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Harold Camping – Are Adventists Looking In The Mirror?

Harold Camping has predicted the end of the world in late May of 2011. This is not the first time he has made such a prediction. Many have gone on before.

Well guess what, the time came and the time passed, and Harold Camping changed the date again. Now the date is October 2011. I see many folks laughing at him. Others stand with a critical eye on his work. But just like others before (especially the Second Advent Movement that moved the date to October after a missed date) he changed the date.

Doug Bachelor said, “Reckless predictions of the second coming of Christ create an artificial excitement among believers followed by a corresponding depression.” You can find it here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43054329

Some of these same folks either act like they don’t know, or they don’t know that the Advent Movment was born in this type of thing. And all of the arguments that they are using now could have been used against their origins.

Camping is not the first gentleman that I know who has predicted the end…I have a few friends who send me material predicting the end ALL THE TIME. I have a particular elderly friend who is always predicting the end, only he has no radio program to publicize his predictions.

I sometimes wonder if my elderly friend is allowing his great desires for the end of time to cloud his judgement. I wonder if we have the heart longings of an older man who probably does not wish to die, but wishes to be translated…mixing in with the apocalyptic prophecy that he has made the foundation of his thought…and old age with its struggles on 80 year old people…all mixed together to create a climate where predicting the end is almost unavoidable…perhaps those who are close around him should be more deligent about protecting him…

Be that as it may, I still look forward to the time when the coming kingdom is fully realized. I cut Camping some slack. I know it looks bad on christinaity. I know there will be a lot of disapointed believers. But for some reason I got an image in my head of my friend, Harold Camping, my elderly friend, William Miller, and Jesus when the kingdom is fully realized. Like all of these men, I long for that day…

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The Information Is Getting Out!

I have been blogging from January 2006 to now, a little over 5 years. when I began there was a small but vibrant group of bloggers. Some of them still blog. Some of them have been swallowed up by the big sites Spectrum and Atoday, and some of them have just stopped blogging.

Independent Sites Providing News

while some have gone, others have come into the place. as noted above the fiercely independent Spectrum and Adventist Today both speak from a place that is not beholden to the church.

Interestingly enough there are other websites like Educate Truth. Educate Truth brought a story out and would not let it go away. In the past the story might have died, but the internet kept it around.

And then there is Facebook and Twitter. We find out things almost immediately now.

Official Channels Monopoly On News

You see when I was growing up, there was little information except through the official channels. Well, those days are long over. Some may not like it, but whether you like it or not, those days are over.

You are right now reading someone that you probably would not have been able to hear 20 years ago without. the Advent makes my work possible both here and in my other internet work. (Like SoulPreaching.Com)

You probably go on Facebook and read individual’s thoughts on every subject from President Obama to President Ted Wilson. You listen to sermons from various locations, not just your pastor and/or the media preachers. The Sabbath afternoon discussion is now on a global scale as you interact with people from Africa, Australia, Europe, and all over North America.

Local Conference Work Affected

Now the workings of Conferences are even being commented on. I saw another website seeking to be a place where laypeople and concerned workers can come to discuss church work and business The Forgotten Shepherdess. We discuss politics. We discuss sports. We even discuss other churches, well now it is time to discuss this church…

I just found the site not too long ago and what hit me about the site is that it appears to be exposing to the general public that which was usually and often only for privileged ears. The site has caused a stir at the Southwest Region Conference for they are now about to “formulate a policy regarding the proper behavior of an employee relative to Internet conduct via soical media sites and other online activities such as blogs…” You can find that here.

I guess they should have a policy, but if they think that restricting information will continue to work, I think there is a problem.

The answer is not to keep information from the people. That answer will not work. With Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter turning everyone into publishers and free websites like blogger.com and wordpress.com providing free websites to anyone, the day of the conference controlling the people by controlling information has come to an end.

And I say with Edwin Hawkins “Oh Happy Day.”

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Should We Be Celebrating?

Photo by mattbuck.
A little while ago the Religious News Service put out an article about Seventh-day Adventism being the fastest growing church in North America. On Facebook it appeared that a huge percentage of Adventists were sending links to this article all over the place.

Here is a link to that article.

Well it turns out that while Adventism is growing…it was not as much as originally thought. In addition, it appears that it might be based in immigrants. Here is the Christian Century’s article. It appears as though the 4.3% growth rate has been fixed in the original articles to 2.5%.

Growing But Not As Fast

At any rate, Adventists are still growing…aren’t they? Well they are growing, but like everyone else, we are trying to figure out where our converts are. In addition, like everyone else, we are trying to keep our youth.

Whenever we talked about retention the fingers start coming out. The evangelists point to the pastors for not watering the growth. The pastors point to the elders for not doing their job. Finally, the elders point to the other members for not being loving.

Pointing Fingers Or Fixing The Problem?

I know we have a book come out every so often. we have a discussion every so often about retaining members. But when you have a system where you barely tell people what they are getting into when you dunk them…and then leave them to fend for themselves….What do we expect?

What do we expect when church growth is measured in terms of membership transfer and tithe increase (based largely in membership transfer)? Certainly growth is happening, don’t get me wrong, but much of our growth (not all…but much of it) is simply based in where a particular members will consume her or his religious entertainment. The mega churches are growing because they got the best show in town.

Good News?

But more than that, what is very interesting to me is how quickly we want to jump on “good news.” I mean we were giddy about this. One Facebook friend said “this is surely a sign of the end” as he forwarded this article. We know what it looks like in our particular congregation. We know how the growth looks. We know that 15 of the 20 baptisms in the last evangelistic meeting were gone before they could warm the pew. And yet we jumped at this. “we are important…we are significant…God is using us.”

Growth is fine…but for many of us, We don’t keep our converts. they leave.

I realize this is anecdotal. I hope I am wrong. But, I see baptismal numbers all the time. I see growth numbers all the time. But at the end of the day. where are all these people because they sure ain’t at church? Now some of you will give the exception to the rule. Some of you will condemn me for saying it. That’s fine. I hear you. But maybe we need to stop yelling amen about how well we are doing and come to terms with the facts that our growth is going out the same door they came in on. Spectrum Magazine Blog has a discussion of this topic at this link.