I love my church! Being an Adventist is exciting because our beliefs center on the gospel of Jesus and the anticipation of His soon return. Yet in my 26 years of pastoral experience, I’ve observed that our excitement about Jesus’ second coming more often translates into a desire for a deeper study of Bible prophecies than a passion to share the hope of Christ’s soon return with the world. One of the biggest challenges in my pastoral ministry has been to motivate my congregations to transition from being once-a-week worshippers to becoming disciples who daily share the gospel with others.
The mission to share the gospel with the world is central to our existence. In His eschatological sermon Jesus revealed that the end will come, not when we understand all the signs, but when this gospel is “preached in the whole world” (Matt. 24:14, NIV). Likewise, in His last words to the disciples, Jesus warns us not to concern ourselves with “times or dates,” but to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the whole world (Acts 1:7, 8, NIV).
Beyond the Status Quo
As I began to challenge my members to live out missional lives, I soon discovered that we saw our mission limited to our own local congregation. We tend to focus on buildings and worship programs. Acts 1:8 reminds us that God’s call is much bigger, however. It is to reach beyond—to Judea, Samaria, and the whole world.
We have contributed to our self-centered focus by neglecting to emphasize the broader evangelistic mandate. While we have successful year-round evangelism strategies, and our members are committed to daily outreach, we have completely ignored expanding our mission into new territories. The early Adventist movement wasn’t just about growing local churches. It was a disciple-making, church-planting movement. Long before we had a formal denominational mission department, pastors and new disciples were sent as evangelists to new communities, cities, countries, and even continents.
James White wrote extensively on the need to plant new churches. In 1862, for example, he wrote: “In no way can a preacher so well prove himself as in entering new fields. There he can see the fruits of his own labors. And if he be successful in raising up churches, and establishing them, so that they bear good fruits, he gives to his brethren the best proofs that he is sent of the Lord.”1
We could double the number of Adventist churches in the world in 30 years.
Ellen White also challenged the church to have a broad missionary perspective. “In all countries and cities the gospel is to be proclaimed. . . . Churches are to be organized, and plans laid for work to be done by the members of the newly organized churches.”2 “New churches must be established, new congregations organized. At this time there should be representatives of present truth in every city and in the remote parts of the earth.”3 “Place after place is to be visited, church after church is to be raised up.”4 “Many of the members of our large churches are doing comparatively nothing. They might accomplish good work if, instead of crowding together, they would scatter into places that have not yet been entered by the truth. . . . The same rule would work well for our large churches. Many of the members are dying spiritually for want of this very work. They are becoming sickly and inefficient.”5
James and Ellen White were challenging local churches to develop leaders who would take care of the needs of the local congregation while the pastor (and others who felt called) would be free to go and evangelize new territories. This was similar to what was done by the apostolic church. The Spirit told the elders of the Antioch church to send out Paul and Barnabas, their best leaders, on a mission while they took care of the church (Acts 13:1-3).
Such missional spirit was carried forward by the Adventist Church all the way into the early 1900s, before it slowly started changing to what we see in most churches today. In 1912 General Conference president A. G. Daniells wrote a warning to churches that demanded to have settled pastors to care and serve only the needs of the baptized members. Daniells was afraid of losing the outreach missional culture. As he put it:
“We have not settled our ministers over churches as pastors to any large extent. In some of the very large churches we have elected pastors; but as a rule we have held ourselves ready for field service, evangelistic work, and our brethren and sisters have held themselves ready to maintain their church services and carry forward their church work without settled pastors. And I hope this will never cease to be the order of affairs in this denomination; for when we cease our forward movement work, and begin to settle over our churches, to stay by them, and do their thinking and their praying and their work that is to be done, then our churches will begin to weaken, and to lose their life and spirit, and become paralyzed and fossilized, and our work will be on a retreat.”6
Adopting a Growth Mindset
In 2006 I accepted a call to become a full-time church planter with the Texas Conference. I was part of a missional movement started by the Richardson Seventh-day Adventist Church, with a very mission-minded pastor and an outreach-focused team of elders. Collaborating over 20 years, the Richardson church and its “daughter” churches planted 14 new congregations with more than 3,000 total members.
Today most churches that are self-centered are plateaued or declining, while those that have adopted church planting as part of their outreach strategy are growing and multiplying. To become a missional movement again, Adventist churches must commit to multiplying disciples, developing leaders, and looking beyond their “Jerusalem” church by including church planning as part of their evangelistic vision.
Imagine with me that your church decided to plant one new church every 10 years. Then each newly planted church commits to do the same. By 2055 you could have 16 new Adventist churches in 16 new areas! Now imagine that one fifth of the 168,000 Adventist congregations around the globe made the same commitment.7 We could double the number of Adventist churches in the world in 30 years. Are you ready to return to your apostolic and Adventist missional roots and go beyond your “Jerusalem”?
“And this gospel . . . will be preached . . . and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).
1 James White, “Go Ye Into All the World and Preach the Gospel,” Review and Herald, Apr. 15, 1862, p. 156.
2 Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1946), p. 19.
3 Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948), vol. 6, p. 24.
4 Ibid., vol. 7, p. 20.
5 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 244.
6 A. G. Daniells, “The Church and Ministry: An Outline of Lesson No. 5,” Pacific Union Recorder, Apr. 4, 1912, p. 1.
7 Seventh-day Adventist World Church Statistics, 2021, retrieved from https://www.adventist.org/statistics/.