I was asked to prepare a slide presentation of various countries and their flags, for a church parade of nations. Part of this preparation has been to jot down some information about the various countries, and I discovered a rather flabbergasting discrepancy.
Now, we need to take a step back and look at the larger picture. I am a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist church, which is represented in almost every country on the planet. The administrative structure of this church is quite elaborate. There is the General Conference in Silver Spring, MA (USA) which is the world headquarter. The world church is administered through 12 “divisions” which themselves comprise a multitude of “union conferences”. These Unions are made up of conferences and missions. And each conference is a collections of local churches. Usually Unions are countries, or cover a few countries. The administrators of these Unions are part of the global (General Conference) executive committee, so they carry a fair amount of responsibility. The same would apply to the administrators of the Divisions.
The discrepancy that was so shocking to me is this. I grew up in Germany, which consists of 2 Unions and is part of the Euro-Africa Division (EUD). These German Unions look after a combined membership of about 30,000 Adventists. The total membership of the EUD is about 177,000. When I moved to England I moved to the territory of the “Trans European Division”, with a membership of roughly 110,000. Both European Divisions (the fact that there are two is in itself a conundrum) represent less than 300,000 Adventists. Yet there are 2 division presidents, and 24 Union presidents.
In my research today I came across the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. This country is the home of almost 400,000 Adventists. There is not a single Union Conference in the country, only two Union Missions (i.e. 2 Union presidents), and one “Attached Territory”. It was that last area that finally led me to write this. An “attached territory” is not much in the administrative world of my church. Yet this territory in the DRC covers more members that the entire Trans European Division. The DRC is part of the East Central Africa Division. (Remember both European Divisions cover less than 300k members) That Division has a church membership of over 2.5 million.
So I went to the General Conference online year book and looked at who is part of the GC executive committee. There are 17 representatives of the East Central Africa Division (remember 2.5 million church members), and 38 representatives of the two European Divisions (representing less than 300,000 members).
How can it be that at the highest level of our church Europe is represented numerically much stronger than the much more populous African continent? I have my ideas, but I give my church brethren the benefit of the doubt.
OK, I have to be fair…. there are three Divisions covering Africa. The total number or representatives from these Divisions at the table is 50. But they represent 6,700,000 church members. If the same ratio that is now representing Africa were to be applied to Europe, this would be the number of their delegates: 3.
[Disclaimer: I gathered numbers from the GC website and may have missed some figures; my calculations may be off; I may have overlooked some important factors, I am not an administrator; my conclusions and flabbergastedness are my own and do not represent an official statement or comment on the operation of my church]
