*In several areas of the world, local field units not holding conference status may be classified with terminology other than "mission." For the purposes of Article IV, such field units may be considered equivalent to a mission provided they have two or more officers and an executive committee and observe a schedule of regular constituency meetings.

UNDERSECRETARY AND ASSOCIATE SECRETARIES-CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWS AMENDMENT
This item was discussed for some time and will be brought back to the afternoon session.

NOMINATING COMMITTEE REPORT #4
VOTED, To approve the following partial report of the Nominating Committee:
General Conference

Adjourned

EUGENE HSU, Chair
VERNON B PARMENTER, Secretary
LARRY R EVANS, Actions Editor
ROWENA J MOORE, Recording Secretary

Profiling Adventist Leadership
Monday, July 4, 2005, 10:45 a.m.

[The meeting was opened with prayer.]

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: The second session of the Profiling Adventist Leadership symposium is now called to order.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today the comments from the floor will be fielded by a panel. I'll introduce the panel: Dr. Richard Osborn is the president of Pacific Union College. Next to him is Dr. Beverly Cobb, a delegate from the Columbia Union in the North American Division. Dr. Cobb has a doctorate from Andrews University, and her dissertation was on the spiritual formation of nursing students. Sitting next to Dr. Cobb is Ted Ramirez, who is a corporate transactions attorney and a member of the General Conference Committee. It's also a privilege for me to introduce Dr. Lyn Behrens, this morning's presenter. I suspect that everyone already knows that she is the president of Loma Linda University and Medical Center.

Dr. Behrens received her medical education in the country of her birth, Australia. She came to Loma Linda many years ago. Her résumé reveals that she has held many positions of leadership at Loma Linda. What you would not know from looking at her résumé is that Dr. Behrens is the longest serving president. It has been my privilege for the past several years to be a board member at Loma Linda, and in the course of our work we have discovered that there are many accrediting agencies and consultants that pay visits to the campus. I have had an opportunity to have an interface with a number of those, and I want to report to you many of these individuals and groups have spoken about their awareness of the personal commitment of Loma Linda to the mission of continuing the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. It is a commitment that is palpable on that campus.

Brothers and sisters, that kind of commitment does not happen by accident. It's the result of very intentional leadership by a committed collaborative and spiritually oriented team that we have at Loma Linda University and Medical Center, and Dr. Behrens is the leader of that team.

LYN BEHRENS: Good morning, and thank you, Elder Cooper. We are so blessed to have had a long line of wonderful chairs of our board who have brought superb governance to our organization. [Dr. Behrens made a presentation entitled "Integrity-A 21st Century Imperative."]

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you very much, Dr. Behrens. [Applause.] We lost some time this morning. So we need to make very efficient use of the time we have available. Will you please approach the microphones with your questions? We shall deal with them as they come to us.

ARNOLD TRUJILLO: My question or observation really is more related to the presentation that was made yesterday rather than today, but I think I would like the panel to address that. One of the things that I fear more than anything else as a conference president is "groupthink," where the conference committee would agree to the various ideas that I may present to the committee for consideration.

RAMON H. MAURY: I want to express my deep appreciation for that refreshing touch of air this morning. I have only one question: Would it be possible to serialize this marvelous presentation in the new magazine Adventist World?

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you, Elder Maury. We'll take note of that.

MELVIN PAUL: Sometimes the auditors find discrepancies in financial matters. Their reports often have explicit recommendations, but the administrators do little or nothing to rectify these errors. I have heard individuals say that they are not concerned with the auditors' report, because they are connected with the powers that be and will remain in office.

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Would anybody on the panel like to address this?

RICHARD OSBORN: I think that sometimes in constituency meetings the auditors' reports are not taken as seriously as they could be. It's one of the routine parts of the agenda. But I think that the management letters that go to the various entities need to be shared by administrators so that the governing boards are aware of the management letter.

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you very much.

ALFREDO GARCIA-MARENKO: I come to the podium to thank the administration and also Dr. Behrens for this fine paper and presentation. It's the finest paper on integrity that I have read and heard in this church. And it's about time. I applaud this initiative of our world church.

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you also.

C. GARLAND DULAN: Just a brief question to the panel on the issue of letters of recommendation. Since many of us receive these, what is the responsibility of an individual who is asked to write a letter of recommendation or to give a recommendation for someone that they cannot really recommend positively?

ROBERT OSBORN: I have very strong feelings on this question because I tend to give very honest recommendations of strengths and weaknesses. And sometimes it hurts a candidate, especially if all the other recommendations are positive. Recently we interviewed an individual for vice president. A student on our search committee asked: "What are your weaknesses?" And the candidate had thought about the question and said, "These are two or three of my weaknesses." I think that if we were a lot more honest in the recommendations that we give each other, we would enhance our recommendation system so that we're very honest with each other but not with a desire to hurt the candidate. We're not going to find perfect people. It would benefit the integrity of the church in a tremendous way. But it's something that we're all going to have to agree to do; otherwise, we will hurt people.

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you very much. We will return to the panel.

TED RAMIREZ: Thank you, Elder Baptiste, for the opportunity to address this particular question. It also coincides with the position requested to be addressed by Elder Trujillo on the matter of how church bodies balance our preference for consensus as people of faith with the need to be sufficiently direct and sufficiently formal, to be clear and to be fair.

It has been my observation that especially in a multilingual environment such as this one, oftentimes efforts made to be open and deliberate and to allow many people to have a voice become misinterpreted. The translations sometimes are not precise, and sometimes the words that we speak fail to convey our intentions.

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE: Thank you very much. We have exhausted our time. This meeting is adjourned. [Benediction.]

HAROLD W. BAPTISTE, Chair
BILL BOTHE, ATHAL TOLHURST,
FRED THOMAS, and CLAUDE SABOT, Proceedings Editors

Seventh Business Meeting
58th General Conference session, July 4, 2005, 2:00 p.m.

GERRY D. KARST: Welcome to the afternoon session-The Challenge of Mission. But just before we get into that, the Nominating Committee has a partial report to bring to us at this time.

NIELS-ERIK ANDREASEN: The Nominating Committee has another partial report. This is for the secretary and treasurer of each division in the world field.

[The complete list can be found in the General Conference Sessions Actions.]

GERRY D. KARST: We will now transition to another challenge. You will recall that yesterday we dealt with the challenge of spirituality. Today we will deal with society. Mike Ryan is going to make a presentation. Once again, we will invite you to be engaged in the discussion to provide feedback.

We like to talk about the good things, but here we want to focus on some of the challenges and get your opinions on how we can better address these and move the mission of the church forward. We appreciate the level of involvement yesterday. We look for that to happen again today, and I will turn to Mike Ryan.

MICHAEL L. RYAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has had the biblical instruction to take the gospel of Jesus to the world. And as we look around the world, we recognize that it is made up of different cultures, different peoples, different languages, and different customs. But the Bible is clear: we are to be the salt of the earth, and we are called to mingle with people. We are called to know their joys, their cares, their needs, and their fears.

It brings us to a very important question. How does the church interact with society?

I just want to make a very quick review, if I can, of some of the challenges, some of the cares, some of the huge concerns, of the global family. At least 1.1 billion people live in extreme poverty; there is a strong possibility that that number has greatly increased. The prevalence of hunger can be as high as 30 percent in some regions of the world.

Twelve million American children experience hunger each year. Up to 70 percent of rural areas in some regions of the world lack access to good sanitation.

Also, at the end of 2003, AIDS left 15 million children orphans. The illiteracy rate of the world is 18.3 percent.

When we come to a General Confer-ence session, we hear reports, and I praise the Lord for these reports. Great things have been done. This church is one whose membership is growing at a rapid rate, and I praise the Lord for that, but there are certain issues that we need to be honest about. How does the church score when it comes to interacting with society?

Surveys indicate that less than 20 percent of the Adventist Church is making an impact in their community, or interacting with their community. Among churches in North America, community service and ministry was a priority in only 15 percent of churches.

A healthy church must be active in relating with society, and it must first listen to the needs of the community. It has been called to reach and then respond proactively to meet those needs.

Let us turn to the Bible, and we are very familiar with what I would consider to be a biblical mandate. It says in John, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35, NKJV).

We can turn also to James, and there it is recorded, "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27, NKJV).

Also, in the Gospel of Matthew is a most dynamic and touching parable: "And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me'" (Matt. 25:33-36, NKJV). These are those who are welcomed to the kingdom.

Today in our church we need to have more Daniels working daily in society bringing the salt of the earth to the governments of the world. We also need to have more Esthers willing, despite great personal peril, to risk all to help save the lives of millions of people about to face a horrible death. We also need to have more Dorcases, who, by their love and action, touch the lives of society and give clear witness to the real love of God that they serve.

The biblical instruction is clear: we are to be interacting with those who have very little hope, who have many needs. We're to be a representative of Jesus for them.

Let's just take a brief look at what Ellen White says: "Christ's methods alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good, and He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, 'Follow Me.'"

The question today that I want to bring is Why has the church's response to the needs of society been limited? We have to share with each other, so that we understand what the concerns are. What are our problems? Also, what values and organizational changes need to be adopted by the church in order to realize a greater percentage of Adventist members involved in community projects? What do we need to change?

I want to tell you an experience that I had not too long ago. I happened to be visiting Sydney, Australia, and I was invited to attend a church that was not far out of the city. And just before I walked into that particular church, a church that was addressing a wide range of needs, I came into the parking lot, and there I saw about 20 Harley-Davidson motorcycles. And there were those standing around who were dressed in a manner that might make some uncomfortable. We went inside the church, and there I met people whose profession would be questioned. But it made my heart feel warm when I found that that church provided babysitting services and that they worked with those mothers, and that day I had an opportunity to meet some of them and shake their hand and hear them say, "Jesus is important to me." I walked to a bulletin board, and I stood there and looked at postings that displayed opportunities to become involved in the community.

You know, I praise God for a church that ministers to the community.

Today I think lack of community involvement is a serious problem. We need to discuss this, to consider the questions that I placed before you. I would just like to invite Elder Finley and Pat Gustin to come up. I'd like them to place this in focus and add their ideas to what I've presented.

PAT GUSTIN: We're putting all of our thoughts into the context of mission. And one of the things that we emphasize with outgoing missionaries is that Jesus was the greatest preacher and teacher of all time. But we know that He spent more time healing people and ministering to people's needs in that way than He did preaching and teaching. People knew Jesus, and they knew His heart. Every Adventist church should be so well known in every aspect of our communities that no one will ask, "Adventists? Who are they?"

MARK FINLEY: The past 35 years I've traveled the world holding evangelistic meetings in the major cities of the world. As I've traveled and held evangelistic meetings in almost every continent, this single fact stands out in my mind. Where the church is actively involved in the community, God does something special when we're holding evangelistic meetings. When ministers and members discover their gifts and reach out in harmony to meet practical felt needs, God opens hearts and minds. My question is this: If your church closed its doors tomorrow, would the community beg it to open the doors again because it's meeting the needs and making an impact on the community?

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you for a stimulating presentation. It's now your opportunity to respond. I'm going to invite individuals to come to the microphones and share with us your suggestions and ideas on this challenge to mission.

RICHARD ELOFER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am working in Israel and in Palestine also. How can we speak about mission if we are not ready to take into consideration the people that we want to reach for Jesus? Often we show that we are not ready to be sensitive to a minority, to another group of people. And in that way it will be very difficult for us as Adventists to reach other people. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is all over the world. When we write a statement, we must be able to think about all the people all over the world and all the minorities. Thank you.

MICHAEL L. RYAN: Richard Elofer and I have worked very closely together, and he's a very good friend. The latter part of your question I think I'll leave for some others to take up. But you know that we have a major concern in the church and that is to develop contextualized material that is specifically relevant to people in every type of culture and language group. In all of our writing we need to be sensitive to the concerns that may cause problems in various areas. But this needs to be something that is carried to the conference level and union level and church level. Because the best contextualized material will come from those sources, not from the General Conference. We certainly want to support and encourage it. But Edler Elofer has put his finger on something that is a tremendous challenge to the church. Something that we need to express.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you, Elder Elofer, for your comments on this. We need to be sensitive about these kinds of issues, so that we can make friends and not turn people away.

CYNTHIA TUTSCH: I would like to express gratitude to Mike Ryan for this very important presentation. I think that the underreported story in the Adventist Church today is Ellen White's involvement in social issues as well as the involvement of early Adventist pioneers in social activism. I think that as we look for ways to be involved with the community in social issues we will better capture the vision of our pioneers and be more able to finish the work.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much.

FLAVIA R. KABAHENDA: I'm concerned that Adventists have seemed not to want to mingle and associate with others who don't belong to the church, especially in their events. For instance, we need to involve ourselves in public events. We cannot address people's concerns if we are not ready to integrate with them. For example, this conference was planned long ago, and the people who spearheaded the planning knew that today would be Independence Day for America. Why should we confine ourselves here and not go and interact with people in their celebrations of independence? Because it is on such days that addresses are made to specific concerns. How far have we gone without independence? What are the problems that we need to address? How can we find out if we don't associate with people on such events, if we are not going to share in their concerns?

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much for your comments. And once again, these comments are all being recorded and taken down, and will be given careful attention.

JONATHAN KUNTARAF: Thank you so much for the presentation given by Elder Mike Ryan. I understand that only a small percentage of our members are involved in community affairs.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much.

GUILLERMO MAGANA: I am a student from Andrews University. And the church has done a wonderful job in certain areas, but not so in others. The speaker spoke about mingling with other people, but we do not mingle very well with those of other faiths. I see many youth who are afraid to mingle with other people who are not in the church. While we are young we need to make friends other than Adventists, because that's the only way we are going to be able to preach the Word to others. Finally, I have read that 70 percent of the church members are under the age of 30, yet there are only 34 delegates here who are under the age of 30.

GERRY D. KARST: Guillermo, thank you very much for coming to the microphone. You represent that youth group that is underrepresented, and hopefully for the future we can have that changed.

DELORES RICHARDSON: I'm from the North American Division, and I'd like to congratulate the committee in bringing this to the forefront at this session. It is something that has been a tremendous concern of mine over a long, long period of time. In the area where I live Adventist churches are not known in the community. We do not always have to reinvent the wheel. There are so many community organizations that are doing a lot of good things in the community, from health care to sessions that deal with violence, drug addition, alcohol addition, and physical and mental abuse among women and children. And yet we act like an isolated little group that is known only by the fact that we go to church on Saturday. Our integrating into the community at large is very, very poor. So I'm glad to know that we are addressing this issue, because it is one form of witnessing. It is not enough for us to preach the gospel and not to be a part of the solution in terms of making a better quality of life.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much. I see that our time is running out. Let me remind you that if you do not have an opportunity to speak today, please write down your suggestions and see that they get to Mike Ryan, because these will be incorporated into the final reports that are produced.

BENJAMIN CLAUSEN: I am at the Geoscience Research Institute. There is one important area that I don't know too much about, and that is how to reach the academic community. I am especially interested in that, since I am in the area of science. I look at origins issues-evolution and creation-but there is a wide range of other issues in science that it would be useful for us to address in perhaps a more aggressive way.

This is a people group that perhaps we don't often find ways of reaching for Jesus.

I have found that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is academically respectable and intellectually responsible, especially in the area of science, because we see God as Creator and because of our medical ministry that is based on science.

Dr. Rasi has done a great service in his work with the Faith and Science seminars in many parts of the world, and this might be one area that we could look at more carefully.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much.

ALEX R. PONNIAH: Allow me to thank Elder Mike Ryan for the excellent presentation. The point that I would like to make, Mr. Chairman, is the necessity for training. We need our individuals to be trained so that they can interact with society. This is often lacking in our churches in our mission fields.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you very much. We're going to give the last word to Mike Ryan, followed by a prayer of commitment and dedication, and then we will go directly into the business agenda, at which time I will invite Elder Cooper to come and take the chair.

MICHAEL L. RYAN: [Summarized the points that had been made in the discussion that had taken place.] There's much that could be said, and I hope that this is the beginning, the catalyst, of moving our church to a position where we feel it's part of our obligation to touch the community with the wholistic hope of the gospel.

GERRY D. KARST: Thank you, Elder Ryan. I invite you to stand now for our prayer of consecration.

MARK FINLEY: [Offered prayer.]

GERRY D. KARST, Chair
DOUGLAS CLAYVILLE, Secretary
BILL BOTHE, FRED THOMAS, and CLAUDE SABOT, Proceedings Editors
 
 

LOWELL C. COOPER: We are ready to return to some business, and we have exactly 23 minutes in which to do business, because at 4:00 there is a special feature that begins here.

We were looking at item 304, and we are in the midst of a discussion about the question of the secretary and treasurer of the North American Division being named as associate officers of the General Conference.

ROBERT E. LEMON: Just a clarification, Mr. Chairman. I have had a number of individuals ask me why the North American Division treasurer or secretary would have a special status different from the secretary or treasurer of other divisions in relationship to being an associate within the General Conference office. Some have said that this must be historical, and it is true that the North American Division and the General Conference were one entity up to 1985. In the year 1990 things were divided even more completely.

Others have said that the reason for it must be that the North American Division provides more tithe and offerings. Both of those facts are true, but those are not the reason that this special relationship needs to continue. Many may not realize that in separating the North American Division and the General Conference a number of institutions and organizations in North America serve both the division and the General Conference. We share many of the functions that the divisions would be carrying elsewhere. As this division was made between the North American Division and the General Conference, it was felt that it could save the whole church an awful lot of money if some of those functions remained as joint functions.

So I would give that as an explanation as to why this is not just a past historical thing nor a financial thing but rather a relational plan whereby we are trying to save money and operate more efficiently.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Thank you very much. Let's move to Ricardo Graham, who is at microphone 6.

RICARDO GRAHAM: Yes, Mr. Chairman. Just one item relative to the discussion on the wording for the proposed change in this agenda item. I am wondering if the spirit of the wording would be violated by removing the pronoun "his" altogether, thus reading, "The secretary of the North American Division, by virtue of election to that responsibility, shall also be an associate secretary of the General Conference."

LOWELL C. COOPER: Can we take that by common consent? It doesn't change the meaning of the statement at all, and perhaps is a cleaner reading of it. So unless there's an objection, we'll say that it is ordered, and thank you very much for the suggestion.

RICARDO GRAHAM: I am a member of the North American delegation, and it is not my personal desire to usurp an authority of any other division. And I don't think that our entire delegation would disagree with that opinion. Thank you.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Thank you very much.

ESMERALDA GUZMAN-HARRIS: Good afternoon. I am representing the North American Division; however, I was born in Cuba. I came from my country in 1980 in a very small boat along with my family and 33 other people. I am standing here as a living testimony of God's grace and mercy.

Many of us sitting here come from places where we are not allowed to express ourselves in our own countries. I encourage you to recognize the contributions that North America has made to all of us in the Adventist world. My brothers and sisters, I believe that we all agree that each division represented here today has some way benefited from the generosity of the North American Division.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Sister, thank you very much.

ARNOLD TRUJILLO: I just want to assure the delegates from the other divisions that I as a delegate find no desire on the part of our officers to add additional responsibilities on the General Conference level.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Thank you. I'd like to appeal to the people who are speaking to speak precisely to the motion.

CHARLES BRADFORD: Mr. Chairman, I really am not speaking precisely to the motion, but I want to take this opportunity to say that we do not have divisions as constituent bodies. The General Conference is the constituency, and we are all subsumed under the General Conference. We must not think of us and them-it is altogether the General Conference. The highest body in the field that is a constituent body is the union; after the union comes the General Conference, which in turn divides itself into the divisions and works through the divisions. I do thank the Lord that progress has been made so that the North American Division is no longer a stepchild but a member of the family.

LOWELL C. COOPER: Thank you very much, Elder Bradford. I believe that when the item was introduced this morning it was explained that this is not an addition to the constitution; this practice is already enshrined in the constitution in the instructions to the Nominating Committee. The purpose of the action was merely to raise the same point in other parts of the constitution that describe the various officer groupings.

We are now at 4:00. Let's move to Dr. John Fowler until we get a signal that the next group is ready.

JOHN FOWLER: Mr. Chairman, this morning a very vocal speaker mentioned about the relationship between the North American Division and the General Conference and the functioning of the Nominating Committee, all in one speech. It was said that this church belongs to the world. It's not a North American church; it's a global church. I agree very fully with that statement. This is a global church, and I have yet to see anyone in North America claim otherwise.

It has also been said that North America tends to dominate the world church, but I have been noticing the reports of the Nominating Committee, which do not convey to me a North American church. Many of the officers come from other parts of the world.

I must say that there is an element in which North America is dominant, and that is in providing means, providing personnel, and providing resources generously for the work of the church throughout the world. To that dominance of the North American Division I bow my head and thank my Lord.

LOWELL C. COOPER: All right, folks, we are going to have to leave this item and pick it up later. I trust that in the future we will also be able to discipline ourselves to focus on the motion. Thank you very much. We will now listen to a special program about Adventist health.

LOWELL C. COOPER, Chair
DOUGLAS CLAYVILLE, Secretary
BILL BOTHE, FRED THOMAS, and
CLAUDE SABOT, Proceedings Editors

Seventh Business Meeting Actions
58th General Conference Session, July 4, 2005, 2:00 p.m.

NOMINATING COMMITTEE REPORT #5
VOTED, To approve the following partial report of the Nominating Committee:

UNDERSECRETARY AND ASSOCIATE SECRETARIES-CONSTITUTION AND BYLAWS AMENDMENT
This item was discussed further and will be brought back to the morning session.

LOWELL C COOPER, Chair
DOUGLAS CLAYVILLE, Secretary
LARRY R EVANS, Actions Editor
JANET C UPSON, Recording Secretary