Silver Spring, Maryland, United States …. [Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
Michael and Anne Browning, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and his wife, have made some changes recently. They’ve gone from an island that is roughly 26,300 square miles (63,118 square kilometers) to one that is two square miles (5.1 sq. km). Instead of serving three congregations with 130 people, their new parish has 45 permanent residents and 15 “expatriates” who rotate in and out on three-month cycles.
There’s one other difference: unlike their former home of Tasmania, a large island off the Southern coast of Australia, their new home shuts down on the Sabbath. Everyone, Adventist or not, lays down their tools for the only day of rest that this small, industrious community knows.
This is Pitcairn Island where residents of this British colony in the South Pacific — once an outpost of Adventism — still have a “high regard” for the church. The couple recently moved to a place famed for housing survivors of the “Mutiny on the Bounty” for what is expected to be a one- to two-year term.
While a “large proportion” of Pitcairners, as the residents are known, do not regularly attend weekly worship, the expatriates, who include police, a physician and a social worker, among others, frequent church services.
“We are pastors to the community,” Browning, who was in the United States on a study trip, told ANN in an interview. “This is a totally different ministry” than his three-church circuit in Tasmania, where, he said, “I was driving all the time.”
The Pitcairners “are amazing people,” Anne Browning added. “They are survivors. They’re great people and we’ve learned to love them.”
Although the Seventh-day Adventist message reached the island in the late 1800s, recent years have seen a well-documented departure from church practices by some. While television isn’t a distraction, the Internet connects to the remote outpost, and the rise of e-mail has led to a decline in postage stamp sales to collectors — once the island’s chief source of revenue. Today, Pitcairners sell carvings and artwork to passing cruise ships, and are developing honey and dried banana exporting businesses.
The church’s key spiritual role in the community — the Adventist Church is the only house of worship there — is of great importance to Browning, who said he is “asking people to pray for a revival of spirituality on the island.”
Copyright © 2005 by Adventist News Network.
