News Articles

Every AdventHealth hospital leader has two roles: chief executive officer and chief spiritual officer. While the daily demands of the first role could easily overshadow the second, AdventHealth believes the latter determines the organization’s ultimate success. A group of 17 AdventHealth CEOs recently had the opportunity to learn this lesson firsthand in Battle Creek, Mich., where, beginning in 1866, the Seventh-day Adventist Church began its commitment to extending the healing ministry of Christ through health care services to the public. The CEOs, all in the early phase of their tenures, were there as members of the inaugural class of AdventHealth’s Chief Executive Leadership Program (CELP).

A decade ago, AdventHealth introduced the area’s first surgical robot in Palm Coast. This program has grown to include a fleet of 17 robotic surgery devices across the AdventHealth East Florida Division, offering patients robotic surgical procedures in multiple specialties.

When Patmos Chapel Church in Apopka celebrated Community Guest Day on October 5, 2025, the congregation was in for a surprise. Along with the six special guests being awarded for their service to the community, a video crew from the ABC television network showed up. The film crew was taping a news report on Florida’s voting rights movement, spearheaded by one of  Patmos’s honorees, Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Restoration Rights Coalition (FRRC).

In partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Israel Museum, Southern Adventist University is the only scheduled location in the United States where visitors can see the first complete alphabetic sentence in human history ever found. This oldest deciphered sentence is inscribed on an ivory lice comb, which was excavated by Southern archaeologists and dates to 1700 B.C. The rare artifact is on display at the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum on Southern’s campus on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The current exhibit, “The Ivory Comb: Lice and Literacy at Lachish,” is open to the public through May 2, 2025.

Walla Walla University believes Adventist education is more important than ever. To train even more Adventist educators who ensure the Christ-focused development of the whole student, WWU is offering job-embedded North American Division Adventist Education Certification courses that do not require summer classes.

As the calendar has turned the page from December to January, the light has effectively turned green for Pentecost 2025, a comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck revival and evangelism initiative of the North American Division. Winston Taylor, pastor of the Cedar Grove Seventh-day Adventist Church, with a core team of about 15 members, has already established significant connections with the community through multiple outreach efforts. A first fruit of this goal is scheduled for March 9–29 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Around 5:30 a.m. on January 8, 2025, the alert sounded on John Cress’s phone. He and his wife would have to evacuate their home in the Glen Oaks neighborhood of Glendale as the Eaton Fire charred a path toward them. The sky was black with smoke and tinged with red and orange.

Ten years ago, after delivering a well-received presentation at the annual American Society of Church History meeting, Michael Campbell, North American Division director of Archives, Statistics, and Research, pitched the idea of a book on Adventism to the head book editor at Oxford University Press. Intrigued by Campbell’s introduction to Adventist scholarship, the editor invited him to submit a proposal. Their conversation was the catalyst for the groundbreaking Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism, a 39-chapter volume published in 2024 after much prayer and revision.

During their senior year, Luke Graham and Avianna Alvarez, Walla Walla University engineering alumni, were two of 16 student finalists chosen for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Pressure Vessel Piping Conference student paper competition.

Jack J. Blanco, former dean of the Southern Adventist University School of Religion and professor emeritus, and author of The Clear Word Bible paraphrase, passed peacefully to his rest on Sabbath, January 11, 2025. He was 95.