A constituency meeting of the Pacific Union is happening right now (Sunday and Monday, August 28, 29, 2016). Rebellion toward the world church has been flowing out of the Union for many years, especially involving the practice of women’s ordination and the support of LGBTQ themes. The current meeting is attempting to make changes that would loosen the authority of the General conference over this rogue region of the church. Let us explain.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a worldwide body, with churches in over 200 countries. Every five years delegates are elected and meet together to advance the mission of the church in a General Conference session.
The most recent such session, held in 2015 in San Antonio, Texas, USA, refused to permit Divisions to ordain women. Because it adheres to Bible-based, spiritually qualified male leadership, the Seventh-day Adventist Church does not call women to serve as conference presidents. Nevertheless, Southeastern California Conference (SECC) in 2013 elected a woman president. After the 2015 General Conference session decision voted by delegates not to permit the ordination of women, SECC has proceeded in defiance, ordaining multiple women to the gospel ministry.
SECC Insub-Ordination from CAP on Vimeo.
As of (Monday morning, August 29) the meeting is in its final hours and is debating organizational changes it does not have the authority to enact.
Proposed changes to the Constitution and Bylaws of the Pacific Union are seen http://www.adventistfaith.com/session/_downloads/ProposedBylawChanges.pdf.
Because the Pacific Union is a subsidiary part of the General Conference, it is bound by certain required wording in its Constitution and Bylaws documents. For example, it is required that in the event of the union being dissolved, all assets revert to the next higher organizational unit (in the case of the Pacific Union, the North American Division). However, delegates will vote on whether to replace that required wording with wording that says that in the event of dissolution, all assets revert “to the individual conferences comprising the pacific Union at the time of its dissolution.” Another proposed change is to delete the required wording that limits changes to the Constitution and bylaws to wording which must be in harmony with the General Conference required wording. Removal of this clause would appear to loosen requirements that the Union remain in harmony with the world church.
However, even if these insubordinate initiatives are voted and pass, the Union constituency has no authority to make them. All such changes contrary to the required wording are, in our understanding, null and void so long as the General Conference requires the Union to comply. Indeed, changes such as the leaders of the Pacific Union seek to vote into being today only clarify that the rebellion in that section of the church is in an advanced stage and will serve to make corrective action by the General Conference less difficult. These rebel actions will solidify world church support for decisive action by the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The Pacific Union is a Seventh-day Adventist organizational grouping of several conferences located in the states of Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Each conference is a grouping of Seventh-day Adventist churches. The North American Division (NAD) is made up of nine such unions including the Pacific Union. The NAD is one of 13 top-level organizational units of the world church.
UPDATE: The the most troubling changes debated were not implemented. However, the key development of the session was when a motion was offered by Sacramento Central church pastor Chris Buttery. The motion sought to have the 2012 Union decision to approve the ordination of women rescinded. Delegates, however, voted 74 percent to 26 percent to maintain the 2012 decision. Thus, the Pacific Union, by the vote of its delegates now AFTER the 2015 General conference session, continues to operate in opposition to the world church.
7 replies on “Pacific Union Poised for Additional Rebellion”
I am the editor of an independent self-supporting Seventh-day Adventist ministry, Present Truth Magazine (www.PresentTruthMag.org). We support your efforts to prohibit women being ordained as ministers in the SDA denomination. Thank you for your untiring efforts to stop this unscriptural attempt to make the SDA movement more “pluralistic” in its teachings. We have placed a link to your web site on the front page of our web site. Please let us know if we can help you further in your efforts.
Bill Diehl Jr, editor
Bill, thanks. Please clarify in the link that you are not us and we are not you, but thank you. Every effort to stand in support of the Word of God is to be applauded.
Oh My “GOD”!!!! I can’t believe the timing! I just completed my Commentary, calling out this un-familiar Spirit that has entered into the church, cloaked in a “Lamb Like ” Spirit! I just sent this Commentary to the General Conference attention to the office of the President Ted N. C. Wilson last Thrusday August 25, 2016!
Folk, this is the evidence of the end times, and what the Spirit of Prophecy points outThese warnings are written in the Spirit of Prophecy, as well.
When the church is in difficulty, when coldness and spiritual declension exist, giving occasion for the enemies of God to triumph, then, instead of folding their hands and lamenting their unhappy state, let its members inquire if there is not an Achan in the camp. With humiliation and searching of heart, let each seek to discover the hidden sins that shut out God’s presence. –Patriarch and Prohets – {PP 497.3}
I don’t know if this is going to work or not or even if it’s going to be permitted but here the link to that Commentary sent to the General Conference
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_fzwHX1ilxYMXJWSFhCY1FIS1k
I live in Loma Linda. There was no reason for SECC to ordain Shirley Ponder (shown in your video above), as she retired only days later. This was just another instance of my local conference—and union conference—thumbing their noses at both the General Conference and the world church.
“And, according as they did not approve of having God in knowledge, God gave them up to a disapproved mind, to do the things not seemly..”
Where exactly in the Bible does it say a woman cannot serve as President?
The Bible doctrine is that women cannot serve as the President in any ecclesiastical sense of the term: for example, General Conference Presidents. Women’s ordination is not only against the Law of Nature and Nature’s God: it is a HERESY against the fundamentals of Christian belief. The Woman’s Ordination movement is nothing but a modern version of ancient Gnostic heresies in which women were permitted to become pastors, elders, bishops, and hold positions of ecclesiastical authority in the church. Every time such things occurred, the Church councils of the mainstream Christian church always strongly disapproved of these things on penalty of excommunication.