c. 2003 Religion News Service
SILVER SPRING, Md. _ The Seventh-day Adventist Church has grown to a total of 13.3 million baptized members worldwide, an increase of almost a million in the last year.
The statistics, as of Oct. 10, were reported at the church’s Annual Council of the General Conference Committee, which concluded here Wednesday (Oct. 15).
Jan Paulsen, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, said the church is working to involve youth in its ongoing evangelism goals.
“I think we have become better at acknowledging and affirming the creative role that young people and young professionals can and must play in our future,” he told reporters at a news conference at the denomination’s headquarters. “Fifty-five, 60 percent of our total world community are under 30 years of age.”
The 13.3 million figure includes only baptized adults, Paulsen explained. As of June 30, 938,662 Seventh-day Adventists lived in North America.
The entire global Adventist community, including children, is more than 20 million, he said.
During the annual meeting, church leaders adopted guidelines for relations between employers and employees. Church founder Ellen White “gave stern warnings about the trade union practices of her day,” the guidelines read, because “she was fiercely protective against incursions on the conscience of individuals.” But almost a century and a half after the church’s founding, the guidelines declare that specific recommendations cannot be given due to the range of political and cultural environments in which church members live.
The document calls for mutual respect and fair wages and working conditions.
“If you’re an employer, you have to be fair to your workers,” said Paulsen. “There needs to be an ongoing dialogue between employer and employee for fairness to be obtained.”
During the council, church leaders continued consideration of a number of other issues, including higher education and worship.
A higher education report stated that non-Seventh-day Adventist enrollment in schools affiliated with the denomination increased from 18 percent in 1990 to almost 32 percent in 2000. The percentage of Non-Seventh-day Adventist faculty members quadrupled in that same time period, from 4 percent to 16 percent.
“I am more concerned with whether we have the teaching staff and leaders who can justly and fairly carry what the institution is set up to accomplish, both professionally and also in terms of the … spiritual and moral values that institution represents,” Paulsen said.
At the request of its members, the church also is wrestling with a document on its “philosophy of music.” Paulsen said the document will be a subject of much discussion, given the range of cultural approaches to music across the global church.
“There is some music which is not appropriate for church use, music which has its heritage more in particular types of popular music that is alien to what I think is appropriate for a worship service in church,” he said.
He would not give an example of what he considered “alien,” but a draft of the document says, “Christians will shun certain music styles and any secular music such as rock and related forms that opens the mind to impure thoughts, leads to unholy behavior, or destroys the appreciation for that which is pure and holy.”
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