Challenges confront the church today. What are the causes of its problems? Are there any cures?

With about fifteen hundred new members joining the Seventh-day Adventist church every day, we have reason to believe that the future of our church is bright indeed. The very name "Seventh-day Adventist" summarizes the timely message God has called us to proclaim: the Sabbath rest for human restlessness and the advent hope for human hopelessness. This message offers us tremendous possibilities for meeting the vital needs of people today.

Response to the proclamation of the advent message in many parts of the world is truly heartening. In many countries of Central America, South America, and Africa people are flocking into the Adventist church in unprecedented numbers. At our present growth rate, our membership will have nearly doubled to ten million members by the year 2000.

Yet despite this unprecedented growth, the Adventist church faces serious problems today. In North America, Australia and most Western European countries, the church is stagnant, if not declining. In England, for example, we had ten times more indigenous Adventists twenty years ago than we have today. In Italy, where I come from, our membership has remained at about 5000 for the last ten years, while Jehovah's Witnesses have grown from a few thousand to over 100,000.

In North America the situation is not much brighter. For instance, in the region where I live, the newly released report of the Lake Union Conference (May 1991) indicates that while 3,422 members joined the church by baptism or profession of faith in 1981, only 1,926 joined it in 1990. The net growth for 1990 was only 80 members among a total membership of 65,670. Five years ago (1986) the same union reported a net growth of 612 members, over seven times more than in 1990.

SOME PROBLEMS

My comments on the problems our Adventist church is facing in Western countries are based, not on scientific surveys, but on personal observations. During the last five years I have traveled an average of 100,000 miles a year to meet speaking engagements in our churches and institutions in North America, Europe and Australia. This has afforded me the opportunity not only to speak, but also to observe and listen to some of the problems our pastors, administrators and local church members are facing today.

The following appear to me to be some of the major problems our church is facing today.

Uncertainty

The fundamental problem that I see in our Adventist church in Western countries is uncertainty. Many of our members are confused. They do not know whether the church still really holds to our fundamental beliefs and practices. The older members have been taught that to be an Adventist means to follow Jesus all the way by refraining from such things as alcohol and drugs, jewelry, buying food or services on the Sabbath, going to movies, dancing, divorce and remarriage, sex outside of marriage, competitive sports, abortion, serving in the army as a combatant, and diverting of the tithe to other projects.

Today, however, our members are being told, sometimes even by eloquent camp meeting speakers, that the traditional emphasis of Adventism on obedience is legalism. To experience the joy of salvation Adventists must seek righteousness by faith, that is, more by professing than by practicing. This new understanding of "righteousness" has led many to question the importance of traditional church standards. Practically every Sabbath afternoon during the question-and-answer period of my seminars, I am asked, "What is wrong with... moderate drinking, dancing, going to good movies, working on the Sabbath for organizations that provide essential services, having beach parties on the Sabbath, joining the army, wearing jewelry, participating in competitive sports, making the church service more exciting with drama, drums, and beat music, having an abortion, etc.?"

Crisis of Identity

These conflicting views on what it means to be an Adventist in terms of lifestyle lead to another problem, namely, a crisis of identity. To be an Adventist for many no longer means being different from other people in eating, drinking, dressing, adornment, entertainment, private and public worship, or marital relationships. To observe a holy day is no longer seen by many as part of God's call to be a holy people in a secularly minded, perverse society.

To gain acceptance in our society, some feel that we need to minimize our theological and lifestyle differences and to maximize our similarities to prevailing evangelical beliefs and practices.

Weakening of Commitment

The loss of a clear sense of identity and mission affects the commitment of many of our members to the outreach programs of our church. More and more Adventists feel less and less motivated to support a church which they feel is losing its distinctive identity, message and mission.

This weakening of commitment is evident in several areas.

Financially, tithes and offerings are down in many conferences. In others the increase is less than the inflation rate. Some of the largest and wealthiest conferences have been firing rather than hiring workers because of declines in giving. Various church programs are being terminated or consolidated.

Educationally, the enrollment in our church schools and academies has been steadily declining. Several academies have closed down and others have been consolidated. To maintain their enrollment, most of our North American colleges are actively recruiting non-SDA students overseas in such wealthy countries as Japan and Korea. Yet even this problem provides us with an opportunity to share our message with representatives of foreign countries.

Ecclesiastically, the church attendance rate is at an all-time low. In North America, the average Adventist church attendance is less than 50% of the membership. In many churches of over 500 members, attendance can run as low as 20 to 30%. I have spoken countless times during the last ten years in large churches with over a thousand members on the books, but with only 200-250 members sitting in the pews on Sabbath morning. Usually less than half of these attend Sabbath school.

The head elder of a 600-member church recently told me, "Our church attendance at the Sabbath divine service averages 200-250 and, sad to say, most of them are the older members. Many of our young adults between 25 and 40 years of age bring their children to the church for Sabbath School and then they go back home to bed. They come back by the end of the church service to pick up the children."

If the names of those members who have not attended church during the last twelve months should be removed from our local church records, the shocking truth is that our membership in North America would fall from 750,000 to possibly only 300-350,000. We truly have some serious problems that we need to address.

SOME CAUSES

The causes of our current problems are varied and not all easy to identify. Three of them seem particularly significant to me: (1) pastoral leadership, (2) erosion of Biblical authority, (3) cultural conformity.

Pastoral Leadership

An important lesson that I have learned through my itinerant ministry is that the root cause of many problems in our churches is not membership but leadership. As in ancient Israel evil kings led the people into apostasy and good kings brought about spiritual revival and reformation, so today poor pastors can lead a congregation into permissive lifestyles and good pastors can bring about spiritual revival and reformation.

Our church has been blessed through the years by countless dedicated, talented leaders who have helped the church grow around the world. In many ways the same is true today. God has blessed us with a godly, gifted General Conference president together with thousands of like-minded workers in all parts of the world. Unfortunately, however, some pastors and other leaders may fail to provide the leadership needed at the various levels of our church.

Some time ago I spoke in a church where a pastor had recently been reassigned to a church he had pastored five years before. When I asked him, "What is it like to return to the same church after five years?" he replied, "Sad! I left this church with about 400 members attending regularly on the Sabbath, and I came back to find only about 120 members attending. I have a monumental task ahead of me in reclaiming all those who are no longer attending church." It is evident that the intervening pastors had caused the church to decline rather than to grow.

Sometimes pastors attempt to compensate for the lack of powerful Spirit-filled and Bible-based preaching by introducing exciting drama presentations, singing accompanied by musical bands, tasty fellowship dinners, social programs and services. Exciting programs and good food can and will draw people—most people enjoy excitement and entertainment. However, these things do not satisfy the spiritual void in the soul that can only be filled by the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of God's Word.

A couple of years ago a pastor invited me to present my Sabbath seminar to his church. He felt that Sabbath keeping was a problem for some of his members who were executives in companies where they sometimes "had" to attend board meetings on the Sabbath. To my surprise, the first thing he told me when he picked me up at the airport was to "soft pedal" my preaching on how to keep the Sabbath, because he did not want me to hurt the sensitivities of some members. I reassured him that my goal was not to condemn anyone but to help all better understand what God expects us to be and to do.

On Saturday evening something unusual happened after my last presentation. I was surrounded by a group of church members who came to tell me how desperately their church needed the kind of spiritual guidance on Sabbath keeping they had received that day.

However, it would be unfair to place the blame only on pastors. After all, our pastors are the product of our ministerial training. Their preaching and teaching often reflect the training they have received in our various schools. And the training given to our pastors reflects our administrative policies. What this means is that all of us who lead the church in various capacities are in a sense part of the leadership problem. It is our problem.

Erosion of Biblical Authority

An important factor accounting for the lack of effective spiritual leadership on the part of some is the erosion of confidence in the authority of the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. What gives our preaching authority is not our academic degrees but the truths revealed in the Bible. Our authority comes from divine revelation, not from human investigation or speculation.

Higher criticism has greatly undermined the authority of the Bible by denying its supernatural revelation and inspiration. To a greater or lesser degree all Christian bodies, Catholic and Protestant, have been influenced by higher criticism. Adventists have not been totally immune to such influence.

A phrase I often hear when discussing what the Bible teaches in such areas as the sacredness of the Sabbath, the sanctity of life, the permanence of marriage, or on issues like adornment and the role of women in the church, is that the Bible is culturally conditioned in these areas. This means that its instruction was required by social conditions of that day, but should not be considered binding in other times and other social conditions. Consequently, it is claimed, we need to seek the guidance of the progressive revelation of God which can be found in the cultural values of our time. This leads to a dual source of authority: Scriptura et cultura.

The current trend to seek guidance from culture in addition to Scripture largely resembles the historic Catholic appeal to tradition in addition to Scripture. In both instances the Protestant principle of the Bible alone (sola Scriptura) is rejected in favor of a broader, more relative basis of authority for defining beliefs and practices.

We can see the influence of this trend in the permissive, open-ended preaching and teaching which often leaves our members confused and uncertain. Time and again church members have told me that they no longer know what to believe, because whatever the subject discussed, different views are presented. Not long ago an older member told me: "We used to be told, 'This is what the Bible teaches.' Now we are told, 'This is what the majority of Adventists believe.'"

The effectiveness of our witness largely depends upon the degree of our conviction that our beliefs and practices are solidly based on Scripture. We cannot convince anyone about the validity and value of the Adventist message unless we are fully convinced ourselves. I have found in my itinerant ministry that the growing churches are usually made up of members who strongly believe in the Adventist message and mission; they are most eager to share their faith with others.

Cultural Conformity

A third major contributing cause of our current problems is closely related to the previous one, namely, cultural conformity. Throughout the centuries Christianity has faced the choice whether to confront the world with the uniqueness of its message and values or to conform to the world by adopting its values and practices.

Many false teachings and practices have entered into the Christian church because of the pressure to conform to popular beliefs and practices. For example, the prevailing belief in the immortality of the soul entered Christianity (and even Judaism) as a result of the influence of Hellenistic philosophies which taught that the spiritual soul survived the material body in a disembodied way. The Christian adoption of the Day of the Sun (dies solis) as the new day of rest and worship was influenced in part by the popularity of the sun cults which venerated the sun god.

The pressure of cultural conformity still affects Christianity today. For example, society's permissive view of sex outside marriage has found acceptance among many churches. Many Christians have gladly accepted softer terms for illicit sex. "Fornication" has become "premarital sex," with the emphasis on the "pre" rather than on the "marital." "Adultery" is defined as "extramarital sex," a morally neutral term, like an extra-professional activity. Many Christians no longer see homosexuality as a perversion, but as a "deviation," a "gay variation," or an "alternate lifestyle."

Even our own Seventh-day Adventist church feels the pressure of cultural conformity. Adventists are pressured to conform to the world in eating, drinking, dancing, adornment, movie-going and video watching, competitive sports, rock music, secularization of the Sabbath, rejection of role distinctions between men and women, and adoption of an entertainment style of divine worship.

Adventists who partake of a daily diet of television and worldly entertainment can hardly be expected to enjoy going to Sabbath school or the church service unless these services also are made entertaining by featuring drama, raucous music, exciting social interaction, and a pep talk that makes people feel good. It is not surprising that these features have made some churches popular.

Worship can be entertaining but it must be much more than that. While religious entertainment may leave you feeling good about yourself, true worship leaves you feeling like doing something good to improve yourself and others. True worship calls us to bring forth the fruits of righteousness, to be a holy people among a secularly minded, perverse generation.

SOME REMEDIES

Diagnosing problems is sometimes easier than prescribing a remedy. No one person knows how to solve all the problems our church faces today. The few suggestions below should be seen as steps in the right direction rather than as a magic panacea.

Spiritual Revival and Reformation

In my view the first and fundamental step we need to take to solve our church problems is to seek for a genuine spiritual revival and reformation. The main cause of most of our problems is spiritual decline, failure to seek daily the guidance and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus emphasized this spiritual condition through the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1-13). All of them were waiting for the coming of the Lord, the Bridegroom. Five of them, however, were foolish—they ran out of oil, which in Scripture represents the Holy Spirit. How did they run out of the oil of the Holy Spirit? Apparently not by leaving the church to enjoy the pleasures of the world, because they were "virgins." Virginity in Scripture stands for purity and integrity. This suggests that the foolish virgins represent church members in good standing, Christians whose moral integrity could not be questioned. Yet the influence of the Holy Spirit was missing in their lives.

How does one come to lack the Holy Spirit? It is by becoming independent from God, by failing to claim daily the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. In a sense here lies the difference between a nominal Christian (foolish virgin) and a genuine Christian (wise virgin). The nominal Christian lives independently from God while the genuine Christian lives in constant dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit.

The more successful we become in our lives or in developing church programs, the more tempted we are to feel self-sufficient and in need of nothing (Rev 3:17). The success of our educational, medical, and evangelistic programs can tempt us to think that we have what it takes to make our church grow. Spiritual growth, however, comes not through programs but through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

Today we urgently need to seek the outpouring of the Latter Rain, to seek daily for a larger measure of the Holy Spirit. The problems of our church, which in many ways are the problems that exist in our personal lives, can only be solved as we allow the Holy Spirit to bring forth His fruits of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal 5:22-23).

To be effective, this spiritual revival must begin in the lives of those of us who have been called to lead the church in various capacities. Spiritually revived leadership will encourage spiritual revival among our membership. Implementing a worldwide call to spiritual revival and reformation in our church requires divine wisdom. Appeals through our church papers can be helpful. Many of our members, however, do not subscribe to or read our papers. More effective, in my view, would be special convocations at various levels (General Conference, Union, Conference) where our workers can come together for the sole purpose of making things right with God in order to experience the infilling of His Spirit. The goal of these convocations should be strictly spiritual, providing time and opportunity to study and pray how we can become the kind of spiritual leaders God has called us to be in this final hour of world history.

Renewed Commitment to Biblical Authority

To experience spiritual renewal and reformation, it is important for us to reaffirm our commitment to the normative authority of the Bible. History teaches us that spiritual revival and reformation occur when Bible truths long neglected are rediscovered, accepted and experienced.

We noted earlier that a fundamental problem facing our church today is uncertainty. Many of our members no longer know what to believe because of the tendency on the part of some to explain away various teachings of the Bible as culturally conditioned. Some spend more time arguing about the Bible than studying the relevance of its message for today. Their concern seems to be to establish whether the Bible is a casebook or a codebook, or whether its teachings are descriptive or prescriptive, or whether its content is dependent on or independent of other literary sources.

Such critical study of the Bible can undermine its authority for defining our beliefs and practices. It can lead a person to view the Bible more as religious literature reflective of past, outdated cultural customs, than as divine revelation of vital principles needed for our lives today.

Recently I asked the pastor of a 900-member African-American congregation, "Why are our Adventist black churches today growing much more slowly than they did ten or twenty years ago?" His answer startled me. He said, "The preachers we produce today are of a different breed. They do not preach from the Bible as we older preachers do. Some of them do not know what they believe themselves."

It is very difficult for a pastor to help his congregation grow in understanding and experiencing Bible truths, if he finds in the Bible more perplexing problems than profound principles. I often wonder if the widespread lack of interest in studying the Sabbath School lesson may reflect, at least in part, the declining use of the Bible in Adventist preaching today. I often hear sermons where the Bible is scarcely used. Some pastors find it more interesting to preach on current issues than on the relevance of the message of Habakkuk for today. If the pastor is not excited about studying and preaching from the Bible, how can he expect his church members to be excited about studying their Sabbath School lessons privately at home and in groups on Sabbath morning?

To grow spiritually, whether individually or as a church, we need the nourishment of the Word of God. Through the study of the Scriptures we discover who God is, who we are and what God wants us to become by His enabling grace. To witness effectively, both individually and as a church, we need to regain the confidence that our Adventist beliefs and practices are still solidly grounded on the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.

Experiencing the Benefits of the Advent Message

An important factor which can motivate us to share our faith is the experience of the blessings of the Adventist message. It is possible to accept the validity of the Adventist message without experiencing its value and benefits. Yet it is only to the extent that we enjoy the benefits of the Adventist message that we will be able to influence others to accept it.

In my ministry sometimes I meet believers who view the Adventist message more as rules to obey than as benefits to enjoy. For example, some observe the Sabbath as a commandment that must be obeyed in order to be saved, rather than as a free response to God's invitation to experience more fully and freely the awareness of His divine presence, peace and rest in our lives. We desperately need to help our people not only to understand more deeply the Biblical soundness of our Advent message, but also to experience more fully its benefits in their daily lives.

I have always believed that Adventists should be the healthiest and happiest people on the face of the earth, because God has given us a message that is designed to ensure our health and happiness. A healthy and happy Adventist can be a powerful witness to what the Adventist message can do in the lives of those who are willing to accept it.

When I joined the Adventist church thirty-five years ago in Italy, I was excited about its message, because it brought meaning, purpose, and joy to my life. Frankly, what impressed me about the Adventist church was not its institutions and programs, but its message. The few modest churches we owned at that time faded in comparison to the hundreds of magnificent Catholic basilicas scattered throughout Italy. We had no church schools, no medical work, no radio or TV programs, no health food factories. We only had a message that thrilled my soul, that gave me reasons for living, loving and serving.

What we need to revive our Adventist church today is not a new carnival type of worship, but a spirit-filled preaching and worship that can revive the Blessed Hope in our hearts and challenge us to live a holy, upright and abstinent lifestyle while awaiting the soon coming of our Lord.

The problems confronting our Adventist church today should not cause us to believe that the future of our church is bleak. There has never been a church without problems. Even the Apostolic church had to face problems of all kinds. We live in the land of the enemy and the evil one is busy at work to undermine the message and the mission of our church. But the Lord, who has called us to proclaim the final message of preparation for His soon return, can and will provide us with the wisdom and strength to resolve our problems and transform them into possibilities for fulfilling His mission at this time. Our challenge is to allow the Lord to use us in a constructive way to turn our problems from stumbling blocks into stepping stones, leading us heavenward.