Around 2010 the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists requested to be allowed to ordain women in its territory. They argued that it was procedural and not doctrinal (as earlier studies had indicated) so would not need a formal action from the GCEC or a quinquennial session. When Jan Paulsen was reluctant to move forward at that time the request was renewed under the new administration of Ted Wilson. This request, small though it seemed at the time, was the small thing that led to the much larger issue of church governance that we face today. After GC leadership consulted with Legal Counsel, the Division was informed that they did not have the right to deviate from GC consensus. They were just an arm of the General Conference, their authority came from above, they had no constituency (a group of members who elect officials and give guidance). They were not free to make independent decisions.

When this decision was handed down, the lights went on at several unions around the world. Unions have constituencies, their authority flows up from below and they had the constituted authority to decide who could be ordained in their territories. So two North American Unions, first the Columbia Union (mid-Atlantic states) and then the Pacific Union (southwestern states), called constituencies to determine whether they should move forward in ordaining women. The GC president attended both meetings requesting that the constituencies not move forward on such an action. But both constituencies voted by a rough margin of 4 to 1 to move forward in ordaining women in their territories. Others in Europe and NAD voted to ordain, but wait to implement, or initiated creative solutions such as abolishing ordination or creating a new credential that both men and women could hold. General Conference leadership blamed the presidents for allowing such a vote. In their view union presidents are not only subject to their constituencies but also represent the world church and should exercise their authority subject to world church actions. In other words, union presidents have a dual role, they could have simply said, “It is not within my authority to allow this vote.” GC leadership believed that the union presidents involved had failed in their dual commission.

What all this was going on, the GC commissioned TOSC– the theology of ordination study committee and requested all to await its findings in 2015. But several unions refused to wait any longer. So the question arose as to how the world church should respond to these actions. While top leadership wanted to take significant action against the unions, many others preferred other options. So as a compromise, leadership agree to propose a “yes” or “no” vote at the General Conference in San Antonio (2015) on whether divisions could be allowed to decide ordination issues within their territory. After serious debate the measure was passed on to the 2015 session by the GECE in 2014. It was a grand compromise. Many hoped that if the delegates to the session (about 2000 from around the world) voted “yes” everyone could do what they thought the mission required in their territories and everyone would be happy.

I didn’t see it then and neither did anyone else, apparently. But this action would have led to an impasse either way. If the delegates in San Antonio had voted “yes” it would have violated the consciences of those who believed that ordaining women is a crime against the teaching of the Bible. On the other hand, a “no” vote violated the consciences of those who believe that treating women unequally is a crime against the clear teachings of the gospel. So a vote was set up in such a way that either result would create a crisis of conscience for a significant minority in the worldwide church. In retrospect, the action in 2014 appears to have been a serious mistake. A mistake that might be difficult to walk back. The “no” vote in San Antonio has kept us in crisis ever since.

In 2016 some top leaders proposed a “nuclear option,” to either replace the leadership of the unions that were ordaining women with leadership more amenable to the GC line or to disband the unions, set up new ones and ask churches, conferences and members to transfer their membership to the new entity. For legal and other reasons, the initiative failed, never even coming to GCDO or the GCEC. Instead a mild action of prayer, consultation and appeal was voted with the promise of a more severe response to come the following year. Then at the GCEC in 2017, a proposal was brought that would have required all GCEC members to sign a loyalty oath or be publically shamed and suffer the loss of voice and vote in the meeting. The action was seriously resisted by GCDO, passing only by a vote of 36 to 35. After vigorous debate, the attempt to discipline the non-compliant unions was sent back for further review, which is a mild way of saying that it failed. And so the impasse continued.

A major factor in SDA organization is the fact that Seventh-day Adventists are Protestants and Protestants believe in the “priesthood of all believers.” Unlike Old Testament Israel, the New Testament considers all believers to be priests under the High Priest, Jesus Christ. This principle tends toward localization and fragmentation in organizations with a certain suspicion of any human in authority over others. Proof of the pudding is the fact that Protestant denominations tend to fracture over all kinds of relatively minor things. Even such well known denominations as the Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists are divided into many denominations, the Lutherans into as many as a hundred. As a result, the SDA Church is the only major Protestant denomination with a truly worldwide structure. The only worldwide Christian body that is larger is the Roman Catholic Church. And to compound the tendency to fragmentation, Seventh-day Adventism is on the free-will fringe of Protestantism. So Adventism adds to its Protestantism a strong emphasis on religious liberty and individual conscience. So the SDA denomination is a grand experiment. A Protestant, free-will denomination with a worldwide structure. As the Church gets bigger and bigger that structure is being stretched to the limit. Can Adventists find a way to hold together? Or will it inevitably fragment into regional churches on the Lutheran model?

A Protestant, free-will church will have a tendency to drift toward separation and localization, unless there is something driving in the other direction. That something else is also embedded in Adventist theology and culture. That is the sense of a worldwide mission. The biblical remnant (Rev 12:17) is called to proclaim an end-time gospel message to every nation, tribe, language and people (Rev 14:6). This sense of worldwide mission is a counterpoint to the free-will Protestant principle. The blended style of Adventist organization (tension between global and localized authority) arises from a tension within SDA theology. But the problem with a worldwide structure is that if it becomes too rigid in its operation, it does not allow for the kind of diversity that meets people of various backgrounds where they are. The struggle between the unity a world church needs and the flexibility that the mission requires at the regional level is a tension at the heart of Adventism. And that tension is being played out in the backlash that the recent General Conference proposals have received.

For those who value diversity, the idea of regional Adventist churches linked together under facilitative leadership is very attractive. But the worldwide mission of the SDA Church would be much harder to achieve if the movement fragmented. The SDA mission calls us to hold together, but how? The documents being presented next week are the attempt of a committee to balance competing interests in the General Conference leadership itself and produce a process that can counter the tendency to fragmentation and help hold the Church together. And everyone, I think, recognizes that, structured the way it is, the Church has delegated considerable authority to the General Conference institutions and processes, but that the GC has no authority over individual conscience. How to respect both the authority of top leadership and individual conscience is the context for this battle. And it seems even top leadership is divided down the middle.

Seventh-day Adventist growth reached the point in the late 1850s where organization of some sort seemed a necessity. Nevertheless, a sizable number of leaders was opposed to it, believing that church organization of any kind would turn the movement into “Babylon,” an organization hostile to God’s mission for the world. They argued that the since the Bible does not require the followers of Christ to organize themselves, the believers should not do so. On the other side, spurred on by James White, other Adventist leaders argued that since the Bible does not forbid organization, and common sense required it, the movement needed to organize. The pro-organization group won out and the Seventh-day Adventist Church was formed over a two-year period, in 1861 and 1863.

As the church continued to grow, the organization grew highly centralized, with top to bottom power centering in the president and a handful of officers. Ellen White became concerned about this development for two reasons. She feared the creation of an authoritarian culture within leadership and she feared it would result in the coercing of conscience. So the church was moved to considered once more how it would or should be organized.

There have been three main options for church organization in the course of Christian history. First, there is congregationalism, in which local churches are essentially independent of each other. Although they may form loose connections with other churches, there is no over-arching authoritative body. The second type of organization is often called episcopal, where authority resides at the top and flows down from there. This kind of organization works best when a people see the leadership as being directly guided by God. The best-known organization of this type is the Roman Catholic Church. The system works because Catholics see the pope as “inspired” when he speaks ex-cathedra, from the holy chair. And most church leaders operate under vows of obedience (SDA leaders chose not to take a step in that direction last year). So the Roman Catholic Church has stayed united through the centuries.

The third type of church organization is the Presbyterian, which has a central organization, but the authority flows up from below and there are “firewalls” at each level that prevent top leadership from dictating to lower levels. While congregationalism emphasizes local needs and perspective, and the episcopal system emphasizes centralized control, the Presbyterian approaches operates on a tension between global and local authority and concerns. The firewalls preserve much to local control.

In 1901 to 1903, the SDA Church created something of a hybrid of the three systems, but ended up closest to Presbyterian model. While the General Conference is concerned with matters that affect the whole world church, the formation of unions between the conferences and the General Conference provided for provide for more diversity of approach when carrying out the church’s mission. So the formation of unions was intended to care for local needs and prevent the formation of “kingly power” at the top. The basis for this type of organization was not in the Bible, the Bible offers some basic principles of leadership and offers some examples or organization, but it offers little systematic guidance as to just how the church ought to organize itself. So the SDA Church created a system, with encouragement from Ellen White that balanced global concerns and central control with diversity of focus and decentralization of power.

Two documents are coming up for discussion and vote at the Annual Council of Seventh-day Adventists next week (probably Sunday, October 11). The first spells out the consequences for any entity of the church whose official actions are out of harmony with world church policies. You can read that document here (https://news.adventist.org/fileadmin/news.adventist.org/files/news/documents/113G-Regard-for-and-Practice-of-General-Conference-Session-and-General-Conference-Executive-Committee-Actions.pdf). A second document lays out terms of reference for “compliance committees” that would be tasked to investigate charges of “non-compliance.” These are less interesting but posted here (https://news.adventist.org/fileadmin/news.adventist.org/files/news/documents/Compliance-Committees-Terms-of-Reference.pdf). The General Conference raise eyebrows by appointing five “compliance committees” a month later, before the documents calling for them were even approved. https://spectrummagazine.org/news/2018/general-conference-issues-statement-compliance-committees. While at first glance all these proposals and actions seem quite alarming, many safeguards have been built in to the processes to prevent many avenues for manipulation and abuse of these regulations and committees. I will try to explain this as we move along.

I share the key points of the first document here. It concerns what should happen when any entity of the church (institutional executive boards or committees) determines that it or another entity is out of compliance with some policy or belief of the church. A number of principles are stated first. 1) Complaints must arise by vote of an executive committee of the church and be expressed in writing. These are executive committees of conferences, unions, divisions and the General Conference Administrative Committee (also known as GCADCOM– a body of roughly 25 people that runs the day to day operations of the General Conference). Complaints are not to be taken seriously if arising from an individual or a committee outside the above parameters. And they must be made in writing. These are extremely important safeguards against abuse (and any regulation like this has potential for manipulation and abuse of power so safeguards are critical). These investigations are not to be based on disgruntled individuals or vague accusations.

2) Oversight for compliance falls to the nearest entity to the complaint. If a problem arises in a church, that is the responsibility of the conference, if a problem arises in a conference that is the responsibility of the union above it. If a problem arises in a union that is the responsibility of the division above it and so forth. If the problem is not resolved at that level it can be addressed at the levels above it and so on up the chain. The location of last resort is the GCADCOM, which could vote to refer the issue to the appropriate compliance committee for investigation and recommendation. A side note: for those not familiar with the SDA Church structure, there are six levels. The lowest level is the church member, then local churches, then conferences, then unions, then divisions and then the General Conference itself. The idea is that addressing problems should happen at the nearest level, but this document sets up a mechanism for higher entities to deal with lower issues if it is felt that intermediate entities are not dealing with the problem. That is a major change in church practice.

3) The process for dealing with non-compliance is to involve prayer and dialogue, confirmation of all charges and responses in writing, allowance of 60 days for a suspect entity to explain what they are doing, change it, or lay out a plan for change. The document calls for all that to be done in a supportive atmosphere, even allowing an extra 30 days when needed. If that process fails it is bumped up to the next higher entity (union, division or GCADCOM). If GCADCOM cannot resolve the issue it is referred to the appropriate compliance committee to investigate, work with the non-compliant entity, or recommend consequences for continued non-compliance. There is also room for an appeal of such a recommendation.

If GCADCOM concludes that there is continued non-compliance in the entity under review, it can recommend to the GC Executive Committee (GCEC– at Annual Council) consequences of progressive severity. 1) A warning to the entity, not just its president, that it is out of compliance and could face consequences. 2) If that does not change anything, the GCEC could vote a public reprimand. This would mean that at future meetings of the GCEC, the president of that entity would be placed in a “reprimanded” category on the attendee list and a public announcement of the same would occur at the commencement of the week-long meeting. This is a softening of the original proposal to make a public announcement of reprimand every time the president of the non-compliant entity gets up to speak. 3) If the non-compliance continues, at the next meeting the president of that entity could be “removed for cause.” The concept of “cause” is expanded from moral impropriety to non-compliance with a particular policy, but would require a two-thirds majority to implement, so this would be hard to do. If the president of a non-compliant union, for example, is removed from membership on the GCEC, other members of that union who are on the GCEC would retain their voice and vote. In terms of the Pacific Union, people like Pastor Randy Roberts and LLU President Richard Hart would retain their voice and vote even if the president of their union (currently Ricardo Graham) lost his position on the committee. And conference presidents from that union would retain voice in the meeting, as appropriate under current regulations.

Compliance Review Committees have been appointed to oversee five areas: 1) The teaching creation/origins, 2) policies regarding homosexuality and 3) ordination, 4) GC core policies (particularly concerned with finances), and 5) distinctive beliefs. The current membership of those committees can be found here (https://spectrummagazine.org/news/2018/general-conference-issues-statement-compliance-committees.). We will have more to say about these later.

The big unresolved question for me is: Who holds the president and/or GCADCOM accountable? No mention of such is made in this document, which suggests a top-down privilege that has high potential for abuse and manipulation. Based on past experience, the first line of defense when a president is “out of compliance” is the General Conference Treasurer, who needs to sign all financial transactions (money is a major compliance issue of course). The General Counsel’s office, with its team of lawyers, also keeps watch on the president. If the GCADCOM does something inappropriate, the GCDO (General Conference and Division Officers Committee—about 70 people) reviews all GCADCOM decisions before they get on the floor of the GCEC. A couple days ago the GCDO voted to pass on the above documents by a vote of 32 in favor, 30 opposed, and 2 abstentions, a razor-thin margin. It appears that top leaders of the church are divided on the usefulness of these documents. Going forward without address who holds the president and GCADCOM accountable may be one reason for the great hesitation, even among those who helped craft the document. Next time, a short history of SDA Church organization is needed to understand what is happening now.