Notable among Annual Council plans this year were
the formation of a Leadership Training Council and a Council on Africa. The
first gives attention to the dire need of trained leadership for the church,
especially in the areas of rapid membership growth, while the second is intended
to reexamine strategy and outcomes in the entire African continent.
Speaking on both these new initiatives, Paulsen (see photo, left) alluded
to the delegates as he stressed their practical function.
"Seventh-day Adventist leadership is hallmarked by its ability to see the whole--the
much larger picture. The God-entrusted responsibility that I would have as a
union president towards the 98 percent of the world membership who did not take
part in my election is understood and accepted. In addition to teaching skills,
Adventist leadership training must deliberately go about creating that kind
of mind-set. God's undivided commitment is to the whole world. My commitment
to Him, as an elected leader, is similarly in the interest of the whole world.
"With such a mind-set, leadership
binds together rather than scatters, looks out rather than in, shares rather
than hoards. Is not that, historically, a pretty good description of how we
have functioned in mission as a church?
"While we have set up a leadership training unit at
the General Conference and shall, during these meetings, elect a director who
will have his defined creative functions, all of us as we serve the world church
are involved in modeling leadership--both by what we teach and by how we act, both by
structured presentations and by comments loosely made. So I say to myself and
to my colleagues, in any department or service of the General Conference: What
sort of Adventist leadership mind-set am I encouraging?
"You will find on the agenda a recommendation to set
up a Council on Africa. Over the past 30 years our work in Africa has gone through
several structural changes. Some of them have come about in efforts to resolve
local challenges. But on the whole, during the 1960's and 1970's, as nations in Africa emerged with their own selfhood,
the church also considered how to best bring the administration and planning
of our work in Africa to the African continent, and with that a strengthened
local sense of ownership in the in the life and activities of the church. It
has been established, and I think indisputably so, that there is a direct relationship
between growth in a given area and the sense of local ownership which the church
has in that area of its own life and witness.
"Some twenty years ago our work in Africa was administratively
arranged in three divisions: the Africa-Indian Ocean Division, the Afro-Mid
East Division, and the Trans-Africa Division. Two of those structures have ceased
to be, for one reason or another. In the third one (AID) there is today, 20
years later, cause to wonder whether the stated reason for its establishment--to
develop and strengthen our work in the French-speaking parts of Africa--was
ill-conceived or should be addressed differently.
"Our church in Africa is today
experiencing rapid growth. During these two decades there has been a 500 percent
increase in membership on the continent. The next 500 percent increase in membership
in Africa is projected to take place in half that time--in one decade. As we
all well know, there are huge demands on infrastructures, institutions, pastorates,
and leadership. So the time has come for us as a world body of leaders to ask:
Have we provided our best to care for the future of our church family in Africa?
"Humanity is by definition in a flux, especially among developing nations.
Faith and doctrines may be fixed; structures and ways of doing things are much
more adaptable and dextrous. Leadership in Africa is part of the challenge,
South Africa itself is part of the challenge, and institutions--higher education,
health care, and publishing--are part of the challenge.
_________________________
BY JONATHAN GALLAGHER, associate director, General Conference Public Affairs
and Religious Liberty Department.
