EDITOR’S NOTE:
At the most recent General Conference Annual Council, there was a series of presentations on the identity, mission, message, and unity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This is the first of a series of feature articles focusing on these important elements.
We are coming to the conclusion of the program, and now it’s time to add a new element, a new ingredient, to all these presentations. The new ingredient is the mission of the church. We must be united in the message, but we also must be united in mission. There is a vision behind all these presentations that you have heard yesterday and today. What is our vision? To have a healthy church.
When we think about a healthy church, we need to take into consideration two main elements. These two elements we can find in a Bible verse. It’s an Old Testament verse that is very meaningful for me. Isaiah 37:31, “And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward” (KJV). This Bible verse shows two components of a healthy church: deep roots and many fruits.
In other words, a healthy church has a solid message, sourced from deep roots, but, at the same time, it has a strong commitment to the mission, demonstrated by the many fruits. If we only speak about the message and the identity, we will be an introspective egoistic church, only thinking of ourselves. If we only talk about the mission, we will be an empty church trying to share what we don’t have. We need to put all things together: a solid message and a strong commitment to the mission. No message, no mission; no identity, no mission; no roots, no fruits. Both must be together.
We need to keep in mind that identity, message, and mission need to work together. After all, we are called to be the church that will prepare this world for the Second Coming of Jesus. And always, when I think of the Second Coming of Jesus, one quotation from Ellen G. White comes to mind. It’s one of my favorite quotations from her. I think that you like this quotation, too: “The Lord is coming. We hear the footsteps of an approaching God.”1
Every time I read this quotation from Ellen White, I have a question in my mind: How close are these footsteps? To easily answer this question, we only need to look at all the signs of the Second Coming of Christ that we have in the Bible. If we consider all these signs, we will find two groups. And if we want to know if these footsteps are getting closer to us, we need to pay attention to them. When the signs of these two groups happen simultaneously, it means these footsteps are very, very close to us.
But what are those two groups? You can easily identify them in Matthew 24, but they are in the entire Bible. The first group we can call the negative signs of the Second Coming of Jesus. When I use the word “negative” I mean those signs where this world tragically suffers. These signs were never the intention of God. They don’t come from the Lord, but are the work of the Lord’s enemy. We can categorize all these as signs that our world is falling dramatically toward destruction.
If we put together another set of signs, which we can call positive signs, we can see a church rising powerfully for mission. These two groups of signs are directly related to the world’s destruction and the church’s revival for mission. When they happen together, we can recognize that those footsteps are very, very close to us.
But let us evaluate these two groups of signs. When we think about the first group, where the world is falling dramatically toward destruction, my dear colleagues, friends, brothers, and sisters, it is happening before our eyes. We don’t need to spend time on that; we are seeing this situation every day on the news, on the internet, etc. The world is falling apart before our eyes, and it is getting worse and worse every day.
Despite our commitment to love, care, serve, and make the difference, the situation of this world doesn’t depend on us. Everything that’s happening in the world—the negative signs of the Second Coming of Jesus—are not caused by us. We can see these signs, we can ease the effects, we can care for those facing its consequences, but we can’t change the course of things.
All these activities of the devil deserve our attention, but not our priority. Is it clear for you? They deserve our attention because we need to deal with them on a daily basis; they are around us and we can see their consequences among us. They are not the priority because they are not the heart of the Second Coming of Jesus. Our priority needs to be Jesus’ priority to prepare the way for His Second Coming.
When we think about the second group—our church rising powerfully for mission—we are really focused on God’s priority. This is the major sign that will prepare this world for the Second Coming of Jesus. But my question to you is: Is this set of signs already happening? I mentioned that both groups need to happen together: a world falling toward destruction, and the church rising powerfully for mission. We can easily see a world falling apart, but is our church also rising powerfully for mission?
We have some amazing mission movements in specific areas of the world. But when we as a church consider and compare our current reality with the church’s commitment to the mission of some years ago, it seems that today we need to double our efforts if we are to have half of the involvement we once had. What does this reality mean? While the world is falling faster to destruction, the church is slower to be involved in mission.
The power to raise the church for mission comes from the Holy Spirit and we need to depend totally on Him. The foundation of the revival for mission comes from the Word of God. But the responsibility to involve the church in the mission is in our hands, as leaders of this denomination. The situation of this world doesn’t depend on us, but the responsibility to strategize, involve, and commit the church powerfully to the mission depends on our clear focus and our priority on the mission.
The power to raise the church for mission comes from the Holy Spirit and we need to depend totally on Him. The foundation of the revival for mission comes from the Word of God. But the responsibility to involve the church in the mission is in our hands, as leaders of this denomination.
The mission was the priority Jesus assigned to His leaders, before ascending to heaven. Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, former director of the Biblical Research Institute, reminds us that, “Christ clearly told His disciples that the time between His two appearings was to be filled with the mission of the church (Acts 1:8; Matt. 24:45, 46).”2 If the mission was Jesus’ priority, it needs to be the priority of His church, His leaders, and His modern disciples.
I’d like to conclude this short presentation just by inviting you, in all your initiatives, to deal with the world falling dramatically toward destruction, and to prioritize raising the church powerfully for the mission. If we don’t do that, we will be distracted by the negative signs around us, focusing on them, talking extensively about them, paying attention to them, suffering from them and opening the door to sensationalism and ultimately demotivation. We will spend all our time and energies them, forgetting that they don’t depend on us. They will happen with or without us.
God is calling us to put our attention, our energies, our priorities, our strategies, our resources—all that we are and all that we have— into the mission of the church. Through the mission we can be distinct but not distant, using Christ’s method3 to serve and save, leading people to Jesus and His salvation. This is exactly what God placed in our hands. Let’s make Jesus’ priority our priority and raise the church powerfully for mission, preparing this world for the Second Coming of Christ.
1 Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1946), 219.
2 Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, “How Long?,” Adventist World, August 2020, 26.
3 Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1905), 73.
Erton C. Köhler is the secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Silver Spring, MD, USA. He holds a master’s degree in theology and an honoris causa doctorate from Peruvian Union University. He is writing his dissertation for a DMin from Andrews University.
