Appearances: Obedience is Better than "The Healthy Church Initiative"

No doubt you are familiar with the story in the Bible about Saul and the Amalekites (I Samuel 15: 2 - 35). God, through Samuel, told Saul to go to Amalek and kill everyone and everything. Saul was under direct orders from God not to spare any living thing. Seems pretty simple. Definitely straighforward. Nothing to really think about. Step 1: Go to Amalek. Step 2: Find everything that is living. Step 3: Fix it so it's not.

However Saul decided to save Agag, the Amalekite King, and all the "Grade A" cattle, sheep, oxen, etc. Saul, and those that empowered him to make this choice, were (possibly) thinking, "Hey listen, we probably should make a sacrifice to God when we get back, right? Okay fine, why don't we take their best cattle and livestock, and sacrifice that? C'mon, guys! This is genius! We save our stuff, God gets His sacrifice, and in the end everything gets destroyed, just like we were ordered. I mean, come right down to it, does God really care how we get the job done, as long as we do it? It's a "win-win" for everyone...except the Amalekites!" I can only imagine the laughter. Of course, this "reasoning" seemed right in Saul's eyes. So King Saul and the rest of the desert trek crew head back home, to be greeted by the news from Samuel of God's anger and displeasure.

"...Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to harken than the fat of rams."

Fast forward a few thousand years to the founding and organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. According to Ellen G. White, God was the Founder of this Faith, and the early Adventist pioneers came up with a organizational structure, as detailed in the Church Manual, came after long periods of fasting, sleepless nights, and endless prayer. Ellen White cautioned that the development of our organizational structure was guided by the Holy Spirit. She admonished that we tamper with this structure at our own peril. If the Book of Samuel is any indication, it would be reasonable to assume that following His direction in the form of the Church Manual is one of many situations in which God wants our obedience.

But instead, what do we have today in the 21st Century? Seventh-day Adventists, both clergy and laity, who look to Baptist and Pentacostal "mega-churches" and covet their "successes." Not success as defined by searching the Scriptures, or success in sharing in Third Angel's message, or success in telling people what the Bible says about the imminent return of Jesus, but success measured in terms of big buildings, and big congregations, and big money. What a pity that these people seem to forget that if we are doing God's will, the need for anything would be the least of our worries.

To some small degree, I can actually feel for the people pushing the "Healthy Church Initiative." It's been more than a century and a half since the beginning of the Advent movement. We believe that we are God's remnant Church. And yet we look at other faiths, other belief systems both in and out of Christendom, and see huge growth. The Crystal Cathedral. The Saddleback Church. Joel Olsteen. T. D. Jakes.

Some Adventist pastors, and laity, seem to be thinking, "These ministries have huge followings. If we are the Remnant Church, why aren't we growing like they are? Hey! I have an idea. We're smart people, why don't we copy everything the 'Church Growth Movement' people do? We know the basics already. We can either go back to the 1950s and study the original work by Donald McGavran, or we can study modern McGavran incarnations like 'The Purpose Driven Church.' That part would be easy enough since they even host websites like 'Pastors.com' and/or 'Sermons.com.'" Another party to the conversation could have said,"Well if we are going to go that route, then why don't we just hire a church growth consultant? C'mon, it's not like we don't have a budget line item for 'Evangelism.' Let's hire some guy to 're-brand' us. We'll bring in some drums, electric guitars, and get everyone up on their feet screaming and shouting! In fact, if we run the numbers, I'll bet we'll find we can save a ton of cash by not buying hymnals. Who really wants to take the time and think about what hymns are trying say? The concept of hymns as 'prayers in song' is old fashioned, anyway. We can even give it a cool name like the Healthy Church Initiative!" A third member to this conservation could have added," You know guys, there's another way to look at as well, just between us. There's a cost benefit analysis piece the entire church is missing. The percentage of tithes and offerings are down. We have renovations a lot of us would like to see made to the Conference headquarters. Then we have our salaries, and the large number of our employees that are baby boomers that will be retiring soon. Add all that to increased energy costs and other sundries. We need cash. One way to do it is to grow churches. Do the math. Even if we get a portion of new members to pay consistent tithes and offerings, we'll be in a better position financially. Why in some of the so-called 'Mega-Churches,' they manage their tithes and offerings by telling parishioners that God won't bless them, or even answer their prayers unless they give generously to their churches. We not only can do this, we have to do this." Yet another "in-group" member no doubt said, "You know there are going to be a few members, and maybe even a few pastors that are going to push back on this. From what I've read, in order to make these 'Purpose Driven' churches work in terms of reaching out to non-SDAs, we have to 'calm down' preaching about some of our doctrines. We can't talk about Hell, or the 'Time of Trouble' because it will scare people. If we talk about Ellen G. White, they'll thing we're nuts. In fact we can't talk about sin, because we'll be called 'judgmental' or 'haters.' The big problem will be that we will have to change the way our Church is organized and the way decisions are made. Some members are bound to object." To which a senior in-group member probably said something like, "Let them. This is serious business. We have to grow our churches. We can't get the clergy or the laity to commit to actual Bible training so they can go out and teach their neighbors, and we aren't doing in-gathering anymore. From what I've read, there are some pretty effective tactics we can use to shut down any members that don't want to get with the program. We're pastors, after all. Who's running this church anyway? Us or them? Besides, we know better. In the end, we'll increase tithes, we can be more competitive and more main-stream, and we can even get new members. It will be a win-win for everyone."

The problem with this reasoning starts with the question, "Who's running this Church, anyway." The right and only answer is God. Case closed. The Church is the bride of Christ. In the meantime, we are supposed to serve, help, and love another, both inside and outside the Church. We are supposed to both prepare ourselves for His return and and tell others to prepare as well. But that message is lost in the rush to create an "Adventist Clone" of the Purpose Driven Church, or a Saddleback Church, or any one of the several nome-de-plumes for an organization run by a clergy that call the SDA Manual guidelines, and demands the laity "submit to their authority."

Shame. Shame on any SDA clergy anywhere in the world for pushing a system that is contrary to Protestant and SDA core beliefs. Shame on any laity blindly following confeence or pastoral "leadership" that would take us in a direction contrary to God's plan for our Church.. There's wrong, and then there's wrong, and then there's this.

God gave us brains and intelligence so that we might heed the admonition of Isiah 1:18, " Come now, and let us reason together." The key word here is reason. Those who have studied the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, have enough information to know that what Bill Miller and many Potomac Conference pastors are doing is wrong.

But it doesn't stop there. There are books and articles by by Jay Galimore, and Richard O'Ffill, and Thomas Mostert, and others. But more importantly, there is the SDA Church Manual. Think it through. If the people who are pushing this change in Church structure had any value to their claims, why then do they not take their arguments to the General Conference in Open Session? Let them put their ideas forth like honest men, instead of behind closed doors. Certainly, if God supported changes like removing the Church Board in favor of an "Accountability Board" and the "Ministry Board," then the entire church would see the light. Instead look at the chaos and confusion in Minnesota Conference, Rocky Mountain Conference, and Potomac Conference, where the system in play at the Takoma Park Church is used.

If nothing else we know that the God is not the lord of confusion. If so, we know that God is not in the Healthy Church Initiative.