Inter-America: Conserving and Retaining Members, A Priority

Miami, Florida, United States…[Libna Stevens/IAD]

Part of measuring success is evaluating the past and planning for the future. The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Inter-America, with its decades-long record of strong membership growth among its 37 countries and islands, is striving to continue its success by nurturing its 3 million church members and reaching unbelievers with the good news of salvation.

To accomplish that, top church leaders from throughout the Inter-American Division (IAD) territory met last week to unify, evaluate and strategize the work of the church for the coming years. Over 100 church leaders met during the church’s first of its biannual executive committee meetings held at Montemorelos, Mexico.

One issue brought up before the top leadership was the need to conserve or retain new members. Although IAD statistics shows that the member retention rate as of December 2006 is 98.5 percent among the total membership, the 1.5 percent still remaining are leaving the church.

What is of more concern among leaders is the retention among the newly baptized. For the year 2005, 17 percent of new believers left the church. Similarly, for the year 2006, 15 percent left.

“To lose 1.5 percent of the membership does not bring us satisfaction,” said Pastor Israel Leito, president of the church in Inter-America. “To lose 15 percent of those baptized horrifies us and we need to reduce those numbers.”

IAD Church leaders approved a document that church executive committee leaders world-wide voted during last month’s General Conference spring meetings, in Maryland, on plans to be implemented on retaining and reclaiming members. (For ANN article with details on Conserving Membership Gains-An Appeal go to http://news.adventist.org/data/2007/03/1176319238/index.html.en).

Yet in addition to this document, which encourages members and leaders for a “renewed emphasis to the matter of membership reclamation and retention,” the church leadership of the IAD approved to assign the responsibility of an aggressive membership conservation program to a division officer. That division officer will work to organize an international conference on membership conservation and prepare training programs to get new members more involved in the Christian lifestyle. Classes will teach family worship, Sabbath keeping, healthful living and witnessing, as well as primers on church structure and organization.

The initiative will involve unions, conferences, missions and local churches and will specify that someone be assigned specifically to membership conservation. In addition, a system will be designed “in order to keep contact with former members and/or members starting to get cold,” according to the document.

“Our concern is to bring those numbers down to retaining and conserving every new member and every ‘old’ member,” said Pastor Leito.

Church regional leaders expressed their excitement at the aggressive plan of conserving and retaining members during the meetings.

Pastor Patrick Allen, who leads the church in the West Indies region, agreed with the plan to retain members.

“This is a great day for the church in the IAD, and I want to take the opportunity to express appreciation to the division administration for this bold attempt to address the concern that has been there for many years for many of us,” Pastor Allen said. “Many times the members are disheartened and feel that our attempts of evangelism are not working for the best of the church, but this program is going to benefit the church.

Other church leaders expressed their support and appreciation for the much needed initiative to conserve members in the church.

The initiative will also seek to create a system to further reduce the ratio of apostasy among church goers.

Part of the successful retention of members is keeping the church leadership organization close to the growing membership taking place in each church.

Creating new territorial regions among most of the 15 regions in the IAD has proven to be beneficial, according to church administrators.

Part of the strategy that church leaders are striving for is for all 56 of its mission fields to be upgraded to conference level, thus leaving room for additional new territories to be organized. There are currently 42 conference fields throughout Inter-America. This will prove to strengthen the church leadership and allow for expanded fields within the region, leaders say.

“We want to help in the development of the field and facilitate the work of the church,” said pastor Leito. “This issue of reorganizing is a blessing.”

For more than ten years, the church in Inter-America has based its strategic plan on five issues to better serve the church: church growth and consolidation, education in the church, consolidation of the family unit, church image, and technology and the mission of the church. The leadership has been able to integrate these strategies with the various church departments to unify, promote initiatives, improve structure and give directions for the finishing of the work.

Part of that direction and focus has brought much success to the church in the Inter-American Division with its rapid growth in church membership and financial strength, according to church leaders. Yet executive members discussed the need to survey and evaluate to make sure it’s on track to reach more unbelievers with the good news of salvation.

“Part of our strategic plan is a strong, dedicated and committed laity together with a dedicated ministry to finish the work,” said Pastor Leito. “Based on the results we have seen, the plans that we began a few years ago are taking us farther yet,” he said. “However, with all of the good results, we don’t want to glorify ourselves, we want to see if we still know where we are headed.”

Church leaders also approved a new 29-page document on specific guidelines to strengthen the financial system of the church in Inter-America. The financial document outlines the management and operation of unions and local fields, granting long-term loans to union and institutions, preparing internal control plans, ensuring proper auditing, training of financial personnel and promoting efficiency and effectiveness throughout all church organizations, among others.

Filiberto Verduzco, treasurer of the church in Inter-America, presented the document to committee members for approval. He said that most of the guidelines and recommendations came about from the division-wide treasurer's council held late in March. The guidelines will benefit even further the strong financial position Inter-America has held for decades, according to Verduzco.

During IAD's executive meetings, church departments presented their initiatives and upcoming events to benefit the church across the territory.

“God is really blessing the work of His church here in Inter-America,” said Pastor Leito to church leaders.

For now, the church leadership is committed to inspiring and implementing new plans and strategies to continue working towards retaining and conserving its members by spreading the gospel even deeper into their territories.

Church executive committee members will meet again during the year-end meetings in Cuba later this year.