October 7, 2005 Silver Spring, Maryland, United States …. [Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
“The Second Coming of Christ is very good news indeed; and it is a unique event to be believed and preached,” Pastor Jan Paulsen, world president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, declared in an October 7 sermon opening the church’s Annual Council. “And, Seventh-day Adventists have a specific mandate to do that,” he added.
Paulsen delivered his sermon, “Embracing the Unique,” at the start of the world church’s administrative session to an audience of 500 delegates, guests and friends gathered at the world church headquarters, as well as to viewers around the world, who saw the event broadcast via the church’s Hope Channel cable and satellite network.
“The first Annual Council after a General Conference session is of a special character,” Paulsen said in remarks before his sermon. It “is the occasion when we want to take a larger and more expansive view” of the church’s mission, he added, including reflection on the church’s service priorities, its finances and personnel resources. He added it is expected that a new examination of the headquarters’ ministries and structures would be undertaken through actions presented at this council.
“In all of this, I hope it will be evident how deeply we are committed to the church and our Lord,” he said.
Paulsen also noted the growing nature of the world church family: “We will nurture the Body of Christ so as to keep it healthy and agile. But we have, as a global family, become very diverse, very widely spread out and so diverse in so many ways. I want us to relate to this diversity as a blessing and not to see it as a threat,” he said.
In his sermon, which was based on an encounter between Jesus and His disciples as recorded in Matthew 16, Paulsen drew a parallel between the uniqueness of Christ and the need for Christian leaders today to follow Christ alone, apart from any personal agendas.
The arrival of Jesus on the scene in the Roman province of Palestine perplexed many observers, Paulsen explained. Some saw Him as “a friend, a breath of fresh air, one who brought hope.” Others considered Jesus “a dangerous influence, a manipulator of simple minds, [and] one who should be watched and controlled.”
But when Jesus asked His closest followers who they believe He was, Peter immediately identified Him as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” That understanding of Christ as the Unique One sets Christians apart from all others – in Jesus’ time as well as today – who consider Him a good teacher, a prophet or an exponent of moral virtue.
Jesus’ singularity is “a uniqueness which must be recognized, embraced, affirmed and confessed. As leaders, we have to be the first in the line” to do so, Paulsen said. “With Jesus, the searching stops. You need not look anywhere else.”
“It is a sobering fact that it is possible to be that close to the truth and still miss it,” he declared. “We may fill our lives with so many noble and fine things, and engage in so many worthy activities. And yet, if Jesus the Messiah is not an identified, and affirmed and embraced part of it, we are where they were who said: ‘He is John the Baptist, or Elijah or Jeremiah.'”
Paulsen singled out church leaders when he said, “For the ‘business’ in which you and I are engaged, it is critically important just simply to follow the Leader – the Lord – as faithful and loyally as you know how. Embrace His agenda.”
He added, “In the ministry and service of the Lord and the church, don’t spend too much time looking at the ‘landscape’ or measuring the strength of the political winds that are blowing. … Self-generated and self-serving agendas can not be reconciled with the belief that God has a plan, and that is the only one that ultimately matters and the only one that really will prevail.”
In another remark aimed at church leadership, Paulsen noted that while God “has given us our uniqueness of doctrines and values, such matters are sometimes neglected in sermons and writings for the church.
“It bothers me and it troubles me, if I may say so without creating some kind of paranoia, that the uniqueness of our faith is often shied away from in our preaching, and in our teaching and in our writing,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with what is being said from the pulpit; it is biblical; it should be preached; it has its day. But what about that which is not said – that which is somewhat special to our faith identity. Are we embarrassed by or unsure in affirming and confessing the unique?”
Paulsen said “our mission as a church” is to affirm, as he does, “that there is only one Lord, and everything about Him is special;” “that it is the Holy Spirit, and the faith which He generates, which makes me strong to recognize and affirm that which is unique” for Adventists; and “that, ultimately, the only thing that matters is to recognize and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”
While a special Sabbath worship service will be held at the world headquarters on October 8, the regular business of the Annual Council will begin Sunday morning and is expected to continue through October 13.
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