The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Sweden announced today that like Norway and Denmark and Belgium-Luxembourg have done, the Swedish Union of Churches Conference will cease ordaining pastors. In the notice posted on the union's website, the rationale was given that all pastors [male and female] will be equal. The move comes in response to the General Conference vote in San Antonio, Texas against allowing the Adventist Church's thirteen divisions to make provision for the ordination of women.
The issue is more than WO, The issue is the heavy hand of central Leadeship. One phrase lingers as a challenge ââDire Consequencesâ It is going to be a Rocky 4 more years. tZ
Tom
It appears that âDire Consequencesâ turns out to be that Pastoral Leadership is no longer unethical and discriminatory. All pastors are placed on an equal footing. Pastoral Leadership confirms the concept of the pastor as a servant among servants, and no longer Headship and Power.
A TRUE Setting Apart.
It is TIME for the North American Division to do the same.
3/15 Edit-- Global Transferability.
This is VERY EASY to do. Other Unions [or Divisions] can just make a statement that Pastorâs credentials from these various Unions will be recognized as valid in their Union [or Division]. No different than a Professional person with a license to practice moves from State to State or Country to Country.
3/16 Edit â Nymous you MISSED IT AGAIN!
AHHHHHH! YES!
One person cannot be Everything.
But it is God who decides what Body role a Body Part is to be and NOT man through restrictive church policies.
The Church SHOULD be an Equal Opportunity organization. It should be an organization which promotes, which fosters the complete development of the person. It should be a place where talents and abilities are encouraged and given opportunity to grow and multiply. A place where Hidden Gifts are discovered and encouraged.
Do any of you enjoy watching movies or plays that are based on the life-styles of the British homes in the middle to late 1800s? It is interesting to see what roles Women were allowed to have in the home and in the community. It is also interesting to understand how Men viewed women when they wanted to have the Vote both here in American and in Great Britain. If one notices, the Seventh day Adventist church has not moved into the 20th Century, much less into the 21st Century yet in regards to the allowable roles of women in the Church. There is still the 19th Century mind-set of womenâs roles.
âSeventh-day Adventist Church in Sweden Votes to Stop All Pastoral Ordinationsâ
Spectrum, reported:
âIn Sweden this inequality is seen by many as being unethical and discriminatory and can be questioned from a legal point of view thus jeopardizing confidence in our message and ministry.â
One of my favorite saying in Swedish is Cow in the iceâIngen ko pĂ„ isenâ â Thereâs no cow on the ice. âThis is a popular saying in Sweden, which quite simply means âDonât worryâ. It remains unknown how often Swedish cattle are milling about on frozen lakes, but itâs no stretch of the imagination to understand that a cow on ice would be definitely worth worrying about.
How long before WE in the USA decide and do something to remedy what many of us consider as âbeing unethical and discriminatory and can be questioned from a legal point of view thus jeopardizing confidence in our message and ministryâ?
Is the USA-Adventist church the moral and ethical equivalent of the âthe cow in the iceâ?
Almost forty years ago, as the womenâs ordination issue was beginning to percolate in the General Conference and Sligo Church, I asked Elder Neal Wilson how long it would take to move from ordaining women elders to ordaining pastors. We had just learned that he supported the position that ordination must be a decision of the world-wide church (to preserve unity). His answer shocked me, particularly since only six years earlier, while serving in the Atlantic Union, the Southern New England conference had already voted to ordain women as local elders in their churches.
âAt least fifty years,â he said.
I realized then and there that this was a political and theological mistake of enormous proportions, a mistake his own son has reaped and now perpetuates. In the past 40 years, with unprecedented political and leadership ineptness, church officials at the highest level have done almost nothing to educate the world field on this issue and how to read and interpret the Bible and Ellen White with greater insight. A long-time friend and scientist/theologian told me over lunch two weeks ago that he has âgiven upâ and no longer considers himself an Adventist. âWhen in a General Conference Session my church would âwrite offâ half the worldâs population, that did it for me,â he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
âChurch growthâ has to mean more than adding numbers to the rolls. It MUST also mean that those on the rolls grow in tolerance, understanding and biblical literacy. If the former continues to be done without the latter, this church will never fulfill its gospel mission. Right now it is failing, not only on this issue but on a range of other important issues, sadly.
As long as the homiletics remain the same, it will not make much difference if 50% of SDA pastors were female or 100%.
Edit:
What is the chief reason that people go to church AND continue to attend?
What is the main attraction? Music, fellowship, entertainment? People can stay home or go to a concert and listen to music. People can go to a sporting event, bar, club or other social event for fellowship. People can and often do watch TV or movies for entertainment.
What is the main impact or influence of a pastor on those who sit in pews?
The SERMON.
Why do people go to church? To be transformed so as to escape Hell.
While the vote didnât move authority to the Divisions within the church to approve who is ordained, it is also important to note that really what happened is that the vote didnât move authority. Full stop.
Upon checking the church manual, we find that the authority has always and continues to be held by the Unions. The WO vote didnât change that.
I think that over time more and more conferences and unions are going to refrain from ordination and substitute another means of recognizing the call of God whether male or female since the GC refuses to address the contradictory and ambiguous language in the Working Policy. No consensus came from the TOSC and zero from the SA simple majority vote and conviction canât rest in lack of consensus.
it would be interesting to know how delegates who voted ânoâ in san antonio feel, now that time has shown that the unity they may have thought they were voting for doesnât seem to be materializingâŠis it the case that the uniformity policy behind the no-vote has led to greater unity than the diversity policy behind a yes-vote, outlined in Acts 15:6-21, would have achievedâŠwould a yes-vote really have led to greater fracture than weâre seeing nowâŠ
i think it must be concerning for those who care about our church to see the constant drip-drip of lip service to the san antonio vote that in reality is a studied departure from that voteâŠand can that no-vote have been correct, given that it is the institution of the general conference itself that appears to be losing respectâŠindianapolis 2020 may very well need to be about finding a way to undo the damage caused by san antonio 2015, which really means the decade spanning these two general conferences has not been about forward motion, but the futile spinning of wheelsâŠas i see it, action taken that results in the destruction of the body taking that action, cannot be correctâŠ
Once again Europe and Scandinavia lead the way in the area of
Ethics
Unity
Solutions
Equality
Spiritual Gifts
Ripple effects from San Antonio continue to show a serious problem with the handling of this issue by leadership.
It is true that this vote had long-term and serious repercussions on women currently dedicated to spiritual leadership, the upcoming Millennial generation of Adventists, as well as those like the scientist/theologian who cannot ethically belong to a group that discounts half the population and more like 65% of the Churchâs membership.
While church leaders may feel they pulled off some kind of victory in San Antonio, they did not. Articles like this and stories like Dr. Londisâs will continue. The Church will be stunted in its mission. Young people gifted with the Spirit for leadership will be impacted, and many, like the population of Sweden, will see church ârulesâ prohibiting the participation of women in ordained spiritual leadership as unethical, discriminatory, illegal, and not something of spiritual value.
You have used a capital letter in your post (Acts 15:6). Please be consistent in your policy of not using capital letters in your posts (which I quite like generally).
How ironic that the world church began in North America as once the leader but now all the rest of the westernized church is now the tail being led by the Europeans who were first recipients of the American Adventist missionaries.
The leaders here were very negligent in educating third world Adventists of the message Jesus brought: all are equal in His sight; there are no second-class members or positions based on ethnicity or gender. The NT examples are abundantly clear on full equality for all. When any church fails to follow their Masterâs teaching and example, they can no longer be called His true church here on earth; knowing that in heaven there will be no second classes where all will be equals.
So. These conferences are saying that ordination really doesnât mean anything. Pastors can do their job without it. That affirms what GC policy already isâpastors do not need to be ordained âto the Gospel Ministry.â They just need to be ordained as eldersâsomething already allowed to women. This is the elephant in the room that the Theology of Ordination Study Committee never talked about.
Well, satan doesnât care whichever way we go. He is trying to stir up this church. Whether itâs womenâs ordination issue or other issues that we humans fall into his trap. From what I see and the way Ellen White writes, this is a sign of the second coming soon. I am not surprised at all. The bottom line is that once the GC has voted on an issue thatâs it. I believe that God has lead His church in the past and he will lead it to the truth to the end. No matter what some individuals or pastors have in mind in undermining the decision and dividing the church. Itâs almost like a repeat of 1888 times. Focus on the issues brethren, we should focus on the righteousness by faith in Christ not worrying whether women are being ordained or not. Itâs quite clear, that some of us are wasting time and energy in undermining the Word by trying to conform to the world by being politically correct according to the worldâs standards. Follow the Word and with sincere and playful hearts. Wake up and focus your energy in evangelizing and hastening His return. I pray that the Holy Spirit will stir our hearts in the right direction.
âI pray that the Holy Spirit will stir our hearts in the right direction.â
We just seem to disagree which direction is âcorrectâ, Remnant, which is what the whole issue is really about.
This âissueâ is not going away and it doesnât have anything to do with Satan âtrying to stir up this churchâ. It has more to do with allowing the Spirit to lead the various unions, etc., to make the best decisions for their places and cultures in the world. Otherwise, the SDA church appears to have a serious integrity problem (which some of us believe it does)âŠwhen it ignores its own biblical scholars and decide to make it into a trumped-up voting session.
Whether or not the delegates at San Antonio realized it, what they actually voted on wasnât about women in pastoral ministry - it was about whether women can be Conference Presidents or higher, within the church administration.
The reason for this is pretty clear to anybody who actually knows church policy. There is already policy in place to allow the commissioning of women pastors, and all a commissioned pastor cannot do as compared to an ordained one, is be a Conference President or higher.
When viewed this way, the San Antonio decision was gender discrimination pure and simple. If the various government authorities in the US actually knew or cared about what had really happened there, the church would now be facing a slew of legal action for gender discrimination.
In many ways I see this move by the Swedish Union as positive! I see the move to grant the commissioned credential to individuals more or less automatically after two years of obtaining a commissioned licence as useful to prevent discrimination and favouritism in the case of certain individuals.
Yet this is not a final solution to ordination issues among Adventists!!
Problems of Global Transferability
The present global system of ordination ensures global transferability. This means that those who are commissioned are not as easily transfered because the present global system of commissioned only provides a commission to serve within the local union. Commissioning really has little or no meaning in a total global sense. It seems to me that the move by Adventists in Sweden will only complicate the potential service of Inter-Divisional Employees [missionaries] proceeding from Sweden to other unions.
If not Global, then Local and Repeatable
This is one additional reason why in the absence of global uniformity on ordination issues, which never has looked likely among Adventists, our global faith communion should at the very least investigate the possibility of developing and implementing a system of âappointmentâ for each specific role an individual of whatever gender undertakes. Such an appointment would be signified by an associated rite of appointment. Such rites of appointment would be repeatable as and when an individual moves to a new sphere of responsibility.
Advantages of Local and Repeatable Rites of Appointment for Adventist Leaders
The real advantage of such rites is that such rites could be made culturally and situationally appropriate. I do not believe in âonce ordained, always ordainedâ as if ordinands were sealed in their foreheads with the mark of the beast.
