Don C. Schneider has been president of the North American Division since 2000. Before that he served conferences and unions throughout North America as pastor, departmental director, and president. He and his wife, Marti, have two grown children. Recently he sat down with Stephen Chavez to talk about some of his dreams for the church, corporately and personally.

AR: What does the president of the North American Division do? What do you see as your primary responsibilities?
DS: My job is to encourage our employees and our members to do two things. I'm into only two things: I ask (1) "Do you know Jesus?" and (2) "Are you telling somebody about Him?"

That's it; I'm a pretty simple guy.

So how do you spend a typical week?
There are no typical days or weeks in my world. My world involves a fair amount of travel, lots of committees and boards, meeting with groups. During the summer I visit several camp meetings.

I go to Loma Linda University, and I'm on the board. Every action that they take I'm trying to think, Will anyone know about Jesus because of what we're doing? Some things are really not about that; some things are.

When I was a union president, my parents visited me. On Sunday morning I left the house to go across the street to the Andrews University board. My mother said to me, "Don't go there to complain about anything; go there to make a difference for God."

My job isn't really about complaining about what's going on around here. My job is, Do I know Jesus better? And, Can I talk to somebody else about it?

When I got to Berrien Springs, I was given a subscription to Trustee magazine. It's all about how to be a good hospital trustee. An article I cut out of that magazine was about how to identify a good hospital CEO. This is not a religious publication; it has nothing to do with spirituality. They were trying to figure out, Why is this person an outstanding hospital president, and this one only mediocre? They concluded that the outstanding person has a personal relationship with God.

What this church needs from me is not another course in management and improving my skills by another 10 percent. What this church needs, and has a right to expect, is that I know Jesus.

Some of my work seems to militate against that. I was at a very difficult constituency meeting, and I was arguing with a person across the table over the election of someone. I was very eager to see the conference president reelected. I believe I won an argument. But the next day, when I came back to this office, I said, "I won an argument, but do I know Jesus better? Does he know Jesus better? I don't think either of us does." I simply won an argument—at a very high price.

So on a board my question is, Will this help anybody to know about Jesus? That's true in a hospital, a university, a conference; it's true everywhere.

At the end of the day, what gives you the most personal satisfaction from your job?
I just came back from Battle Creek a few weeks ago, where we had our year-end meetings. I wanted that spot because I wanted us to remember how the Adventist Church got started. We spent the day touring Historic Adventist Village—the James and Ellen White house, the meetinghouse, and all these places.

This morning a conference president called and said, "Thanks; in January I'm taking my pastors to Battle Creek because I want them to have this kind of experience and revival and recommitment to this message we had."

I said, "Thank You, Lord; maybe somebody is doing something because of something I did. Thank You."

So to the extent that you can influence someone else, that gives you satisfaction?
Last summer a woman said to me, "You preached last summer where I was. You made a call, but I didn't do anything about it. I thought about it. Six months later I accepted that call, and I've been rebaptized. Thank you."

I feel pretty pleased about somebody who moved closer to Jesus. We all don't have to have this particular job for that; it's everybody's job.

How would you describe the state of the church in North America?
The good part is that we are growing, and every day of the week people are accepting Jesus Christ.

The bad part is that a lot of people are getting more relaxed, more calloused, more Laodicean. Some of those can be preachers, and I want to make sure I'm not one of them.

What do you attribute that to, just the climate in society?
Some of it is societal, but Jesus had the same problem. In fact, John the Baptist, who was, after all, prepared more than anyone has ever been prepared, on a low day from his prison cell said, "Go and ask Jesus, 'Are You really the one?'"

Jesus said to John's friends, "Stick around; see what happens around here. The blind are getting their sight; the lame are walking."

I can spend my time looking at the Web sites and reading about the people picking at this church, or I can spend my time reading things in the Review and other places, and saying, "It's happening! The blind are getting their sight. Dead people are walking again."

I went to church in Hagerstown, [Maryland], a few weeks back; we had to dress appropriately. I usually wear a suit; they didn't want me to wear a suit. A group got together, three or four families. Their goal, their target audience, is homeless people in Hagerstown. If I go dressed in a suit, I'm going to chase those people away.

So I asked, "How do you dress?" Some of them come in shorts, others come in slacks, and some members wear Levi's. I didn't wear my suit. I couldn't quite bring myself to go to church dressed like their target audience, but I went to this renovated pizza parlor. A man wearing overalls was cleaning up. I asked, "How long have you been here?"

"This is the third week I've been sober," he said. And this guy's been there a few more weeks, and this other guy's been there a few more weeks. And I'm thinking, It's happening.

By the way, you know what their next step is? They have a target for another church; only this time it's not going to be as high-class as a renovated pizza parlor. There are people who live under a bridge in Hagerstown, and this Adventist missionary doctor family says, "Our next job is to plant a church under that bridge."

This is exhilarating. We're going to change lives under that bridge. People are going to become different under that bridge. I can think about that, or I can think about people who only complain.

You see the church in North America from a unique perspective. Are there some parts of Bermuda, Canada, and the United States where the Adventist Church is making unusual or exceptional progress? And how can that be replicated in other parts of the country?
We get our greatest number of baptisms with first-generation immigrants; we've done that for many years. That's a spot we can put our finger on and say, "It's working right there." Today Don Corkum called me from Wisconsin, and we've just had a breakthrough among the Hmong, a recent immigrant group.

But we can't afford to specialize only in recent immigrants, because there's too many of the rest of us. We need to hear the gospel too. So we're trying new things. We're inviting people to the Lord by all kinds of methods. We're starting new churches everywhere. We're starting some of them in towns that haven't changed in many years.

You've been very public about the fact that the Seventh-day Adventist message is a message about Jesus. What specifically should people who attend Adventist meetings know about Jesus as a result of their attendance? What about Jesus do you want them to know?
That He is capable of wiping out our past mistakes and starting us over fresh again today. Menninger said if he could convince people that God forgives sin, 75 percent of them could go home from the hospital today. If I can help you understand that God really will forgive you and start you over new this morning, you have the chance of living one exciting life today.

Do you think, in general, people get that message when they attend Adventist churches?
I want them to. We all have our bad days. Sometimes people can't hear what's being said; sometimes the message is distorted. We may not do it perfectly every day; I don't do it perfectly every day. I was talking to a group of employees this weekend, and I said to them, "I want more from you than I can produce in my own life. I don't do it perfectly; I wish you would."

I want to be called a Christian without it being an embarrassment to Jesus. I pray, "If somebody calls me a Christian, Jesus, I hope You're not embarrassed. I want to live for You today."

Does the church in North America have major outreach priorities?
We just spent our year-end meeting in Battle Creek. The title on the screen: "If not now, when? If not me, who?" This fits with the two things I said to begin with.

The North American Adventist Church is a solid church with more funding than many places in the world. We have so much to be thankful for. With the talent, financial pool, and raw numbers we have, it is possible for us, with the Holy Spirit's blessing, to say, "Within the next five years we will give every person in North America the invitation to know Jesus."

Five years is kind of a long time; we ought to be able to do that in five years. I ask conference presidents at our year-end meeting, "Have you thought this over so that every person in your territory will know about Jesus and heaven in the next five years? Whatever you're putting your money and effort into, I hope you're thinking about that. How will I reach these several million people?" The job of a union office is to say, "OK, we have this five- or 10-state region, how do we make sure that every person in this region has an invitation?"

Some people are specialists. Youth directors have a specialty area. I would say to them, "Have you thought about how every kid in this state is going to hear the gospel? Conference president, how is every single person going to hear the gospel?"

But that's a corporate business. I don't want to divorce the corporate from the personal. The bottom half of the screen said, "If not me, who?" When [General Conference vice president] Lowell Cooper dropped me off at my house after we arrived at the airport in the middle of the night, I said, "Lowell, you're driving into my territory." My primary mission field is the neighborhood where I live. How are these people going to know Jesus?

The people who live on our street, we've knocked on their doors, we've asked their names, we've written down their names on a tablet, we know their kids' names, their dogs' names. The tablet sits in our house, and my wife, Marti, prays for these people by name.

One of our neighbors has recently been to evangelistic meetings with us. I don't know how to work for Muslims, Hindus; I don't know much about how to work for anybody. But out of the 16 families that live on my street, the best way God has of giving them an invitation to His kingdom is through me. So I'm saying, "If not me, who?"

I believe in the Voice of Prophecy and It Is Written, and I'm praying that my neighbors happen to turn on It Is Written and Breath of Life and all the rest. But God's probably going to use me.

Every year at Christmas we give our neighbors some cookies and a note that tells them a little about our family. Last year we told them, "We were off in Nigeria; thanks for praying for us." We asked our neighbor, a Muslim, to be in charge of praying for us while we were gone. She told us, "I prayed for you every single day while you were in Nigeria." If God's not going to use me, who's He going to use?

The next five years is a time for us to think and plan corporately. But for me, personally, these people are my prime targets.

I've heard it said that the idea for satellite evangelism came from your creative mind.
I don't know if I'd say it that way.

How would you say it?
Former North American Division president Al McClure asked me to chair a committee about evangelism. He said, "Choose anybody you want. I don't care who, but talk about this."

So we met in Denver and said, "What can we do?" And out of that meeting, satellite evangelism was born. That became NET '95.

Do you have any thoughts about other creative means of outreach?
The church tried something through Sow 1 Billion, and we're baptizing people through Sow 1 Billion. Everything we can lay our hands on is good to use. Everything works if we work it.

We're baptizing people through LifeTalk radio. It works. We're baptizing people through felt needs seminars. The most consistent way we're baptizing people is still through evangelistic meetings. Maybe we have to package these in continually different ways, I don't know. I'm not sitting here saying, "I have the idea that will finish the work." I don't understand how He's possibly going to do it all.

On the other hand, when 9/11 came, around the world, in a matter of minutes, the word was spread. The message about Jesus can go around the world too.

The North American Division has gone on record as saying that one of its priorities is to reach large cities. How is that going?
We've done several things in large cities. We've had many cities involved. Our next one is Montreal, where we'll take next summer's General Conference offering and make some special effort there. We've had special success in Toronto. We have new believers in New York City as a result of the thrust following the 9/11 event. We've approached other cities in other ways. We don't have this accomplished. The people are in the cities. The need is huge.

Is the church's progress significant? Would this have happened without a deliberate effort in that direction?
Probably not. And we need to continue to focus. After all, the people are in these big cities. They speak hundreds of languages. We haven't accomplished this. Lots of people in North America do not know the name of Jesus. We have to put our energy there; we have to put our money there; that's what it's all about.

Among people who know you, you're known as someone who enjoys life. How does that relate to what you know about Jesus? Do you think Jesus was fun to be around?
I do. I think Jesus laughed. We've done Him a disservice when we say only He was a man despised and rejected and all that. He was a fun person, and I'll tell you why I think that: kids liked to be around Him. Kids don't enjoy being around people who are not having fun. Kids wanted to be close to Him. He must've been fun. I'm a believer in that.

Do you have a place where you like to escape to clear your mind?
Not really. We enjoy a certain amount of travel, and we've taken some time in Europe and viewed places in Rome and the area of the Waldenses, and on through Germany. I've been in Germany several times. If I were to go to a place of meditation for a few days I would enjoy going to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther was, sitting there in church and thinking about some of his thoughts, and recommitting myself to Luther's commitment to the Bible, and the Bible alone.

I've gone to the places where Luther preached some of his last sermons. He said to people, "Don't become a Lutheran. What is important about the name of Luther? Just forget it. I didn't die for anybody; it's Jesus who died." I'd go there and think some of those thoughts.

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Stephen Chavez is managing editor of the Adventist Review.