BY LES POLLARD

eginning Sunday, July 3, each morning of the General Conference session in St. Louis ended with a segment called "Profiling Adventist Leadership." Angel Rodríguez was yesterday's speaker, dealing with the authority of the church.

I appreciated the clarity of his presentation. He was able to take the whole notion of the authority of the church, starting with a wide-topped funnel, so to speak, and working his way down to a point where leaders could have something to take back to their people.

It's not that those of us gathered had never heard these things before. But speaking for myself at least, Rodríguez crystallized them, pulled them together. He took great pains to emphasize the fact that the church acts on behalf of Christ, not independently.

Especially is this emphasis important at this time of radical independence and relativism. In our post-modern culture it's so easy for people to say, "Well, I can be independent and do what I think best in my own local situation. I'm responsible to myself alone." The result is that what you have in some places is a kind of hyper-contextualization. Especially is this true in certain Western countries where individual freedoms, autonomy, and even the pursuit of happiness are ensconced in their very charter documents.

So Rodríguez's presentation reminded us of the collective nature of the church--that the church manifests authority as a collective body. (The implication for church discipline, incidentally, is clear--not discipline in the sense of punishment, but discipline as one of the strategies of "tough love" in behalf of Christ--a prerogative that He has committed to the church to perform.)

But there was yet another aspect of Rodríguez's talk that captured my attention. It was his emphasis on the idea that the authority of the church does not reside in any one individual. So the truth cuts both ways. Indeed, that was the burden of Ellen G. White in the early 1900s, when she repeatedly warned about the danger of kingly power, the centralization of authority in a single individual or a small group of individuals.

If delegates and visitors, as they make their way back to their home fields, could take these basic principles, it could make a significant difference for our church on all levels.

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Leslie N. Pollard is vice president for diversity at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California.

How Does the Election
Process Work?

BY SANDRA BLACKMER, news editor, Adventist Review

he 14-million-member Adventist Church is represented at General Conference sessions by 2,000 delegates from around the world. The "regular" delegates number 1,240 and are chosen from the church's nearly 100 unions and about 540 conferences and missions. The remaining 760 delegates are called delegates at large and represent the 13 world church divisions and the organizations of the General Conference.

These 2,000 delegates caucus at the session and select representatives to serve on the Nominating Committee, which, after reviewing job responsibilities, brings recommendations to the floor of individuals to serve in more than 100 top leadership roles in world church and division offices. Nearly 200 individuals from all parts of the world church serve on the Nominating Committee.

Those elected at the session are the General Conference president, vice presidents, secretary, undersecretary, associate secretaries, treasurer, undertreasurer, and associate treasurers; director and associate director of each GC department and association; director and associate directors of the GC auditing service; the GC auditing service board; division presidents, secretaries, and treasurers; and general field secretaries.

The Nominating Committee brings recommendations to the floor, at which time all 2,000 delegates, including the Nominating Committee, vote to accept or reject the recommendations of the Nominating Committee. Those elected to office serve in these positions for the next five years, until the next General Conference session is held.

At Annual Council following the GC session some positions are appointed. They are director of Archives and Statistics, director and associate directors of the Biblical Research Institute, and editors and associate editors of the principal denominational journals prepared at the church's world headquarters.

To get complete election results from the General Conference session, visit the Adventist Review Web site at www.adventistreview.org.