‘Twas time for the Sabbath sermon, the last great day of the feast,
people’s faces were beaming, expectant, to say the least.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/12102
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/12102
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Through poetic meter Sigve captures Son of Wil,
Chopping motions and meanings with dogged fervor still,
Whilst waiting in the wings appears another Word and face–
The Son of Man, who offers matchless love, and hope, and grace.
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Thank God for the mailman.
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It can feel so right to be wrong
So tone deaf while singing a song
Clear vision, full speed ahead
No peripheral seeing of the bled
And broken and hurt;
Sound the alert, the alert
Turn the cry into a scream
And truth becomes mean.
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no matter how much he is vilified, and no matter how many mistakes he makes, TW is always going to have a strong following with those who hold to traditional adventism…when and if he retires, and is replaced by someone progressive, conservatives will likely leave the Church again in droves, just like they did in the 1990’s…
this seems to be one of the differences between conservatives and progressives within adventism: conservatives leave when they don’t get their way, while progressives stay, but work for change systematically over time…
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So true, conservatives leave or at least throw their toys out the pram when things don’t go their way while progressives rry to get on and as you say, make changes internally.
The thing is, even when TW retires, he’s made enough changes to policy and put in place people who agrees with his theology as to continue his legacy for another 5 years at least.
The reality is we’re stuck with this Conservative, bordering on fundamentist idealology that really seperates our church. With the youths voting with their feet, adventistm, especially in the west, will cease to be relevant over the next decade unless big changes are made. At the very least, the global south should take note of what their adventist future is like unless they do something about it now.
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In my experience, conservatives don’t leave. They may leave the local church, but they aggregate in other like minded congregations - often small, and dominate the proceedings there. Leaving the Adventist church as such is a step to far - after all the Adventist church is God’s remnant church, or so they say, and to leave it has eternal consequences.
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They also tend to move their money from official channels to the conservative affiliated ministries.
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Has this been validated? Is it verifiable? In the workplace exit interviews sometimes provide useful data. Is there any such source to provide support for church membership-related data?
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i’m not sure there’s actual data on the conservative exodus in the 1990’s, at least not anything i’ve seen…but this was an actual, historical event for our Church (some LGT adventists, like Kevin Paulson, dispute that it was a major exodus)…basically, conservatives charged the GC with apostasy along the lines of what they dubbed the “New Theology”, stemming from the publishing of the 1957 Questions on Doctrine - yes, it took that long to brew, and gather steam - and left the Church, not in order to leave Adventism, which is why progressives tend to leave, but in order to establish their own adventist church in the form of independent ministries…points in dispute included the Nature of Christ, which the GC had right, but conservatives had wrong, according to egw, but also the justification element in our salvation, which both the GC and conservatives got wrong, again according to egw…it was fairly common at the time to hear The Shaking interpreted to mean that those who left the Church were still in the Church, while those who stayed had been shaken out…
some of these independent ministries were sued by the GC for using the SDA name while diverting tithe, which didn’t help matters…one independent ministry still extant is John Grosboll’s Steps to Life, centred in Wichita, Kansas, but i don’t hear the charge now that the GC is in apostasy (the Grosbolls left the Church over issues that seem to have preceded the general conservative exodus of the '90’s)…i also don’t hear anything about the New Theology…conservatives, on the whole, seem to have been placated by the election of TW in 2010, and many conservatives do seem to have agreed to return tithe through the GC once again…
Arguably, that has already happened. Most of the SDA’s of my generation that I was raised with, even some who remain rather conservative, have left the church. Among my kid’s generation (they’re now in their 20’s), it’s even more pronounced.
The NAD barely grew last year, which is the trend, and areas within it that are likely more progressive (e.g., the West Coast) mostly shrank again. See Adventist Church Statistics - All Documents (ASR)
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Any stats on retired church employed - the ones who saw the “sausages” being made?
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In what way was Adventism relevant to the general population in the past? Can you quantify it’s former relevance to others outside of the SDA culture, and when this was?
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Ha! No, I don’t think so.
Chris Blake might have insights into this. Also, Barry Casey, and others who have retired colleagues from higher ed.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
Are the above quote and the “Time for the Sabbath Sermon” poem really about the same person???
It seems axiomatic that Adventism must cling to what it has, and continue to hang on EGW’s every word like a toddler depends on his water wings in order to stay afloat, thus bringing in new members to replace those who eventually see through the farce of EGW “gifts”.
So the chances of TW finally “understanding”-to say nothing of actually admitting-that EGW was in it for fame and fortune rather than fidelity to truthfulness, are precisely equal to the odds of the pope giving up his Gucci slippers.
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