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The Kaigat Dispersal of 1941 occurred when pioneer Adventists at the Kaigat Adventist Church in northern Nandi decided to relocate to other parts of Nandi, carrying with them the Adventist message to their place of settlement.
"Medz Yeghern" is an Armenian term meaning “great calamity.” It is synonymous with the deaths of several hundred thousand Armenians in Anatolia1 and Syria during the period of the Great War. For the Seventh-day Adventist Church, this same event caused the greatest proportional losses of an Adventist community in the church’s history. The great calamity came about due to a confluence of geopolitical, religious, and historical factors that overtook the most promising Adventist mission field in the Middle East and left behind a shattered and scattered population. The Adventist Church in Anatolia has never recovered.
A membership audit is the examination of the local church record book to monitor church growth and account for missing members. People become members of the church only after baptism or profession of faith, preceded by instruction from the Bible on the “Church’s fundamental beliefs and practices and the responsibilities of membership.”
The West-Central Africa Division of the Seventh-day Adventists oversees 22 countries. The region is home to various native religions, including the Akan religion, Dahomean, Efik mythology, Edo religion, Hausa animism, Odinani, Sever religion, Yoruba Religion, West African Vodun, and Dogon religion. Although the Seventh-day Adventist Church is among the few Christian denominations that came to West-Central Africa in the late 19th century, the Church encounters similar challenges with the native religions that the earlier Christian denominations faced in their attempt to Christianize the region.
Adventists in Southern Africa-India Ocean Division seek to integrate public evangelism into their daily life, as not to limit evangelism to church organized events. The Church has initiated several programs to help revive and equip all church members for mission.
The vast majority of people living with HIV/AIDS are located in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 66 percent living in sub-Saharan Africa. Among this group, 19,600,000 are living in east and southern Africa which saw 800,000 new HIV infections in 2017.
Rites of passage are usually well-prepared occasions that are planned to mark the transitions to different life stages. These stages include birth, initiation into adulthood, marriage, death, and burial in most cultures. The Adventist perspective on the significance of these rites is, firstly, a critique of African Christianity in its theology of inculturation. Secondly, it seeks to provide a missiological approach in outreach to adherents of African Traditional Religion or those steeped in the African worldview.
One of the challenges facing members in the West-Central Africa Division (WAD) of Seventh-day Adventists is associated with Sabbathkeeping. This is particularly the case for impoverished members in poor or developing economies where many people find it difficult to eke out a living. The challenges to Sabbath-keeping facing Adventists in WAD may be classified under three major subheadings: culture, the influence of technology, and poverty.
From the era of its pioneers to the present, the standard position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has been that the annual ceremonial sabbaths of ancient Israel pointed to the Messiah and terminated when Jesus Christ was crucified, whereas the requirement to loyally observe the seventh-day Sabbath retains its validity as an integral part of the Ten Commandments.
Seventh-day Adventists accept the value of science and seek to understand science, and also accept and seek to understand Scripture. Since its beginning, the church has a history of searching for the appropriate interaction between these two sources.
During its two decades as an organization (1970-1989), the Seventh-day Adventist Church Musicians’ Guild (CMG) sought to foster understanding of the role of music in worship and advance informed interchange between musicians and pastors about critical issues involving music in the life of the church.
Since the arrival of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific, singing and musical expression were considered essential components of the worship experiences of its people.
The Kokoka Track traverses the Owen Stanley Range, which run the length of Papua New Guinea and traditionally separate Papua from New Guinea.
This refusal to work on Friday nights or Saturdays has resulted in workplace discrimination for many Adventists. While some members have accepted this as part of their lot in maintaining the beliefs and practices of the Adventist faith, other members have chosen to take a stand against discrimination. Since the Charter became law in 1982, the Adventist Church has been proactive in participating in numerous cases advocating for religious freedom.
The political upheavals in Burundi in 1965, 1972 and 1976 have impacted the history of the country as well as the work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Burundi.
The group of people commonly known as Shepherd’s Rod were a breakaway from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1930 through 1962, later splintering into several manifestations centered at Waco, Texas. They chose to call themselves the General Association of Davidian Seventh-day Adventists. Their initial leader was Victor Houteff.
The officers of the South Pacific Division (SPD) are those persons who have been elected to fill the roles of president, secretary, and treasurer. Each office may have an associate who is also a part of the officer group or adgroup. Currently in the SPD there are four persons in the adgroup. In the SPD the secretary is referred to as the division secretary and the treasurer is referred to as the chief financial officer (CFO). This article will consider the roles of the three senior officers and will not discuss associate officer roles.
Seventh-day Adventists early on experienced the need for financial support of those working in gospel ministry. Prior to the formal organization of the church, they developed a plan of systematic giving. After more than one and a half decades, they eventually adopted the biblical tithing plan of Malachi 3 that aided in the dissemination of the Adventist message to all parts of the world.
One of the darkest moments that the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Cuba experienced after the triumph of the Revolution was when it suffered a most unjust and devastating tax imposition by the State. This plunged the Church and many of its members into one of the most critical economic situations of its history.
Ancestral veneration in Tanzania cuts cross World Religions: Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion. Church programs on nurture and retention seek to teach new members how to abstain from forms of ancestral veneration present in their communities.