Structure vs. Evangelism

When the details of the plan for changing our congregational governance structure were presented, the argument that came with them was that our current structure wasn't conducive to evangelism, and therefore had to be revised. This argument has been key in the success of the pastoral staff in pushing through the change (along with apathy, ignorance, or mistaken information in a significant portion of the congregation, but that's another post), so I would like to examine it more closely.

The governance system our congregation was following before this change was, at least in name, the system found in the Church Manual. (I specify "in name" because even before this change there were ways in which our pastoral staff were not truly following it as they should, but that also is another post.) The Manual is written by the world church, to be followed exactly and in its entirety by the entire world church. In other words, the same system is implemented in every Adventist congregation worldwide. In some places there are great evangelistic efforts and rapid growth. In others, stagnation. What this tells us is that the Manual system does not inhibit evangelism; if it works, it works, and failure to evangelize must result from something else.

At this point some may ask, "Even if the Manual system doesn't inhibit evangelism, could a change in the system do more to advance it?" Liberty will soon be examining the origins, nuances, and general pros and cons of our new system in detail, so I won't get into this too deeply. The simple answer is that while there is a theoretical possibility that there could be ways of improving the Manual system to advance evangelism, what we have seen implemented at Takoma Park doesn't qualify as improvement. What's worse, it's at best a cosmetic change, and at worst a destruction of several fundamental premises of Adventism, including that the unfettered voice of the majority of believers is the authority by which the church is to be governed and that all believers are created equal in the site of God and responsible for knowing and deciding for themselves what the Bible instructs them to do, independant of the clergy.

This brings us to one last question. If the governance structure is not to blame for our failure to evangelize, what is? In this case, the fault lies squarely with us, both corporately and as individual members, because we couldn't be bothered to commit to it and follow through. That statement is uncomfortable for all of us, but also true.

No amount of changing our governance is going to make our hearts more committed to the gospel work. To say that we had to change the structure to do evangelism simply makes the structure the scapegoat for our own failings, so we don't have to face them.

Before I end this post, I would like to point out that those of us who oppose this governance change are not in any way opposed to evangelism. In fact, we wholeheartly support it. We just believe that the changes to our governance will ultimately do more to harm than help the cause of evangelism. Before we can reach out and bring others in to our church we must first be sure that we are truly living according to the beliefs we claim to follow as Adventists, or those who come in will walk right back out when they discover our duplicity.

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