Silver Spring, Maryland, United States …. [Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
More than one million people joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the year ending June 30, 2004, bringing the total world church membership to 13,663,497.
On average, 2,756 new Adventists are baptized daily, with 13 congregations formed in the same 24 hour period. There is one Adventist for every 468 people in the world today, down from one for every 490 people a year ago. If current trends continue, it’s projected that there will be one Adventist for every 100 people on Earth by the year 2034, said Bert Haloviak, director of archives and statistics for the church.
“The Lord has been good to His church, and has blessed growth initiatives,” said Matthew Bediako, secretary of the world church.
Six of the church’s 13 world regions — Inter-America, South America, East-Central Africa, Southern Africa-Indian Ocean, Southern Asia Pacific and North America — have memberships of more than 1 million each. The church regions with the largest membership are:
Inter-America, with 2.5 million; South America, with 2.345 million; and East-Central Africa with, 2.068 million.
North America, having just climbed back into the million-plus rank over the summer, represents just under 8 percent of worldwide Adventist Church membership. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded in the United States, but today is a global movement, with its largest concentration of members in Africa, South America and Asia.
At the same time, the church is revising its membership counts through audits of regional church records and due to departures from the church. Bediako said the church has an average global retention rate of “about 70 percent.”
Bediako, who in delivering his report was assisted by secretaries of the church’s 13 regions, said, “although we would like to see the retention rate go higher, we need to make sure our figures are accurate.” He appealed to the church’s regions to complete membership audits “as soon as possible.”
He added, “the conservation of the harvest is as important as the reaping of the harvest.”
Among areas of strong church growth since the 2003 Annual Council, the afternoon session heard about India, where 114,000 were baptized in the past year, up dramatically from the 15,000 baptisms reported in 1994.
In the South Pacific region, evangelistic campaigns in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea have brought thousands into church membership. South America’s membership continues to climb through public evangelism and small group Bible study outreaches, while in the Northern Pacific, millions of Bible study invitations were placed in leading Japanese newspapers, leading to thousands of inquiries.
Copyright © 2004 by Adventist News Network.
