3 July, 2015

Electronic voting debuts at GC Session after a snag

The electronic voting system—a first use for a General Conference session, replacing the handheld voting cards—didn’t quite go as planned during the initial Thursday morning business meeting. When the system registered only a few hundred of the 1,800 delegates’ votes over three attempts to respond to a practice question, platform chair Lowell Cooper finally told delegates that “for the balance of our business this morning, we will use the voting cards.”

3 July, 2015

GC delegates pledge Christlike attitude

Delegates at the General Conference session knelt down with the Adventist Church’s top officers as they promised to show “Christ-likeness and humble respect for each other in our words and actions” during the 10 days of the meetings in San Antonio, Texas, and beyond. The church’s top officers, a group of about 60 people including General Conference leadership and division presidents, had previously approved a 120-word appeal to the General Conference session that General Conference president Ted N. C. Wilson read to the delegates on Thursday and asked them to support.

3 July, 2015

Ted N.C. Wilson re-elected GC president in landslide Vote

Delegates overwhelming elected incumbent General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson to another five years in office on Friday. An estimated 90 percent of some 2,358 registered delegates voted in favor of continuing Wilson in his position as leader of the Seventh-day Adventist world church after a 37-minute discussion at the General Conference session in San Antonio, Texas.

2 July, 2015

Inter-America selects its members for GC Nominating Committee

Hours after the official opening of the 60th General Conference Session today in San Antonio, Texas, nearly 400 delegates and top church leaders from throughout the Inter-American Division (IAD) territory met to choose 40 nominating committee members. The new committee members will represent the IAD when nominating the next president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide, which is scheduled to take place tomorrow.

2 July, 2015

GC delegates approve record 35 new union conferences

Moving to streamline the church’s work at a time of rapid growth, delegates opened the General Conference session on Thursday by officially approving the addition of an unprecedented 35 new union conferences to the Adventist world church. The delegates easily approved the administrative units—most of which are located in Africa, Central America, and South America—by holding up yellow cards in a vote in the cavernous Alamodome stadium in San Antonio, Texas.

30 June, 2015

5,500 Pastors and their families descend on Austin

Cab drivers hunting for customers outside the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport initially anticipated a boon in business when dozens of people suddenly burst through the exit doors and out into Texas’ hot, humid weather. But discouragement washed over some of their faces a moment later when they saw that the throng of Seventh-day Adventist pastors and their families made a beeline past the line of taxicabs to form a line by the bus stop.

30 June, 2015

What U.S. same-sex ruling means for Adventists

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that finds a constitutional right to same-sex marriage raises a lot questions for the church. This decision, reached on on June 26, 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, is one that many Seventh-day Adventist members greeted with apprehension.

26 June, 2015

GC SESSION 101: A look inside the nominating committee

General Conference Session is the largest business meeting of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that takes place every five years. During the 10-day meeting Church leaders are elected and business is conducted that governs the way the church will fulfill its mission. When it comes to facilitating official church business, more than 2,000 delegates are tasked with the responsibility of voting on recommendations from previous meetings of the Executive Committee, the Church’s second-highest governing body.

26 June, 2015

In Costa Rica, Constitutional court exempts Adventist traffic officer from working on the Sabbath

A Seventh-day Adventist traffic police officer recently won a court decision to keep his job and be exempt from working on Saturdays. Paul Rivera Nuñez, who has been working as a traffic police officer in the Cartago Province in Costa Rica since 2013, was notified by his superiors in April that he had to work on Saturdays.

26 June, 2015

Inter-America to feature large exhibit booth during 60th GC Session

In less than a week, thousands of Seventh-day Adventists from all over the world will convene in San Antonio, Texas for the 60th General Conference Session to participate in business meetings and have an opportunity to visit hundreds of exhibit booths showcasing Adventist organizations and their institutions. The Inter-American Division (IAD), with its vast territory of 24 major church region and various institutions, will get to highlight its vast multi-cultural, multi-language territory in its large exhibit display area during the 10-day session.

25 June, 2015

Disabled Adventist woman goes missing in Arizona

A worried Seventh-day Adventist family has asked for prayers for a 44-year-old disabled relative who went missing in remote mountains in the U.S. state of Arizona. A three-day search and rescue operation has been suspended as police regroup to consider their next move in the case of Janet Castrejon, who disappeared while on a weekend camping trip with her parents in Rustler Park in the Chiricahua Mountains on June 19.

24 June, 2015

In West Venezuela, Adventist communicators challenged to be God’s Messengers

More than 600 Seventh-day Adventists from across West Venezuela crowded the Metropolitan Adventist Institute in Barquisimeto to take part in the church’s first Adventist Communicators Congress held June 12-13, 2015. Challenged to be “Messengers of God”, hundreds of Adventist communicators from across 11 states, dozens of church leaders and members committed to communicating hope within their communities.