ROY ADAMS

“Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles” (Deut. 16:16, NIV).

I remember running into then General Conference (GC) president Robert H. Pierson at the GC session in Atlantic City back in 1970. Seizing the unexpected opportunity, I asked him the one question uppermost in my mind at the time: “Elder, what does this session cost?”

“I don’t know, Brother Adams,” he said earnestly, “I have no idea.” And I got the impression he was glad not to know—as though the figure, if he knew it, would be too embarrassing to disclose.

What do you think? Would you be scandalized by the sheer size of the amount if you knew it? Are GC sessions costing too much? What criteria might one use to deter-mine that?

What’s the Cost?
The reason Pierson was in the dark probably had a lot
to do with the structure of the church itself. The bills aren’t paid from a single source. The GC headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, for example, is responsible for its own set of expenses: travel, housing, and per diem for its own personnel, including a good number of its support staff, arriving with all sorts of machines, equipment, and supplies. The situation with world divisions and other church entities would be more or less parallel. At the end of the day it’s a complex setup, involving the treasuries of a multitude of entities, making any kind of accurate cost tracking exceedingly
difficult.

Moreover, a huge chunk of the total tab of a session, if one thinks of the church as a unit, has to do with nondelegates. We can expect tens of thousands of them to descend on Toronto from North America and around the world, spending millions of dollars in travel and other expenses.

It’s impossible to know the bottom line for all this. But one thing seems clear: it’s in the millions—perhaps in the tens of millions.

What Then?
Are these sessions becoming too expensive? Might not the funds spent be used in winning souls? In caring for the poor? In building schools and churches? Are we wasting the Lord’s resources?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that these expenditures are wasted. Isn’t a certain amount of prodigality tolerated in nature? Leaves by the billions shed every autumn. Fruit by the millions of bushels fall every year to the ground, and rot. Water by the trillions of barrels flows to the sea every day, seemingly lost to human, plant, or animal use. Were all these resources consumed, however, it would be a disaster to the ecosystem. Is there a lesson there for us?

For my part, I approach the question by asking another: Are there considerations that transcend dollars and cents?

Like esprit de corps, for example. Like morale. A sense of unity. A sense of common mission; of shared outlook and strategy; of global coordination; of being part of a larger team. How about common purpose? How about the building of mutual trust? How about vision? Perhaps nothing provides members with a global perspective more quickly or effectively than to rub shoulders with believers from around the world, representing just about every culture on earth. I think I saw the effect of this in 1995 in Utrecht. The session gave opportunity to thousands of our Eastern European believers, their religious expression suppressed for decades, to share in the drama and excitement of a world vision. Can anyone measure in dollars and cents the impact of such an experience for the future of the church in that region?

Back in ancient Israel God was so keen that His people come together three times a year that He guaranteed the security of their homes and property during their absence. “No one will covet your land,” He said, “when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God” (Ex. 34:24, NIV)—an extraordinary promise at a time when belligerent local chieftains, marauding tribes, and plundering gangs roamed the countryside wreaking havoc on the unprotected.

Do we, as a church, have too many meetings? I think so; and I think we should cut back. But this general convocation of the entire body every five years we should never touch. I believe God wants it. It revives our spirits. It’s vital to our mission. And it’s the most effective antidote we have against isolationism and divisive independence.

So let the meetings begin!

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Roy Adams is an assistant editor of the Adventist Review.