progress still, our way growing continually brighter and brighter onto the perfect day. Then let us maintain an inquiring frame of mind, seeking for more light, more truth.” RH April 30 1857
I’m sure this is what you were thinking of wasn’t it, oldabe?
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Elmer,
How does the “common” church member who disagrees with the mandates of Ted Wilson and Jay Gallimore effectively communicate their positions to these men?
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It is so sad to read many of the comments in this venue. Apparently no one has taken the time to read their new testament scriptures. The church leaders have the right to have authority over all church members. Using the scripture, 2Timothy 3:16 says that all scripture is profitable for TEACHING, REPROOF, CORRECTION, and for training in RIGHTEOUSNESS. Unfortunately we are living in a time when everybody just wants to belong to the church and do whatever they want to. Yes, women are forbidden to have positions of authority, and if the Michigan Conference says that LSU is apostate, that is fine with me as well. Adventists believe in the young earth doctrine, and evolution should not be taught in Adventist colleges.
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Oh my! Really? This is sad.
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