Pastor Abner De Los Santos was elected as general vice president for the Seventh-day Adventist world church during the 60th General Conference business session yesterday in San Antonio, Texas. The election came as the church chose its six vice presidents who will help implement three mission-oriented goals that will be a priority around the world during the next five years.
General Conference (GC) session delegates elected 12 of the 15 department directors of the General Conference on Monday. Eight directors were incumbents, and two of them replaced officers who are retiring. The retiring department directors are Jonathan Kuntaraf of the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries department, and John Graz, director of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty department.
A slimmed-down leadership team of six general vice presidents has been elected to the General Conference and charged with helping implement three mission-oriented goals that the Seventh-day Adventist Church intends to prioritize over the next five years. The lineup includes three new officers—Guillermo E. Biaggi, Thomas L. Lemon, and Abner De Los Santos—and three reelected officers—Geoffrey G. Mbwana, Ella S. Simmons, and Artur A. Stele.
As the Seventh-day Adventist world church holds the General Conference (GC) session in San Antonio, Texas, about 550 young adults ages 18 to 35 are gathering for Impact San Antonio at the Marriott Rivercenter hotel from July 2 to 11. The 10-day experience is composed of dynamic worship services and breakout sessions that will be accompanied by community service projects in the afternoons.
Delegates voted on Sunday to not use electronic voting at the General Conference (GC) session after repeated tests of the system failed to yield accurate results. General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson took to the stage after lunch on Sunday to lead delegates in a final test of the e-vote system.
Pastor Israel Leito, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Inter-America was re-elected Monday, July 6, to serve another five years as president of the vast growing membership. Pastor Leito was confirmed by the GC Session delegation after his name was submitted by the Nominating Committee of the world church.
Church leaders are encouraging each of the world church’s 18.5 million members to find a way to get personally involved in the Adventist Church’s new five-year “Reach the World” strategic plan after the General Conference (GC) session ends in San Antonio. The plan, which will be implemented from 2015 to 2020, is based on the results of a two-year survey of more than 41,000 current and former church members worldwide and approved by church leaders at the Annual Council last fall.
A festive mood permeated the predawn air as 2,500 Seventh-day Adventists attending the General Conference session in San Antonio, Texas, traded the comfort of their beds for a 5K Fun Run. The “InStep for Life” run, which covered a downtown loop close to the Henry B. González Convention Center, where part of the session activities are taking place, gathered church workers and their families to support physical exercise as a key component of a healthy life.
100 Days of Prayer, a General Conference Ministerial Association initiative running from March 25 through July 11, sought a deeper outpouring of the Holy Spirit among church members and an anticipation of God’s blessings at the GC session. The goal is to keep the momentum going with United in Prayer.
Delegates unanimously reelected G. T. Ng as General Conference (GC) executive secretary and GC undertreasurer Juan Prestol-Puesán as General Conference treasurer. Ng, whose service for the denomination includes being a pastor, seminary professor, and General Conference administrator, was elected as GC secretary five years ago at the GC session in Atlanta.
The electronic voting system—a first use for a General Conference session, replacing the handheld voting cards—didn’t quite go as planned during the initial Thursday morning business meeting. When the system registered only a few hundred of the 1,800 delegates’ votes over three attempts to respond to a practice question, platform chair Lowell Cooper finally told delegates that “for the balance of our business this morning, we will use the voting cards.”
Delegates at the General Conference session knelt down with the Adventist Church’s top officers as they promised to show “Christ-likeness and humble respect for each other in our words and actions” during the 10 days of the meetings in San Antonio, Texas, and beyond. The church’s top officers, a group of about 60 people including General Conference leadership and division presidents, had previously approved a 120-word appeal to the General Conference session that General Conference president Ted N. C. Wilson read to the delegates on Thursday and asked them to support.