Adventist Leaders Inaugurate New Administrative Offices in Mexico

June 2, 2022 | Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon, Mexico | Keila Urbano and Inter-American Division News

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico recently inaugurated its new administrative office in Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The office represents the church with its five Adventist unions, or major church regions, and handles legal financial and accounting matters with the government in the operation of thousands of churches, schools, universities, hospitals and a publishing house.

“One of the reasons to have a national office is to unify efforts and create strategies that can be in harmony with the growing demands of the church,” said Pastor Ignacio Navarro, president of the church’s administrative office in Mexico. “The church in Mexico must move forward with urgency in the fulfillment of the mission and it is necessary to work together, well focused and optimizing all efforts and resources strategically.”

Navarro, who is also the president of the Chiapas Mexican Union, said that there are various legal aspects such as permits for public worship, registration of ministers of public worship and religious associates, the procedures registering church properties, as well as the supervision and application of laws that govern religious associations [or organizations], among others.

Government leaders representing religious affairs, norms and sanctions in Nuevo Leon, as well as the mayor of the city of Montemorelos, witnessed the inaugural ceremony along with Inter-American Division administrators, held May 13, 2022.

The new office building is approximately 500 meters from Adventist-operated Montemorelos University and includes a reception area, seven administrative, engineering and accounting offices, a conference room, an archive room, and parking area.

Although the church had its representative office organized 29 years ago, the small staff were housed in different small offices adjacent to union offices and several institutions including in the Central Mexican Union, in Mexico City, later to the GEMA editorial building, before the administrative office expanded to house several administrators, engineers and treasury staff on Montemorelos University campus more recently, church leaders said.

“We are so very glad to have the new office in Montemorelos, where the church’s highest educational institution has been established,” said Navarro.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico has more than 800,000 church members organized in five unions, 42 local fields, 4 universities, 3 hospitals, a publishing house and hundreds of primary and secondary schools.