he General Conference (GC) Executive Committee has strongly endorsed a planning document to help prepare the church for future leadership and resource needs in a rapidly changing world. The broad-ranging plan notes that at the present rate of growth, by 2020 the Seventh-day Adventist Church could have up to 40 million members from increasingly diverse cultures, religious backgrounds, languages, and socio-economic levels.

According to Gerry Karst, a General Conference vice-president and chair of the GC Strategic Planning Committee, "We have to ask the question: 'What do we need to do today, in order to maximize our resources and potential for tomorrow?'"

Michael Ryan, assistant to the General Conference president for strategic planning, presented a statistical snapshot of how the Adventist Church of 2020 could look. In 1985, nearly 15 percent of the world membership was in North America. Surging growth in Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America suggest that by 2020, less than four percent of the world membership may be in North America. In view of the high proportion of funding for world church operations that has come from North America, said Ryan, this cultural change could be significant.

The church of 2020 would also be a "young church," in the sense that the majority of Adventists will be relatively new church members. According to projections, only 12.5 percent of Adventists in 2020 will have been baptized members in the year 2000. Karst and Ryan both emphasized the need for a deliberate focus on nurturing these new believers and fostering a sense of shared identity around the world.

"It is our responsibility to consider what the next generation of Adventists will look like-and we have this responsibility until Jesus comes," said Jan Paulsen, General Conference president. "We need to examine our own resources, look to what plans we should make, and can make. We should do this with openness and use our resources around the world to the maximum."

A key component of the planning document is to properly educate and train both current and future church leaders in a "biblical leadership culture." Part of this process will involve a one-day leadership symposium just prior to the 2005 General Conference session in St. Louis, which will serve as a springboard to further regional symposiums around the world.

The 2020 document sparked an extended discussion among committee members. Violeta Bocala, retiring president of the Southern Asia-Pacific Division, expressed concern at the lack of emphasis in the document on the reason for church leadership-to help the church engage in outreach and mission. He hoped the leadership symposium would not emphasize leadership for its own sake, nor "emphasize the bureaucratic at the expense of the evangelistic."

"This document seems to be based on the assumption that there is a strong pool of those who want to be leaders," cautioned Dick Osborne, president of Pacific Union College, Angwin, California. "But we are discovering that this pool is shrinking." He recommended that, in view of the lack of a strong monetary incentive, "We need to somehow create a culture that encourages employees to take the risk in becoming leaders."

Bertil Wiklander, president of the Trans-European Division, reminded committee members that "by the year 2020 most of us, now sitting in this room, will no longer be here." He urged the necessity of including not just current church administrators, but young people-as the future leaders of the church-in plans for the 2005 leadership symposium.

Ron Watts, Southern Asia Division president, endorsed the proposal but reminded the committee not to take the projected church growth rates for granted. "This [growth] is not automatic," he said. "There are a thousand things that leaders can do that would slow this growth." He urged that leadership training focus on ways to manage church growth and provide much-needed nurture for new members, thus allowing the church to continue its strong expansion.

The planning document also outlines a strategy for developing "contextualized materials" for "new work" areas where the church is growing, but where resources in local languages, adapted to local cultures, are scarce. Pat Gustin, director of the Institute of World Mission, in Berrien Spring, Michigan, applauded the move, saying that in recent years the church has sent out mission workers with "empty hands."

Responding later, Ryan said that the 2020 date in the document "had no eschatological meaning," but was merely a point of reference for collecting and presenting the data. "As Adventists, all that we do and all our plans are focused on preparing people for Christ's soon coming."

Other proposals listed in the document include a "phase-in" strategy to initiate key programs in churches of territories with limited resources and a "donor conference" initiative where conferences and unions are encouraged to individually fund mission workers in these areas.