The North American Division Year-End Meeting resumed for the second day of general business sessions (and third day of YEM) on a clear and crisp Sunday morning after attendees and guests took a day for Sabbath rest and worship. “We had a beautiful Sabbath day yesterday and Friday evening in our worship together and our communion together. The Lord was with us and He visited this place,” said NAD president G. Alexander Bryant as he called the meeting to order.

The November 3, 2024, morning session primarily focused on the report of NAD executive secretary Kyoshin Ahn, who shared statistics about the current state of church growth and the make-up of its membership.

The day also included a breakout on evangelism and reports from several conferences on their evangelistic activities. [Links to news/video coverage here.] Reports were received from various church institutions and departments, and delegates also focused on policy and procedural matters — tasks that would keep the delegates in their chairs until dark.

A Break From Business

The technical business matters were broken up by several moments that brought the minds of the attendees back to the humanity of the people doing the work of the church and the impact it can have on people’s lives. These moments included a special time of prayer for the families of church employees, especially their children. Bryant shared that he has made it his business to go to the funeral of any church worker who has passed way, if he is able. 

“I do my best to make it there. For one reason. And that’s to thank the family for the sacrifice of their children that they’ve made over the years for the Lord, His mission and His church. … Over the past three years or so I have probably done it about 15-18 times,” said Bryant. “It has never failed where one of those children have not come to me with tears in their eyes thanking me for acknowledging what they have gone through.”  

The group then took some moments of silence to remember those who were once a part of this executive committee but had passed away in the last year. 

• Charles Joseph
• Larry Moore
• Arne Nielsen
• Larry Unterseher
• Maurice Valentine (Oct. 2023)
• Josephine Benton (the first female ordained as a local elder in NAD; she also served as a pastor)

The group gathered also expressed condolences to Buford Giffin from the Southwest Union who lost his wife, Carmen, last week. 

The NAD received a special gift during a presentation: a large portrait of the first president of the division, Charles E. Bradford. The painting was done by the well-known artist Nathan Greene, who had been commissioned by one of the large Adventist hospital systems, Advent Health, in recognition of Bradford’s dedication to health ministries and service on the board of the organization. 

The most compelling moment of the day came just before lunch when a former Lutheran pastor shared about the spiritual journey that recently led him to become an Adventist pastor instead. Pastor Robb Carr is currently serving in the Rocky Mountain Conference and shared the improbable story of how he had come to the Adventist faith through a long series of events that included being witnessed to by the Adventist pianist that played at his Lutheran services. 

Ministry Reports

In the afternoon the attendees held the business meeting for the church’s ministry to the blind, Christian Record Services, Inc., as well as received the ministry reports of Pacific Press Publishing Association, Oakwood University, NAD Family Ministries, AdventSource, and a report on the recent hurricane disaster response of Adventist Community Services (ACS).

• Christian Record Services, Inc.: The NAD business session adjourned and reconvened as the constituency of CRS in order to receive its report. CRS is celebrating 125 years of ministry to the blind and visually impaired. President Diane Thurber shared details about the healthy financial position of the organization despite a slightly lower level of donations this year than had been expected. CRS serves the blind community and offers a phone ministry, printed resources, and support for young people through camps and college scholarships. They have also added a lot of Spanish language books and phone faith programs this year, as well as mental health support.
• Pacific Press is the modern incarnation of the church’s publishing ministry, which was established in 1874, making it one of the longest-running ministries of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Pacific Press is playing a key role in creating materials for the Pentecost 2025 initiative, which can be found at https://pentecost2025.com/resources/ .
• Oakwood University is the only higher education institution that is linked directly to the NAD. This is because it is a historically black college or university (HBCU), established in 1896, for students from across the entire division territory. Leslie N. Pollard shared about the 2024 Community Health Worker’s Program Oakwood has been able to start, thanks to a $2.8 million grant, to train close to 100 people to share the message of wholistic health in the communities of northern Alabama. 
• NAD Family Ministries is led director and associate director Cesar and Carolann De Leon. With the assistance of the NAD Data Analytics (Big Data + Social Media) director Paul Hopkins, Family Ministries created a survey that was sent to family ministries leaders across the division. They uniformly reported that trauma-informed family ministry resources that would address the mental health challenges facing their members as the priority; and the NAD team will be providing more training and resources in this area in the coming year. 
• AdventSource is the resource center for the Adventist Church in North America. Located on the campus of Union Adventist University in Lincoln, Nebraska, their flagship project this year is supporting churches for Pentecost 2025 with resources to train and equip their members. This is especially important as Pentecost 2025 aims to facilitate small congregations and lay members to engage in evangelism.
• Adventist Community Services (ACS) is providing on-going disaster response in communities affect by the recent hurricanes across the American south and southeast. Disasters that were on the scale of “a Katrina,” said ACS director W. Derrick Lea. “If you are not ready for the event [as a disaster response organization] it’s going to be too late for you,” he explained. Lea commended the preparations made by the Florida Conference and the Southeastern Conference as well as how church conferences and organizations came together in regions farther north to respond to the unexpected hurricane impacts in the interior of the country. ACS partners with external organizations such as the American Red Cross and state agencies, as well as the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International (ADRA), which has also helped raise money, passing those funds on as grants of $150,000 to date to the work of ACS and its army of church volunteers. 

General Conference Initiatives

Several General Conference leaders dropped in to share about several world church initiatives. Ramon Canales, the GC Ministerial Association director, presented the Back to the Alter Initiative, which supports personal and family worship and devotion. “One aspect that attracted me to the Seventh-day Adventist Church was the focus on the Bible as the basis for faith and practice,” said Canales as he introduced a new praise and worship edition of the Bible that includes hundreds of devotionals organized by audience, more than 200 scripture songs and QR codes take readers to additional devotionals and videos of the songs being sung. All of the attendees received a copy of the Bible to take back to their respective fields. 

In addition, GC general vice president Guillermo Biaggi shared the world church’s 2025-2030 Strategic Plan I Will Go, which can be found at https://iwillgo2020.org/. GC associate secretary Samuel Saw shared about a presentation from the Health Ministry department entitled “Adventist Health Message: Is It Worth It?” It addresses research conducted by multiple external organizations and researchers over the years and connects that with the Seventh-day Adventist health message. The presentation can be found at https://executivecommittee.adventist.org.

In the area of education, the General Conference is funding one full-time position related to theological education for three years in every one of the church’s world divisions. It focuses on the three areas: 1) Higher education; 2) Continuing education for pastors; and 3) At the member level by producing clear information anyone can look up. The NAD has identified the area of continuing education for pastors as their area of highest need and will be bringing current Oakwood University president Leslie Pollard in to do this work, beginning in July 2025.

Policy Changes

The delegates spent more than an hour going through specific policy changes proposed by the policy review committee and North American Division Officers and Union Presidents (NADOUP). This is part of a larger objective to update, simplify, and re-organize division policies. After an intensive focus on ministerial policies in 2023, the attention this year shifted to education policies. “We are hoping to reduce education policies from 100 pages to about 55 pages,” said NAD undersecretary Jorge A. Ramirez. “Identifying which are organizational related and which are governance related … so they can be grouped together and be easier to find by category.” As the policy changes in the areas of education and other areas had already been extensively vetted by various internal groups, they passed with only minor edits from the floor. 

Members also received a for-your-information overview of the Church Manual NAD Supplement that comes from the General Conference Annual Council, held a few weeks earlier. It will be up for an actual vote at the General Conference session, held every five years, which will occur July 3-12, 2025, in St. Louis, Missouri.

And with this, the second business day of the North American Division's year-end meeting came to a close. Attendees will return for a final day of business Monday, November 4. The full livestream of the meetings can be found on the NADAdventist YouTube Channel:

• Sunday morning: https://www.youtube.com/live/Sunday a.m., Nov. 3;
• Sunday afternoon: https://www.youtube.com/live/Sunday p.m., Nov. 3.

— Heidi Straw Camargo is a freelance writer.