You should have been part of today's lunch and afternoon discussion, conversation between 20 Newbold students and Lowell Cooper, Vice President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
The occasion of Cooper's visit to Newbold College is to provide Board training at this Sunday's spring meeting. But, it seemed important to include a conversation between students and church leadership, to assure youth that the Church leadership welcomes, even actively seeks their input.
Newbold College of Higher Education is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Church has a global membership rapidly approaching 20 million, with 66,000 churches and an equal number of 'companies' (fledgling churches), operating nearly 8,000 schools, 750 hospitals, clinics, retirement centres and orphanages, 61 publishing houses and 116 ADRA (Adventist Disaster Relief Agency) offices located throughout 232 countries of the world and regularly employing 891 languages to share God's love.
As you might imagine, the students' questions reflected the youth and international character found at Newbold College and within the Church. The students wanted to hear what plans the Church leaders have to ensure proper representation of young people at the upcoming world church quinquennial gathering, how initiatives designed to better communicate the gospel to the modern mind(e.g. traveling theatrical companies) might secure funding for their innovative work and how we can retain individual culture while remaining a global church.
The most poignant observation Cooper offered, to my mind, was that 'we are not called to individualism; rather, we are called to community.' It is true. Psychologists claim that the most common malady suffered by society today is a sense of alienation. And so, perhaps we should focus less on consensus and more on a commitment to one another. After all, family is defined, not so much by being alike but by being in love.
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