Our Roots, Pt.45

The next significant development in the organization of Adventist church structure took place at the 1913 General Conference Session. But to properly explain this development we need to backtrack a little and cover the organizational developments in Europe since 1901.

As described back in Our Roots, Pt. 28, at the 1897 General Conference Session three separate “General Conferences” were formed in an effort to decentralize decision-making within the Church. The only place this change really took root was in Europe. The leaders in Australasia already had a functional union conference, and having themselves called a General Conference didn’t really make a difference in how they did business. The leaders in North America continued to function as if their General Conference was in charge of the rest of the world field, so the change didn’t really make a difference to them either. But it did make a difference for Europe.

The Europeans had been wanting some self-government, and were happy to have their own General Conference. After the reorganization of the overall General Conference in 1901 the Europeans reorganized their General Conference in the same manner (absorbing the auxiliaries). The overall General Conference paid little attention to the European General Conference during the Kellogg/Jones crisis. By 1907, however, things had quieted down and the overall General Conference had concluded that there really couldn’t be two General Conferences.

During a meeting of the overall General Conference executive committee held in Gland, Switzerland, Daniells and the other General Conference officers convinced their European brethren to discontinue their General Conference. The Europeans finally agreed to this for the sake of church unity, but they weren’t happy about it. In place of a General Conference they were given a vice president of the General Conference to oversee the European territory, along with a secretary and a treasurer.

Starting in 1911, the European leaders began agitating for the creation of a new level of church organization—the Division Conference. After running the idea through several preliminary meetings in 1912 and 1913 they presented their request to form the European Division Conference at the 1913 General Conference Session. In making this request the Europeans made it clear that they thought similar Division Conferences could eventually be established in other areas of the world (such as Asia) whose remoteness from General Conference headquarters made it necessary to have greater local decision-making authority, but that they didn’t think such a structure would be needed in North America. The subject was referred to a committee for consideration, with the understanding that the committee would report back on the matter before the close of the Session.

The committee reported back to the Session on May 21, 1913. It recommended approval of the European Division Conference, and proposed a constitution for this new body. The proposal was set aside for a day to give the delegates time to look it over thoroughly. Later that same day it was pointed out that that day was the 50th anniversary of the original formation of the General Conference back in 1863. At that thought the delegation briefly considered going ahead with the vote on the creation of the Division Conference that same day as a sort of celebratory gesture, but they eventually decided that the extra time really was needed to consider the proposal and that its merely have been presented on the anniversary was celebration enough.

The next day, May 22, 1913, the proposal for a European Division Conference was duly considered and approved. The Europeans figured the subject of Division Conferences was then concluded for the time being, but a certain amount of “me too-ism” kicked in at that point. On May 26 formation of the North American Division Conference was proposed, and the Asiatic Division Mission was proposed on May 30 (the difference between a conference and a mission being that a conference is self-supporting and a mission is not). Both were approved.

There was another item of business at that Session which was not particularly related to structure, but is interesting to this narrative nonetheless. Our Roots, Pt. 40 featured some advice given by Ellen White to a pastor who was leading his congregation away from the organized church structure in favor of congregationalism. That pastor and congregation had continued on that path and separated from the denomination, but on May 30, 1913 the pastor and his congregation presented a formal request to the Session to return to membership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The request was received joyfully and referred to the local conference, since conferences are responsible for handling the admission of entire churches into membership.

Next: Divisions Revisited