Two days to the end of the business session of the 59th General Session of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the 154 regular delegates of the Southern Asia-Pacific Division (SSD) completed its work of electing associate officers, department directors and associates.
Earlier this week, Pastor Alberto C Gulfan, Jr; Pastor Saw Samuel; and Mr Keith Heinrich, president, secretary, and treasurer, respectively, were elected and their names were voted upon by the 2,412 regular delegates to the world session.
On Thursday, July 1, the SSD body affirmed the recommendation of the 17-member of the nominating committee for associate officers, department directors and associate directors who will serve the 18-country territory of SSD for the next five years.
Those elected were:
Johnny Lubis—Vice President for Administration
Sergie Ferrer—Undertreasurer
Moldy Mambu—Associate Treasurer
Kevin Costello—Associate Treasurer
Gary Rustad—Associate Secretary
Houtman Sinaga—Ministerial Association Secretary
James Brauer—Adventist Mission Director
Wendell Mandolang—Stewardship/Trust Services Director
Jonathan C Catolico—Communication/PARL Director
Leonardo R Asoy—Sabbath School/Personal Ministries Director
Miriam Andres—Children/Family Ministries Director
Helen B Gulfan—Women Ministers/Shepherdess International Director
Vivencio Bermudez—Publishing Ministries/Spirit of Prophecy Director
Abraham T Carpena—Health Ministries Director
Jobbie Yabut—Adventist Youth Ministries Director
Lawrence Domingo—Education Department Director
Denny Rantung—Education Department Associate Director
Michael Bankhead—Information Technology Director
Rufo Gasapo—Adventist Health Care Director
In this election, a vice-president for administration has been added as a new position while the Philanthropic Services Department has been added as an additional responsibility in the Trust Services Department.
The retirement of Ms Thelma Selerio necessitated the appointment of a new director in the Adventist Health Care, while the vacancy brought about by the election of Dr Mike Lekic to the position of associate director of education for the General Conference of the World Church (GC) has elevated Dr Domingo to the directorship. A new education associate, Dr Rantung, was elected. [Jonathan C Catolico]
SSD associate officers and directors elected
SSD Administration Officers
Photo: JCC
Pastor Alberto C Gulfan, Jr, on Sunday, June 27, was elected president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the southern Asia-Pacific region (SSD) by the 2,410 regular delegates to the 59th General Conference Session of Seventh-day Adventists here in Atlanta, Georgia along with the presidents of the other 12 regions of the world field.
A dedicated administrator and evangelist, having conducted several evangelistic meetings every year, Pastor Gulfan has been president of SSD since 2003. He is committed to vigorously pursuing evangelistic programs of the church in the next five years with the support of all church organizations and departments. Since he assumed his post, he has encouraged his fellow officers and associates and the directors of departments to conduct at least one evangelistic meeting each year. His leadership style has united his constituents in the region.
On Monday, June 12, after the 246 members of the nominating committee submitted the names of Pastor Samuel and Mr Keith Heinrich as secretary and treasurer, respectively, the delegates voted to confirm the said nominations.
Pastor Samuel, a Burmese by blood and married to a Thai, has served Thailand Adventist Mission as pastor and seven years as executive secretary; and for the last one and half years served as ministerial secretary of the Southeast Asia Union Mission (SAUM), which is based in Singapore. Pastor Samuel takes the post vacated by Pastor Joshua W Mok, who accepted his appointment as president of SAUM. Asked by this writer how he felt being elected to the post, he said that he felt “so unworthy of the calling but by God’s grace and through the help of veteran colleagues I will be able to carry out the sacred task the church has assigned me to perform.”
Photo: JCC
Mr Heinrich, on the one hand, has been the SSD treasurer since 2005. With his able financial management skills, SSD has been consistently assisting the eight unions, two attached missions, and one field with financial allocations. He also has soft hearts for big projects within the division territory, foremost of which is the Hope Channel Philippines which is slated to have television coverage Philippine-wide soon.
The associate officers and department directors are slated for election within the next two days of the Session.[Jonathan C Catolico]
Source: Adventist News Dispatch
Delegates approve Ng as Secretary and re-appoint Lemon as Treasurer
photo: Gerry Chudleigh
World church Treasurer Bob Lemon was re-elected to another five-year term Thursday,
and Associate Secretary G. T. Ng was promoted to Secretary on the second day of the 2010 General Conference Business Session.
Delegates voting in the Georgia Dome unanimously approved the Nominating Committee’s recommendations, which occurred just four hours after selecting Ted Wilson as General Conference president — three significant actions that, observers said, occurred with remarkable speed.
Ng, a native of Singapore, began his ministry in war-torn Cambodia in the 1970s where he and his wife fled before the capital city Phnom Penh was taken by the Khmer Rouge
political party. He later worked in various positions in Asia, including that of professor, and eventually received a call to the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he serves as the secretariat liaison between the GC and three of the church’s 13 world regions.
Addressing the delegates who voted him into the job for the next five years, Ng called the appointment a humbling experience.
“Never in my wildest imagination will I ever imagine that I would ever be put in this position of responsibility,” Ng said, “but the Lord has his way.”
He replaces Matthew Bediako, who was elected in 2000.
Lemon, treasurer since 2002, said his appointment “was a real privilege and an honor” to work with treasury staff from around the world. He asked that delegates pray for every Adventist member and worker around the globe.
In brief remarks, he also said, “We need to change the soft currency of this world into the hard currency of eternity.”
The biggest challenge facing the church over the next five years, Lemon said in a brief interview after his appointment, is the need to increase involvement among young people.
Source: Adventist News Network.
Ted Wilson is the New Seventh-day Adventist World Church President
Photo: Robert East
Ted N. C. Wilson, a vice president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the son of a former church president, was today elected to serve as president of the 16.3-million member global Protestant denomination.
Wilson was appointed by the church’s 246-member Nominating Committee and confirmed by the General Conference Session delegation, which is an international body of 2,410 appointed members and the highest governing body in the church.
Wilson replaces Jan Paulsen, who has served as president since 1999.
The appointment took place at the church’s 59th General Conference Session, being held at the Georgia Dome and adjacent World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
“This is not just an organization, this is not just another denomination. This is God’s remnant church,” Wilson said in an address to delegates after his appointment.
“I do not know everything, but I shall seek wisdom from counselors and from the Bible and from the Spirit of Prophecy,” he said, referring to the writings of church co-founder Ellen White.
“The Spirit of Prophecy is one of the great gifts God has given to the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” Wilson said. “It applies to the past and to the future. And, we are going home soon.”
Wilson asked that church members ask for God’s guidance “and pray that the Holy Spirit would bring us revival and reformation.”
Wilson, 60 years old, was elected as a general vice president of the Adventist Church in 2000 during the General Conference Session in Toronto. His 36 years of denominational service include administrative and executive posts in the Mid-Atlantic United States, Africa and Russia.
Wilson began his church career as a pastor in 1974 in the church’s Greater New York Conference. He served as an assistant director and then director of Metropolitan Ministries there from 1976 to 1981. He went on to serve in the church’s then Africa-Indian Ocean Division, based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, until 1990. There he served as a departmental director and later as executive secretary, the second highest officer.
Following his post in West Africa, he served at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States, as an associate secretary for two years before accepting the position of president of the church’s Euro-Asia Division in Moscow, Russia, from 1992 to 1996. Wilson then came back to the United States to serve as president of the Review and Herald Publishing Association in Hagerstown, Maryland, until his election as a General Conference vice president in 2000.
An ordained minister, Wilson holds a doctorate degree in religious education from New York University, a master of divinity degree from Andrews University and a master of science degree in public health from Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health.
During his address to delegates, Wilson was joined on stage by his wife, Nancy Louise Vollmer Wilson, a physical therapist. The couple has three daughters.
“Our spouses are so important. This wonderful woman is a spiritual backbone for me,” Wilson said.
Wilson is the son of former General Conference president Neal C. Wilson, who served in the post from 1979 to 1990.
Many delegates on the floor of the Georgia Dome said Wilson’s election demonstrated the church’s confidence in his leadership.
Rob Vandeman, president of the church’s Chesapeake Conference in the U.S. state of Maryland — where Wilson is a member — said he was “pleased” with Wilson’s appointment. “This vote is an expression of the world church’s view, that they have confidence in Ted Wilson because of his extensive experience,” Vandeman said.
Daniel Jackson, president of the Adventist Church in Canada said: “I think Ted Wilson has been given a clear mandate from the Nominating Committee. He needs our prayers and our support. I’m happy at the unity of our church.”
Jeffrey Brown, president of the church in Bermuda, said: “We are happy, too. He will be a strong leader; his strong principles will be healthy for the church.”
Wilson is expected to address a press conference this afternoon.
The Adventist Church is a denomination that in recent decades has grown quickly in some world regions. Roughly one-third of membership now resides in Africa, while another one-third lives in South America and Central America. There are about 1.1 million Adventists in the United States, where the denomination was established in 1863.
The Adventist Church operates the largest Protestant network of schools and hospitals worldwide. The church also runs disaster response and development programs through the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International. It also sponsors a religious freedom forum, having established in 1893 what is now the International Religious Liberty Association.
The General Conference Session, held every five years, is an international spiritual gathering and business session to elect leaders and vote on proposed changes to the Church Manual and Constitution. Session runs through July 3.
Source: Adventist News Network
Session Attendee bicycles from Brazil to Atlanta
photo: Alden J. Ho, Adventist Review
Few people can say they’ve visited more than a couple countries in less than a year, but one Seventh-day Adventist has bicycled across eleven since last August in an 8,600-mile journey meant to spread the church’s message of hope.
George Silva’s trek began in his native Brazil, where the 49-year-old kicked up his bike stand in Boa Vista and pedaled through northern South America.
Silva pedaled or pushed — once, for four hours straight after facing five flat tires in one afternoon — his bike through most of Central America, cycling through several southern-tier states of the United States to arrive in Atlanta this morning.
Around 10 a.m. local time, Silva was swarmed by Adventist Church members and delegates, many of them from Brazil, as he arrived at the Georgia Dome, where the church is holding its 59th General Conference Session until July 3.
Silva’s journey to Atlanta is the seventh in a series of such trips, totaling more than 18,000 miles, that the cyclist and runner has embarked on since joining the Adventist Church in 1992.
Silva, who said he was often depressed and troubled as a young person, once nearly resorted to suicide before a chance encounter with an Adventist literature evangelist, who challenged him attend a church.
Disheartened by the overwhelming number of denominations, each with seemingly incongruent beliefs, Silva shelved his search. Years later, Silva again felt impressed to find God. The next day, another literature evangelist visited Silva’s home, giving him the address of the local Adventist church. “For the first time, I felt comfortable in a church,” Silva said. “The same day, I asked to be baptized.”
Shortly after accepting the Adventist message, Silva, then training as a runner, said he felt impressed to use his athletic talents for God. “I heard [God] say, ‘You run every morning for yourself. Now, I choose you to run for me.’”
A Knife in Each Hand
Silva later began biking so he could cross more territory in a shorter period. On his way to Atlanta, he averaged 75 miles per day, biking continuously for seven hours, then taking a three-hour break to rest and eat before another seven hours of cycling.
When asked whether crossing the Panama Canal posed challenges, Silva said finding a boat ride across was barely a hurdle compared to passing through a treacherous, guerilla-controlled wooded area just beforehand. Locals warned him that the guerillas would likely kidnap him, but backtracking wasn’t an option in Silva’s mind. He didn’t have money for a plane ticket to fly over the area, so he pressed on.
Noticing a man riding a motorcycle toward him, Silva panicked. “I thought he was coming to kill me,” he said. But instead, the man guided him to the beach, where Silva took a boat across the Canal to Central America.
“I believe that when I get to heaven, Jesus will introduce me to the angel who guided me through the jungle and brought me from Colombia to Panama in one piece,” Silva said.
While on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, Silva said he was attacked by a would-be thief wielding two knives, who threatened to take his belongings and his life. Silva began praying and pleaded with the man to spare his life, even offering him a copy of the New Testament.
“When he took the Bible — a knife still in his other hand — he was immediately paralyzed,” Silva said, adding that the man, visibly shaken by the experience, told him he was impressed to find God.
Sleeping Under Bridges
Silva believes God also protected him from the elements during his journey — temperatures ranged from below zero to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Once, a hailstorm d
estroyed local crops and property, but Silva, equipped only with a tent, said he escaped unscathed. Another time, Silva, who was used to sleeping under bridges in damp conditions, found a dry mattress under a bridge. “I pitched my tent over that mattress, and it was just like a hotel room,” he said with a laugh.
As he biked through their countries, locals were curious, Silva said. “They asked me, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you leaving your family, your country?’ I always told them that Jesus is coming soon.”
A number of people decided to follow Jesus after hearing his testimony, he said.
Silva, who doesn’t speak English but plans to continue biking through the U.S. into Canada after his stop at Session, said he’s not worried about the language barrier. When he left Brazil, he spoke only Portuguese, but picked up Spanish along the way. “Very soon I will speak English,” he said.
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