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The Winter 2016 issue of Spectrum features articles about the World's Migrant Crisis. The issue explores biblical perspectives on the immigration debate, provides first-hand stories of migrants and the Adventist communities working to assimilate and care for refugees, and offers accounts from Serbia, Macedonia and the Middle East. To receive Spectrum quarterly, become a member of Adventist Forum by clicking here. In the following essay Tom de Bruin, writing from the Netherlands, reflects on how his family's experiences as refugees has shaped his understanding. -Ed

I'm from a family of refugees. My father fled cold, post-war Holland for the promise of a better future in South Africa. My grandmother’s family is descended from the Huguenots, who fled to Holland centuries ago. On my mother’s side we are Afrikaners. In the seventeenth century we fled from Holland to Cape Town, and later we fled from the British into the interior of Africa. I, myself, am an economic refugee. I fled to Holland with my parents when I was twelve, just a year after the fall of apartheid.

Obviously I’m exaggerating a bit about myself. I have had a Dutch passport since birth. While we didn’t flee the country fearing for our lives, we also couldn’t tell anyone we were going. My friends didn’t know I was leaving the country. We were almost stopped at the airport. Simply leaving the country was tricky back then.

 My own experiences as a refugee are wholly incomparable with those of the millions of refugees worldwide. But even for me, the impact of this move on my life was enormous. Packing your things, leaving your home, telling no one where you were going, and then building a new life in a strange land with strange customs. If this relatively civilized, intercontinental migration influenced me so much, how terrible must it be for the millions who have left everything behind, fleeing for their lives? I cannot imagine, and I don’t think anyone who has not experienced it can.

Shoes

It’s very hard to deal with experiences you cannot imagine. My mentor always reminded me that I needed to walk a mile in the other’s shoes. But how can you do that if the other doesn’t even have shoes? How can we be compassionate to people who experience the unimaginable? This lack of compassion is evident in the terrible reactions that we read and hear in media. Refugees are burglars breaking into our country. Refugees are an army that is occupying our territory. Refugees are only after our money and quality of life. Refugees are murderers and rapists. In Europe we see that refugee housing is being attacked: racist slurs on the walls, pig heads on the gates.

Question Marks

Many people think that these atrocities are just the voice of a populist minority. But government policy is not far behind. In Switzerland and Denmark, the government wants to take all valuables – especially money and jewels – from ‘their’ refugees. In parts of the United Kingdom refugees were forced to constantly wear red armbands. Comparisons to the Second World War are not at all hard to make.

These reactions do not occur in a vacuum. Refugees do lead to additional costs for governments, which is clearly frightening if you already have economic worries. Refugees come from different countries and cultures, which brings change – especially in monocultural communities. And, yes, there have been some terrible instances of social misconduct where refugees were involved.

All in all, dealing with the millions of refugees is quite a challenge. Even if you are totally committed to helping every single refugee, sociological issues remain. For example, how are we to deal with the intolerance towards women that flees together with the Syrian refugees?

We Own Our Country

The fundamental principle of the entire refugee crisis is that a group of people have ultimate say in an area. In my case, we have agreed that something called ‘the Dutch’ exists. ‘The Dutch’ are sovereign over a part of the world called ‘The Netherlands.’ People who, for one reason or another, are not part of ‘the Dutch’ can only settle in this area if they have permission. ‘The Dutch’ have agreed to take care of certain things in ‘the Netherlands’: democracy, freedom, safety, social equality and tolerance. People from outside the borders can be seen as a threat to these important values, and as dangerous for the area and its inhabitants. That’s why, some argue, we need to be careful that the stream of refugees does not undermine the core principles of ‘the Netherlands.’

The idea that a particular group of people are sovereign in a particular area is the fundamental assumption on which democracy is based. It is the foundation that nearly the entire world order is built on. But we Christians, as critics of the world, could bring some serious doubts about this idea to the table.

Travellers

In 2017, all the Youth Directors of the unions in Europe will organise a European Youth Conference. About four thousand young people will gather in Valencia, Spain for a week of worship and service. As you can imagine, it is a lot of work to organise such an event, so the preparations started last September. The first item of business: a theme. After a day of meetings, brainstorming, praying, and more meetings we had an idea: travellers.

Now this may not immediately sound like the most inspiring theme. But if you consider the topic for a bit longer, you will notice quite a bit of theological depth. As Christians we understand that we are travellers on this earth. We are guests here and we are responsible for taking care of the earth while we are on it. God owns the world, and he has given it to humankind to take care of – he has given it to all his children. This means that, as Christians, we should know that any other person, wherever they may come from, is a transient traveller just like us. Every traveller should have the same rights.

God’s Earth

If we all are travellers, what remains of our beloved democracy? What remains of the earthly kingdoms and powers? Are they fallacies; do they not exist? Should they not exist? These are tricky questions, with nuanced and complicated answers, but what remains is that God and the Spirit transcend these human concepts. The Dutch may believe in the Netherlands, but God transcends that. We may think we are sovereign on our own soil, but the Spirit reminds us that all the earth is God’s land.

For Christians it should be very easy. The earth is God’s, and we are honoured that we – all of us – can live here. Very rightly you could ask: Who are we to decide who can and cannot live somewhere?

Thousands of Refugees in the Bible

The Bible leaves no doubt about how to treat refugees. I think it has good reasons for this. There are thousands of refugees in the Bible. Count with me. Adam and Eve flee from Eden. Cain flees after his murderous crime. Noah flees the flood, Abraham and his family flee both into and from Egypt. Abraham’s family are all constant refugees: his nephew Lot flees out of Sodom, his son Ishmael flees into the desert, his other son Isaac flees to the land of the Philistines, his grandson Jacob flees from his twin Esau and later from his uncle Laban. Even later, Jacob and his family flee into Egypt, and years later Moses flees from Egypt twice. First alone, later with all the Israelites. Thousands of refugees – and this was just the first of sixty-six books in the Bible!

At first glance, then, it’s not hard to understand why God gives the Israelites so many very specific laws about refugees. The children of God are constant refugees before the giving of the law, so it seems wholly logical that God tells them: ‘When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God’ (Leviticus 19:33–34).

Yet it is profoundly intriguing that God gives this law to the Israelites. Surely the Israelites should know what it is to flee for your life and to have to live in strange land. Surely the Israelites should know what it is to be a second-class citizen. Surely the Israelites should know what it feels like to be a refugee and an alien. I would expect that the Israelites wouldn’t need this law.

Problems that Refugees Bring

Linked to this intriguing law is another intriguing fact. The Bible, no matter how often it talks of refugees, seems hardly interested in discussing the challenges that refugees bring to a society. I can’t imagine that the modern world is unique in having one or two caveats regarding immigrants and refugees. The Israelites must have had similar worries. The Bible does not address them.

The only thing that comes close to these worries in the Bible is the requirement that aliens keep the laws of the land. The Bible does not discuss the troubles associated with the different religion that will accompany the refugees. A word is not wasted on the dangers of changing morals and ethics. Economic pressure is not addressed, nor are the costs of providing food or housing for these new people. Quite the opposite, actually: the Israelites get scores of laws that ensure that refugees don’t starve and are taken care of (see, for example, Leviticus 19:9–10).

The Bible spares no words for the troubles that refugees could bring to the Israelites. The Bible only discusses how we should treat other children of God, who come from a different part of his world. And, sadly, even though you would hope that the Israelites, refugees themselves, would know how to treat others, God still needs to tell remind them to take care of the others among them.

You or the Other?

Now, it may appear strange that God still needs to tell the Israelites to treat immigrants properly. It appears as if it may be something inherently human to think of yourself first, and the other second. It appears as if the Israelites, now that they are no longer aliens, now that they have some sort of land of their own, have totally forgotten what it is to be a stranger in a strange land (Exodus 2:22). It appears as if the Israelites are treating the strangers in their land just as badly as the Egyptians treated them.

It should be no surprise that this discussion of you versus the other stays at the forefront of the biblical teachings. Jesus teaches, again and again, that we should treat the other as we would like to be treated ourselves. Jesus, who is always both a refugee and an alien: God in the body of a human, as a baby with no place to rest his head, and as a child fleeing from Herod. Jesus knows what it is to be a refugee.

The life and words of Jesus are the main focus of the book of Hebrews. This is where we can find what might be the most inspirational and beautiful text regarding aliens, immigrants, refugees, and hospitality. ‘Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it’ (Hebrews 13:1–2). Hebrews refers to the ancient stories of two refugees: Abraham and Lot. Abraham who welcomed strangers and heard he would have a child, strangers who turned out to be angels. Lot who received travelers and heard he should flee for his life, strangers who turned out to be angels. Both of these ancient refugees were hospitable to these angel-aliens. Not because they knew they were angels, but because they were the kind of people who are hospitable to aliens.

This may be the most inspiring thought to face the current challenges. Be kind to the strangers – who knows, they too might be angels.

Tom de Bruin is Director of Communications for the Netherlands Union Conference. This article first appeared in that union's official publication, Advent.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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On Saturday afternoon, March 12, the Loma Linda University School of Religion Humanities Program hosted an afternoon conversation titled "Does Adventism Inspire Young Adventists?" The event featured a panel of six thirty-somethings with varying ties to Adventist academia: Alexander Carpenter, former professor at Pacific Union College; Eric Carter, assistant professor at Loma Linda University; Janice De-Whyte, assistant professor at LLU; Trisha Famisaran, PhD candidate and former director of La Sierra University's Women's Resource Center; Yi Shen Ma, PhD candidate and Development Director for the Adventist Peace Fellowship; and Zane Yi, associate professor at LLU. The discussion featured papers from each of the panelists, followed by moderated cross-talk, and Q & A with audience members.

We present two of the presenters' papers in this edition of the Spectrum Roundtable, focusing on the question, "Does Adventism Inspire Young Adventists?"

Which Adventism?

About a week ago I posted the question this panel is addressing, “does Adventism inspire young Adventists,” on my Facebook page. I got about 40 comments—and given the quality of Facebook religio-political discussions these days—these mostly current students and recent graduates inspired me with their honesty. Here are four examples:

"I feel like any religion that says it holds a traditionalist point of view isn't going to mesh well with a generation that is literally being thrust into the future."

"I try to stay active in a community that I know wouldn't agree with half of what I believe or who I am."

"A religion that doesn't recognize the equality of women and all sexual orientations is a non starter for a majority of strong-minded, intelligent young people."

"Adventist values of wholeness, community, and rest inspire and sustain me. Adventist expressions of fear, bigotry, and isolation demoralize and anger me."

In a Spectrum essay entitled “Challenge,” Molleurus Couperus wrote:

A bewildered and disillusioned generation now gropes for answers that may still save mankind from both utter meaninglessness and doom. Everywhere there seems to be spurning of old patterns of thinking and embracing the new. The participation of the younger generation in this unprecedented passion for rejection of the old and quest of the new is particularly evident in the areas of authority, morals, and personal involvement. Confrontation with political, judicial, cultural, and religious traditions, thus, is unavoidable.”

That was written in 1969.

Today, we are not alone. And as any reader of Seeking a Sanctuary knows, we’ve come a long way. But as any reader of the Adventist Review sees, we have a very long way to go.

I prefer to avoid generational language when possible. Not only because age is only a number, but because an ideological framework can transcend the here and now, for better or worse. A man who grew up in that same aforementioned “bewildered and disillusioned 1960s generation” is now leading our Adventist church. Unfortunately, he has combined a timeless authoritarianism with a rear-facing theology that rejects the eternal need of “new visions and better answers.”

But there’s hope. It’s beyond the church. But not beyond Adventism.

In trying to answer the question for this panel, I’ve really appreciated what my co-panelists contributed and I’d like to add a perspective beyond the church, but grounded in our institutions. Can our Adventist institutions inspire us for a better future?

The church is not just the church. Adventism is more than the church—both global and local as import as both of those are. And Adventist is more than formal beliefs.  I’d like to briefly note two other Adventist religious institutions that actually broaden the definition of Adventist and inspire hope for a more diverse, bold, and inclusive Adventism: education and health care.

Let me offer an example. After six years working in a tight-knit Adventist educational community, I  moved to the Central Valley of California where my wife worked for Adventist Health. It was the largest employer in the county, in a very poor region where the local Adventist churches were very conservative and isolationist. Around town folks associated “Adventist” not with a church, but with health care and good employment. And the very popular farmers market. What really awoke me was when the hospital did a little media campaign in which employees would say in videos: I am Adventist Health, but sometimes they would shorten it to “I am Adventist.” Suddenly several thousand employees were identifying as Adventist and even articulating shared values of wholeness and compassion. Of course, the local pastor would not have called them Adventist. But they are part of our larger identity.

Adventists give about two billion dollars in tithe and another billion in offerings. That’s $3 billion each year going for what?

That’s a lot of global good being wasted via uninspiring leadership. When we could be harnessing our massive global footprint to inspire a worldwide transmission of values beyond cheap grace and clerical obedience.

This summer at the GC Session I interviewed the president of Babcock University, an Adventist institution of higher learning in Nigeria. It has over 10,000 students and many are not Adventist. The school mixes different classes and religious backgrounds. And to accommodate demand it even employees some Muslim professors. As the president stated:  it produces Adventists, maybe not baptised by graduation, but carrying Adventist identity and values into their professional lives. Given that Adventists established strong educational institutions early in organized countries that are early in their modern formation, our schools exist and shape leaders like the elite American institutions of our own post-colonial era.

There are more Adventists in the world than people in the Netherlands or Chile or Rwanda.

If we were a country, we would be in the top quarter—with more people than 180 other nations on earth.

If making the world better inspires, Adventism’s global institutions provide reason for hope.

When the church around us appears uninspired, it’s important to remember that it’s not the only game in town. Our schools and hospitals are Adventist and they model a part of Adventism “spurning of old patterns of thinking and embracing the new.” As Randy Roberts says: you can’t stop the dawn.

The light of the World breaks in. And we become enlightened. Even inspired by that worldly Light.

In his Theology of Hope, Jurgen Moltmann reflects on the meaning of the resurrection and says: “Christ is our future.” Not our past, or even present. But our future. The coming of the resurrected Christ is before us. To be Adventist is to inspired by that coming spiritual reality, the spirit of Jesus lived out in time and space. Even when Jesus was less than inspired by the religious leaders of his day, he critically and compassionately engaged their clerical, educational and even health care systems. Like past Adventist generations and the re-formation example of Jesus—change came to institutions when we bring the inspiration.

What would happen if we broaden the meaning of Adventism—and let the light of the world break in. Power might be threatened. But the Advent of inspiration is always, ready to return. 

Alexander Carpenter is a member of the Adventist Forum Board and the creator of the Spectrum Blog.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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On Saturday afternoon, March 12, the Loma Linda University School of Religion Humanities Program hosted an afternoon conversation titled "Does Adventism Inspire Young Adventists?" The event featured a panel of six thirty-somethings with varying ties to Adventist academia: Alexander Carpenter, former professor at Pacific Union College; Eric Carter, assistant professor at Loma Linda University; Janice De-Whyte, assistant professor at LLU; Trisha Famisaran, PhD candidate and former director of La Sierra University's Women's Resource Center; Yi Shen Ma, PhD candidate and Development Director for the Adventist Peace Fellowship; and Zane Yi, associate professor at LLU. The discussion featured papers from each of the panelists, followed by moderated cross-talk, and Q & A with audience members.

We present two of the presenters' papers in this edition of the Spectrum Roundtable, focusing on the question, "Does Adventism Inspire Young Adventists?"

The Promise of Adventism

As other panelists have already noted, it is important to resist confining the identity and meaning of Adventism to a narrow set of beliefs. There is much to be gained by broadening our understanding of the multiple purposes and functions of the church. To do so, we should consider the different dimensions of religion. As we talk about the promise of Adventism, are we attending to the question of religion as a phenomenon, the institutions operating under the umbrella of the church, or the denomination’s theologies and practices? While we cannot entirely separate these elements, because they inform each other, it is important to talk about them as distinct dynamics or processes. Individuals are attached in varying degrees to the practices, beliefs, institutions, church identity, and social connections. For this reason, we ought not to minimize how meaningful it can be for a person to continue interacting with the church even after moving beyond it intellectually or theologically. Moving beyond the church in some ways does not mean the person has moved on or should move on in all ways.

Our central question is whether Adventism still inspires young people. It has promise insofar as it allows people to sit with doubt and insofar as it resists the illusion of homogeneity, in other words, to resist the impulse to have the body of church members conform to a narrow Adventist identity—to uniformity. Of course, a response to this appeal to inclusion and diversity would rightly be, "What, then, is the tie that binds?"

I would urge that there is not one formula that determines what constitutes an Adventist person or Adventist thought and theology. Is it conceivable for a person to remain a Seventh-day Adventist if she has settled her doubts and landed well outside the theological bounds of the church? The boundary lines aren’t absolute and depend on the priorities of those drawing the line. What if she is beyond or over theism? Is that a cause to forego drawing a line and build a wall instead? If so, the church will discover that many who deeply care about their religious home are suddenly on the wrong side of the wall. This is a painful place to be as the adoption of new ideas and beliefs is not in itself turning against the church. I frequently hear the language of a person having lost her faith but rarely hear the same shift described as a gain or a turn prompted by malevolence. I am not speaking of those who break ties with the church after years of hurt and frustration. This is a different kind of shift. I am speaking of those whose ideas shift because they value and practice critical thinking and have a wide view of the world.

I think doubt, even disbelief, is prevalent within the body of the church, albeit primarily in an asymptomatic state. There are significant reasons why the actual extent of it is not obvious. Disclosing one’s epistemic condition of doubt opens her to being viewed with suspicion, in the least, or, at most, being ostracized by friends and family. Of course, there are also professional and financial risks when the Seventh-day Adventist church and its numerous educational and medical institutions are the place of employment for the person on the margins. The threat of losing employment due to “going public” about one’s doubt or disbelief is more or less actual depending on the capacity in which the person is employed within a church institution. But I do not think we should underestimate how much this dynamic affects the ability of church members to grapple with the various ideas they have and seek a sounding board to sort through them.

Many doubters, agnostics, and post-theists, however, need the church in order to continue ministering and being ministered to. This idea is probably counterintuitive upon first glance. However, when there is an openness to these conversations instead of immediate judgment, it minimizes the number of people whose doubts and questions morph into guilt and those who walk away never resolving their difficult breakup with the church. This is because the church is more than a set of fundamental beliefs. Religions remain and will always be with us as a response to the human condition—to existential angst and the question of meaning.

As for myself, I am agnostic about belief in God, which emerges from my views on language and the limits of knowledge. I consider myself post-theist to the traditional concept of God. This is an entirely different way of thinking about value and of what the meaning of life is. I am comfortable with the idea that this one life is the full measure of my existence in the universe. I am certainly not an empty nihilist even if, like Camus, I occasionally find myself judging the situation as absurd. The moments of satisfaction, happiness, peace, and love are full of meaning, even though intermittent when interrupted by anxiety. Religion is one response to the situation and will continue to carry humans up and onward for the foreseeable future, just as it has for millennia.

I have an enormous amount of sympathy and understanding for the religious life. There is much to be gained from keeping one foot inside of the community, and I still have much to give back. I think it is entirely possible to separate the question of the promise of the Adventist community from the promise of Adventist theology, and then admit that the two exist in a dialectical relationship. I am a happier and healthier person because I do not live a double life, which is what it felt like when I kept my ideas on the inside and attempted to be a “good” Adventist on the outside. If a person cannot be intellectually honest without seeking a divorce from the church, then the promise of Adventism is in serious trouble.

Trisha Famisaran is a PhD candidate in Religion/Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Chris Blake, associate professor of English and Communication at Union College, is chair of Lincoln's Interfaith Peacemaking Coalition. He spoke to Spectrum about the Coalition's big event last Sunday, which attracted lots of local news coverage, featured the city's mayor, and even boasted a long-distance message from the Dalai Lama. 

Question: Last Sunday, the Interfaith Peacemaking Coalition celebrated its 30th anniversary by hosting an event for all city residents, inviting them to contribute to a campaign for 10,000 Acts of Peace. How did the event go? Who was there? What was the atmosphere like?

Answer: Drenched in warm sunshine, hundreds of people celebrated peacefully in a musical, festive atmosphere. They listened to music by the Kokyo Taiko Drummers, Union College Octet, Kusi Taki (Andean), and Star City Kochavim (Jewish). Ringing the event stood 18 tables of community organizations (including the Adventist Church’s Good Neighbor Community Center) that do peacemaking all year long. Mayor Chris Beutler read a Lincoln proclamation about a “City of Peace Week.” As former Lincoln mayor Coleen Seng wrote to me afterward, “What a great event! And the people just kept coming!”

Lincoln's 10,000 Acts of Peace campaign is part of a larger project: the One Billion Acts of Peace project supported by 13 Nobel Laureates. The city of Lincoln is the first city in the US to sign up to contribute as a community. Is Lincoln a particularly un-peaceful place? What is an "Act of Peace" anyway?

This world itself is a particularly un-peaceful place, and we are all residents. The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates spent two years coming up with 10 areas of peacemaking focus:

* Education and community development

* Protecting the environment

* Alleviating extreme poverty

* Global health and wellness

* Non-proliferation and disarmament

* Human rights for all

* Ending racism and hate

* Advancing women and children

* Clean water for everyone

* Conflict resolution

PeaceJam co-founder Ivan Suvanjieff said, “When you see something wrong, and you try to discover the root cause of the problem, and then create a plan to tackle the root of the problem, either alone or with others who also care—that is an Act of Peace.” Keynote speaker Dawn Engle, co-founder of One Billion Acts of Peace, called Lincoln’s 10,000 Acts of Peace “bodaciously ambitious.” She noted, “Governments are paralyzed and polarized, “ and that if everyday, ordinary people become difference makers, “maybe our leaders will follow us.” We are a grassroots movement to make the world a better place, beginning in our own back yard.

What are some innovative Acts of Peace you have come across?

My wife, Yolanda, together with fellow second-grade teachers at Beattie Elementary, led their 66 students in studying the courage of Ruby Bridges, one child who led the way in U.S. racial integration. Church members purchased livestock through Heifer International. Our Union College Conflict and Peacemaking class conducted a Peace Camp for inner city children. Martha, a Methodist friend (in picture above with arms raised), invited a Muslim neighbor to coffee. The world is healed one person at a time. Thousands of examples can be seen at lincolnpeacemakers.com.

Are there other ways the students and faculty of Union College have been involved in this campaign?

The Lincoln Peacemakers website and Facebook page were developed as a project by Union College students Misha Darcy, Aria Bodden, and Helen Maijub for their Public Relations Principles class taught by professor Pat Maxwell. Social media outreach was coordinated by recent UC graduates Harry Smith and Misha Darcy. Union grad Justin Gibson created the Lincoln Peacemakers brand. At Sunday's event, Union College students from Conflict and Peacemaking class and the Amnesty/Tiny Hands International Club set up, handed out programs as greeters, and cleaned up afterward. The Union College Octet, directed by Dr. Ricky Little, provided sublime music. Dozens of Union College faculty and staff attended and supported in various ways. So yes, Union College represented.

Jesus said: "Blessed are the peacemakers." But why is peacemaking important?

What’s the alternative? Violence? Hatred? Peacemaking is a new earth value, one that will stand forever. Peace is also proactive: It’s more than the absence of hatred and violence, just as light is more than the absence of darkness. The four pillars of peacemaking are dialogue, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Peacemaking is fundamentally about action. The difference between a peace lover and a peacemaker is the difference between loving money and making money—we have to work at it. It isn’t all doves and rainbows.

Peacemaking is more than kindness. Sometimes peacemakers have to take and stand and say, “No more.” Sometimes peacemakers have to be visionary and say, “What if . . .?” That goes beyond kindness.

You are chair of the Interfaith Peacemaking Coalition. How long have you been involved? How long had you been planning Sunday's event? I understand you had a message from the Dalai Lama? 

Our Coalition, with which I’ve been involved for five years, planned this event for a year. Yes, the Dalai Lama spoke to us. (No biggie, obviously.) In addition, Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for her work in eradicating landmines globally, talked to us via Skype on the giant Cube screen. Our event was well publicized beforehand, as shown in this local news article.

To learn even more, people can connect to Lincoln Peacemakers on Facebook.

Has the Interfaith Peacemaking Coalition organized anything similar previously?

We have sponsored such speakers as Jim Wallis, Jane Goodall, and Shane Claiborne. One year ago, the Coalition organized its event around the theme of economic discrimination. Keynote speaker Leonard Pitts, Jr., a Pulitzer Prize columnist, spoke to more than 1,000 people on “Eating (Jim) Crow.” Afterward we held five practical workshops to empower economic justice, hope, and healing in our community. The goal of the workshops is to inspire and inform practical application.

This is the first year we have held our event outdoors. We may do it again, although I did say a prayer of thanks for the good weather (84 degrees Fahrenheit) on April 3 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Five days earlier we had snow. Whatever the weather, we were determined to make peace with it, naturally.

^{Chris Blake speaking at the event.}

^{All photos courtesy Steve Nazario.}

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Grant Perdew, whose film won at the SONscreen Film Festival this year, talks about the inspiration of Wes Anderson, the power of film to change the world and the amazing opportunities at Walla Walla University.

Question: Your film, The Exquisite Outdoors, won the Best in Festival and Best Dramatic Short awards at the recent SONscreen Film Festival, held this year just outside Washington, DC. Were you surprised?

Answer: I was surprised to hear of the success of the film. We had definitely targeted the film to our [Walla Walla University] student body specially. There are a lot of inside jokes that may only be understood by those in our university community.

What do you think gave your 10-minute film the edge?

I think the attention to detail really gave the film its edge. All of us who worked on the film donated our time and energy to make sure the film was exactly how we wanted it to be. It was the result of several people with varying strengths coming together with a shared vision to create something “exquisite.”                             

I watched the film and enjoyed it very much – but I would have a hard time describing it. What do you say to people who ask what the film is about? Does the film have a message?

I can’t honestly say the film has a deeper meaning behind it. I usually tell people it is about two quirky students who decide to venture into nature and discover all sorts of things. The film is driven more by the aesthetics than the narrative – there was a feel to the film that we tried to pull off with intentional color palette, sets, costumes, and style of action.

You have said it was "inspired by Wes Anderson." Certainly the film is quirky, colorful, stylized and the actors are awkward – these are all elements I would credit to a Wes Anderson film. In what ways would you say it paid homage to Anderson?

Wes Anderson’s films are amazing because his films are so incredibly intentional – every shot is intricately planned to the tiniest detail. We tried to capture that with the visuals, but also with the music, quirky characters, dry dialogue, and the sort of nonchalant way characters respond to the action that takes place around them.

You were the film's producer and co-director – was The Exquisite Outdoors your idea? How much of a collaboration was it?

The film started as the brainchild of cinematographer Erik Edstrom (who won Best in Festival at SONscreen last year) and myself. We always wanted to shoot something in the unique style of Wes Anderson, and working with ASWWU Video at the university was the perfect opportunity.

More students came on board and donated their time – Jacob Patterson wrote the screenplay and Eric Weber dove into creating the world as costume and set designer.

As ASWWU Video Creative Director, I made sure the project actually happened, and because of my original interest in the project, was able to take on an assortment of tasks. Apart from co-directing, I really enjoyed recording and mixing the original score with the help of some talented student musicians: Joel Willard and Nate Stratte.

ASWWU? What is that?

It stands for Associated Students of Walla Walla, and ASWWU Video as it is today, came to be a few years ago, when several student filmmakers realized they could empower the students and really capture WWU as an amazing place to be. ASWWU Video is really by the students, for the students and is intended to promote WWU as an amazing place. The success of the music video WWU – Can’t Hold Us really kicked off that “culture to be proud of” back in 2013.

Walla Walla University provided several amazing opportunities during my time there. I was first the Editor-in-Chief of The Collegian, then I became the Head Creative Director of ASWWU Video, where I led a team of eight students to produce a short film each week.

Most of the students involved in ASWWU Video aren’t actually film majors. None of the ASWWU Video Heads have been film majors – just students who enjoyed film and spent a lot of time perfecting their skills. Though I had plenty of communications classes, I only took a few film classes at WWU. I chose the major I did because I knew I’d want to continue film as a hobby, regardless of what I studied.

Are there groups like ASWWU on other campuses?

I was able to attend the annual Adventist Intercollegiate Association gathering a few years ago as outgoing Collegian Editor-in-Chief and I learned that there is no department like ASWWU Video or even a student association with the size and passion as ASWWU. At WWU, ASWWU is a culture. Student want to get involved; they see the value, the opportunities, and the potential to create amazing things together.

How long did it take to write, shoot and edit The Exquisite Outdoors? When was it made?

Jacob wrote the script over spring break 2015 and we conceptualized, storyboarded, shot, and edited the film in 10 weeks, just in time for an end-of-year release.

How did the film come to be entered in the SONscreen festival? Have you won awards at SONscreen before?

This is my first win for SONscreen, though not the first for Erik Edstrom, the cinematographer and lead editor. Last year, his film The Way won Best in Festival and Best Dramatic Short.

We decided to enter The Exquisite Outdoors after its success on our own campus and the encouragement of the WWU Film Department. We had never intended to enter the film for awards when we created it.  

You graduated from Walla Walla University last year with a degree in international communication and marketing. What are you doing now?

After a summer creating videos for the marketing department at Loma Linda University, I am now back in Walla Walla working for CMBell Company, a Communications/Marketing agency as the Lead Video Producer. I help produce a variety of short films, from whiteboard animations to internal communications for Adventist Health corporate.

When I’m not working, I’m exploring new film/animation techniques to implement in upcoming projects, both for work and for fun/freelance.

What is your favorite film of all time?

That is an incredibly difficult question, but a few of my all time favorites would include Her, Interstellar, and The Darjeeling Limited. All of them have gorgeous cinematography and a strong emotional core driving the story.

What drew you to work in film?

I’ve  always loved film, but never really thought I’d be able to find work in it. Thanks to the internet and a vast pool of learning resources, I’ve taught myself a lot of editing, special effects, and animation techniques I’ve been able to use to get real work and a good agency job doing exactly that.

Do you have a film project you are working on now? What is your ultimate goal in filmmaking?

I’d love to continue more narrative projects and find more opportunities in larger scale film productions, with talented filmmakers to learn from.

Only brainstorming now: I’ve begun very early collaboration again with Erik Edstrom on a dramatic science-fiction short, but no solid details in sight yet. Right now, I’m spending a lot of time learning useful effects, animation techniques, 3D modeling, and color grading skills that I can use on the next big project I tackle.

There are plenty of miniature projects I’m working on outside of work, but the agency projects take most of the time at the moment.

Do you feel that the Adventist church appreciates film and filmmakers? Does the church make use of the medium? Do you have ideas about how film could be used in the church?

Film is the best medium to effectively convey messages and inspire people to change the world.

I think the best films are the ones that aren’t blatantly religious. I think you can make a huge difference with just a compelling story.

The Adventist church could learn and better understand that with an inspiring project secular filmmakers can make just as much, if not more, impact than expressly religious filmmakers.

How does winning at SONscreen benefit you and your career?

I was incredibly honored to win at SONscreen. It gives me motivation to keep making films after receiving such positive affirmation. I’m incredibly inspired by the potential of film and I hope that I can help create things in the future that have a positive impact on those who view it. I hope we’ve helped inspire other potential storytellers to not give up and keep finding the most effective ways to convey their stories.

What opportunities are there for Adventist filmmakers?

We live in an age where the resources to create incredible films are at our fingertips. It’s not about the equipment you have or the budget. It’s about the story and the hard work and the passion that goes into it.

The Exquisite Outdoors cost us about $15 to make because everyone donated their time and energy to see it through. Adventist and non-Adventist filmmakers shouldn’t be discouraged by a lack of resources of equipment –– find your story, and shoot it on an iPhone if necessary.

We live in an ideal age for spreading information. We have the power to make significant change in our world.

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As I was growing up Adventist, several verses became the watchword repeated by various preachers that explained what life was all about: "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." (Ps. 37:25, NIV). Another key verse was: "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them." (Ps. 34:7, NIV). Then, there was the verse, "And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:19, NIV). These verses (and many others) were used to provide comfort and the certainty that God will provide food, safety and our real, as opposed to only desired, needs. Later sermons introduced from Jeremiah 1:4-5 the idea that all are born with a purpose.

The idea of the purpose driven life was succinctly summarized by Rick Warren in his 2002 book, The Purpose Driven Life, when he declares, "Because God made you for a reason, he also decided when you would be born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death" (pg. 23). Many an Adventist church set aside 40 days to review and discuss Warren's book in an effort to determine their purposes in life.

Living in Southern California can provide an idyllic environment and narrow variance in most metrics that permit assigning to God one's status in life. There is a different reality in war-ravaged sections of the world where life expectancy is less than 50 years, where hunger is a constant companion and where the brutality of rape leads to unplanned and unwanted children. Is this what is meant by God deciding when we would be born, how long we will live and what our destiny becomes? What are we to make of the concept that every birth is planned for God's purpose?

The narrative of an omniscient God who micro-manages our lives, who protects us from harm (most of the time) and ensures that we do not go without need fits very well into the idea of being a "peculiar" people. A protected people, who avoid many of the catastrophes of life because of that special relationship. With prayer, the odds of a good outcome in matters of health, accidents or even marriage are shifted toward the Christian, especially the Adventist Christian. When suffering does occur, there is the pivot toward God's role in that suffering, either though His acquiescence to that suffering or by extraordinary intervention, to relieve that suffering. At the very least, so the narrative continues, suffering is justified and explained because God permitted the suffering of His Son.

An understanding of what happens to us typically centers on what God knows or does. It is not about us. The idea of God's role in suffering, theodicy, has engendered theological arguments through the centuries to explain what it means. Subsumed under theodicy is the matter of our status in life, the issue of God's micro-management of the individual and what we should make of all this. For many, it is believed that God in His divine will is the only factor that matters in what happens to us in life. Comfort to those who are suffering comes in the form of relating the suffering to the theodicy arguments on why suffering occurs: 1) God allows suffering for His honor, 2) as the result of evil in the world, 3) in order to help us grow spiritually, 4) in order to salvage someone else's salvation, 5) because of a cosmic dispute between God and Satan, 6) God's sovereign will, 7) to be grateful when the suffering ends; and for numerous other reasons.

Sermons are frequently laced with references to one of these reasons as a means of providing comfort. An oft repeated phrase to the low-income church where I was raised was "God keeps you poor to keep you humble." Conversely, when good fortune smiles, it was almost always attributed to God's favor on us. We were urged to be careful not to attribute such outcomes to anything other than divine intervention, lest we become "puffed up."

But suffering, like good outcomes, should incorporate these four factors: 1) individual Choice, 2) the randomness that we call Chance, 3)  the physical, social and economic Environment (and all that it entails), and 4) the spiritual realm that we identify as God. These factors operate in a manner that circumscribes how we suffer, what our status of life is at a moment and are contributory to how we respond to those circumstances. Inconvenient data show wide divergences across location, racial and gender lines in family life, health and wealth. These persistent differences are not consistent with a God who chooses my time of birth, my location and purpose in life, and the degree that I should suffer.

Instead, what we observe is the working out of Choice, Chance, Environment and God. While we believe that in the overarching scheme of things, God's will is sovereign and His ultimate purpose will prevail, in the micro world in which we live these four factors can define where we are and who we become. On one level, our choices and even the working out of God's will are constrained by environment and random factors over which we have little or no control. Indeed, God does not micro-manage our lives.

An overreliance on "God alone" subjects us to reject the reality of an existence where we make choices that affect where we are, that random forces can cause suffering in ways that are not predictable on the basis of our spirituality; and the physical, cultural and time environment can profoundly impact our lives. On the other hand, an overreliance on Choice, Chance and Environment, does not allow for God's intervening to alter the trajectory of our lives.

How does this affect how we pray or what we are to make of sermons that seem to defy the surrounding reality? To what degree should we pray that God would overcome the circumstances that confine us? As we lay dying from disease, are we to recognize the potential for miraculous healing and pray accordingly? In a winter storm, will only the righteous be saved, or will they have greater odds of survival because of the spiritual emphasis?

Suffering on the micro level is not something that we embrace, nor should it be confined to abstract theories on why or how God is intervening in the world. Choice, Chance and Environment do matter in why we prosper or suffer and even how we respond. God enters the equation as another, but not the exclusive explanation of why that suffering or good fortune occurs.

Henry E. Felder, PhD, is a retired economist and Adventist Forum Board, which publishes Spectrum.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Welcome to Spectrum’s new weekly podcast created and hosted by Alexander Carpenter. The main interview is with Jason Hines, Ph.D., on the Adventist connections in Prince’s music he researched while helping MSNBC host Touré with his book: I Would Die 4 U. ​

It also features shorts chats with Jared Wright on the website, Stephanie Ward on the proposed changes to the Seventh-day Adventist corporate logo, and Bonnie Dwyer on the current journal.

Featuring outro music by Kerry Chambers. Album: Somnium, Track: Metamorphei

Audio: 

Spectrum Adventism Podcast 1 Prince.mp3

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Shasta Nelson, Adventist-pastor-turned-relationship-expert, talks about her new book Frientimacy, her national friendship business and the importance of close relationships.

Question: You have a new book out called Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness. Who should read this book? Why is this topic important? Don't most of us know how to have friendships already?

Answer: Unfortunately, most of us haven’t had amazing education or impressive modeling in how to build healthy friendships.  We all too often believe it has more to do with discovering the right friend, rather than in understanding how to develop the right friendship.

I wrote this book primarily for women because about 75% of us are reporting dissatisfaction with our friendships. (Although I have a huge heart for men too who desperately need more intimate friendships and who have even less modeling, permission, and practice at developing deeper friendships.) The truth is that far too many of us don’t have deep, familiar, and meaningful friendships that leave us feeling supported. We are more networked than ever and yet don’t feel like we have a support net underneath us; we know more people and yet feel less known; and we don’t feel like we have enough time to develop the intimacy we know matters.

To ignore our hunger for more connection leaves many of us harming not only our happiness, but also our health.  In fact, there may be no more important factor in determining our future health than how we answer the question “How loved or supported do I feel?”  To feel disconnected is more damaging to our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, twice as harmful as being obese, and leaves the equivalent damage on our bodies as being a lifelong alcoholic.

This book follows your 2013 book Friendships Don't Just Happen!: The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends. I see that it has 4.5 stars on Amazon. Have you been pleased with your first book's success? What made you decide to write it?

It means so much to me that my work has resonated with so many people.  In my first book about how to make friends as an adult, I explained the five types of friends and helped break down the steps to developing new friendships.  Research shows that we are replacing half of our close friends every seven years, so all of us — throughout our lives — will want to become very practiced at making new friends.  In other words, two or three of the people we confide in the most right now probably weren’t the same people we felt closest to seven years ago; and me might not even have yet met who we’ll feel close to seven years from now.  I wanted readers to realize that there is an ebb-and-flow to our friendships and a tremendous amount of life changes (i.e. moves, job changes, marriages, divorce, kids, empty-nest, retirement) that all impact our friendships. I wrote my first book to help people understand the different types of friendships and how to establish healthy expectations along the way.

But as I’ve been teaching that work, I realized that for many of us the loneliness we feel isn’t because we don’t have enough friends, but because we haven’t gone deep enough with a few.  So this second book is about how to develop greater frientimacy — or friendship intimacy — with the people we already know.

Both of your books follow your real-life, online to in-person social networking groups GirlFriendCircles.com, which you launched in 2008. How does GirlFriendCircles.com work?

GirlFriendCircles.com is an online community for women who value friendships — kind of like a Match.com for female friends. We love nothing better than being able to introduce women to new friends across the United States and Canada in their local areas.  The wonderful thing about meeting someone online in this way is that we’re meeting other women who we know care about creating intentional and healthy friendships with other women.  Women join and attend local events to meet other women offline.

We also offer weekend retreats, TravelCircles abroad, learning classes, and training programs. 

Everything we offer is the for the purpose of creating healthier relationships.

You are now known as a friendship expert, have appeared on Katie Couric and the Today show, and have been quoted by numerous newspapers and magazines on the topic. You also are a sought-after speaker at events. Would you say you took this role intentionally? Is "friendship expert" the career you saw for yourself as a child?

Haha!  Perhaps had there been a degree in it I would have been drawn to it, but unfortunately the tragic truth is that most of us never even take a single class on the subject. This has had to be a self-motivated and self-taught area of passion.

But I will say that now I can look back on my life and say that without a doubt I have always been passionate about developing meaningful relationships and inspiring people to be their healthiest. To that point, I believe we do our most significant growth in our relationships.  All the sermons and self-help books in the world can only go so far to inspire us. Our real relationships with others are the gyms of our personal growth where we actually work the muscles of forgiveness, compassion, boundary setting, and honesty.  And our spiritual growth is tied to our relationship health.

In that way this role was very intentional — I knew as a healer and teacher that I had to help people heal their relationships with others, too. 

What do you think is the most important advice people need to know about making and keeping friendships?

In my newest book Frientimacy, I teach the three requirements of healthy friendships: positivity, consistency, and vulnerability.  The unfortunate truth is that most of us can’t even define what a friendship is — we tend to just assume it’s people we like, or we name qualities we prefer in people, or use really ambiguous language such as “someone who is always there for me.”  But those phrases don’t capture a working definition that informs us how to start a friendship, develop one, repair one, or identify if we even have one. 

The truth is that a friendship is "a satisfying relationship between two people that is safe and where both people feel seen." In my book I help unpack what that means and how we can assess every friendship in our lives and know what action to take to deepen friendships when we want.
A friendship has more to do with how much we practice the three behaviors of friendship with someone than how much we like someone.  We all have met people we like who we never became friends with, and the reverse is just as true: we have developed friendships with people we wouldn’t have initially guessed were people we’d one day feel close to. 

How does your background as an Adventist pastor impact your current role?

When I first started GirlFriendCircles.com it couldn’t have felt more different from pastoring. But after some time, I actually realized I was doing much of the same work: helping people become more loving and whole.  I used to do that in a church setting through facilitating small groups, counseling couples and individuals, and writing and delivering life-growing sermons. Now the work is done beyond the walls of a church but I’m still writing, teaching, speaking, leading small groups, planning retreats and events, and helping coach people to develop their areas of growth.  It’s miraculous to see how little has changed — I still have the same gifts, passion, and calling, even though everything looks completely different!

I credit my upbringing in church to showing me the power of community and gifting me with some of my bestest friends.  I’ve never doubted that we are at our best — or most like God — when we are in a relationship.  The Bible is filled with an emphasis on relationships and love and forgiveness and I couldn’t be doing the work I am today without having that ingrained in me all those years.

Other practices from my religious background that I still talk about regularly are things like the health message and the Sabbath. Part of what helps Adventists live longer compared to the general population is undoubtedly tied to the relationships of being in a tight-knit community.  Research is showing more and more, in fact, that more important to our longevity than adopting healthy behaviors, even, is whether we feel supported.  Adventists understand how holistic we are and that the human DNA is to be in relationship. Churches give that gift to so many, for which I am so grateful.  And the Sabbath is increasingly important in a world where the number one obstacle to close friendships is lack of time.  The idea of a day that is meant to restore us and reconnect us with each other, with God, and with ourselves, can change the world.

What work do you still do with churches? How important is friendship to the work of churches? And how are churches doing, in your opinion, in helping people build healthy friendships?

Relationships are the foundation of nearly everything a church does whether it’s evangelism, discipleship, community service, or community building,  so my work is at the heart of what a church is called to do.  To that end, I’m often hired by churches or conferences to preach for church services, teach workshops (for women, for men, or co-ed), speak at a health or women’s event targeting the community, or speak for weekend retreats. If we can get our relationships right, pretty much everything else will build on that.

One of the mistakes I see frequently in churches is a similar mistake to what many of us do as individuals: prioritize impressing people over loving people.  I’m guilty of this myself — worrying more about appearing perfect or strong or right, instead of practicing one of the requirements of friendships: vulnerability. If the churches could learn how to share vulnerably in appropriate and healthy ways then they’d be more relatable (and less likely to be accused of being hypocrites) and a safer place for others to be real about their imperfections, too.  As part of being more Godly — or more loving — churches have unfortunately not always been seen as the safest places to come and grow.

Another problem in many of our churches is an imbalance in who gives and who receives.  We want to teach mutuality so that no one burns out, so that everyone grows by serving others, and so we can teach the oft-forgotten skill of learning to receive.  To let others give to us is one of the hardest life lessons to learn.

What most churches do so beautifully is give their attendees a sense of having a support net under them.  That is something that far too many people live without in this world.  I am inspired when I see people come together to care for, fundraise for, cook for, and love people through the transitions of their lives. So many people ache to belong to a group of people who really care and have their backs. 

And churches can be such a great place to connect to people in meaningful ways because one of the requirements of friendship, consistency, can happen somewhat automatically — people can see each other regularly without having to initiate, schedule, and plan that time together.  Plus, there are likely to be shared commonalities (i.e. backgrounds, interests, beliefs) to be discovered among the people who we’re meeting, so we are more likely to feel a bond.

I pray that churches across this country might be known as places to foster meaningful friendships while the people in them grow their emotional and spiritual health.

For more about Shasta see www.ShastaNelson.com

Buy Frientimacy and Friendships Don't Just Happen on Amazon.

To receive Shasta’s weekly advice on friendship and be notified of upcoming events, sign up at www.ShastasFriendshipBlog.com

Shasta Nelson graduated from Mile High Academy, earned a BA from La Sierra University, and received her M.Div from Andrews Theological Seminary, serving as a pastor in Washington and California, before launching her own business.

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Brian Lauritzen, 2006 graduate of Southern Adventist University, is a big name in broadcasting in Los Angeles. Here he talks about the power of radio to make connections, why he feels the Adventist church is perpetuating oppression, and what it was like to interview a spandex-wearing Placido Domingo.

Question: You are the producer and host of Classical KUSC's nationwide concert broadcasts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as KUSC's weekly arts magazine Arts Alive and the choral music program Soul Music. What is the best thing about working in radio?

Answer: Radio, more than any other medium, is about companionship. For me, that's what sets it apart and what makes it so rewarding. It's a mass medium, but one that is directed toward the audience as individuals. When I open the microphone, sure, I'm speaking to tens of thousands of people, but my goal is to sound like I'm speaking to one person: you. I love that I'm able to make personal connections with people I've never met through the music that I play on the air.

Question: You have interviewed top classical musicians and artists in your job, including Placido Domingo, Itzhak Perlman and Gustavo Dudamel. Who were you most nervous about meeting and interviewing? Who was the most fun? What makes a good radio interview?

The key to a great interview is to listen. That may sound obvious, but it's truly an art. The kinds of interviews that I do are with artists who are at the top of their field. So, there's no such thing for me as over-preparation. I have to know an artist's work intimately: who inspired them, who they inspired, their philosophies, and very importantly, what they despise as well. You can't fake knowing an artist's career. He or she will call you on it every time. I never go in with a list of questions, because that limits the freedom of conversation. I do keep a list of topics at hand, but I only use them as the basis for moving the conversation forward.

Probably the most apprehensive I've ever been going into an interview was a few years ago: my one and only interview with the late French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. He was one of my idols growing up and also had a reputation for being difficult. (He once interrupted a concert of music by Igor Stravinsky, leading a group of young composers banging hammers on the chairs of the auditorium, protesting the fact that Stravinsky's new music was too conservative.) Turns out, Boulez couldn't have been nicer. He gave me a thoughtful, engaging interview and it turned out to be an experience I will never forget.

Another favorite interview was one I did with Placido Domingo. He was singing in an opera where his character dies at the end of Act II, but he had to stick around during Act III so he could come on at the end and bow with the rest of the cast. So, during the third act, he had some time to kill. He listened to an audition or two and did an interview with me. It was a very modern production and he was still in costume, since he had to go out and bow later, so I have vivid memories of sitting in Domingo's office at LA Opera, interviewing perhaps the greatest tenor who has ever lived while he's wearing an electric blue mohawk wig and very tight spandex.

You got your start at Southern Adventist University's radio station WSMC. Did you feel your training there was first-rate? How well did it prepare you for your job in LA?

I will always cherish my time at WSMC. I'm forever grateful to Richard Hickam, who convinced me to come shadow a few of the hosts at the station and who hired me. There's something invaluable about learning by doing and WSMC gave me that experience.

Question: Did your classes in broadcast journalism teach you what you needed to know? Can you credit your success now back to your student days? Are there things you wish you had learned that you didn't?

My broadcast journalism classes certainly gave me a good springboard for my career, both in terms of knowledge and in helping me discover my passion for storytelling. Stephen Ruf, in particular, really helped awaken that passion in me. He demanded excellence and it really inspired me knowing that he had worked in the field professionally as well. I got many papers and projects back from him with tons of red ink all over them. Minimizing the red ink became a huge motivation to me.

All of the journalism professors were insistent that we do internship(s) during our student days. I'm very grateful for that insistence, which drove me to apply for and have the opportunity to intern at NPR in Washington, D.C. That is where I ultimately realized I wanted a career in radio.

You grew up playing the cello, I believe. Do you still play? How does your background as a musician help you in your job?

My musical background is an integral component of my job. Classical music is a language and growing up with it made me fluent. I can't imagine doing what I do without a lifetime background in classical music. While I'm more of a "lapsed cellist" these days and don't really play anymore, I don't imagine I'll ever leave classical music behind.

How did you get your job at KUSC?

Not only did my internship at NPR confirm to me that I wanted a career in radio, it also opened professional networking doors. The people who I worked with at NPR put me in contact with the woman at KUSC who ultimately hired me. I sent her a demo of my work and she called me in for an interview.

Are you ever recognized around LA by people you don't know?

Not often, because I don't think a lot of listeners know what I look like. However, my wife and I were standing in line at IKEA once, talking about an LA Philharmonic concert we had been to recently, and the guy in line in front of us turned around and said, "Are you Brian Lauritzen?" He recognized my voice. . . .and the subject matter of our conversation.

Do you have other projects you are pursuing, as well as your day job?

I do a fair amount of public speaking about music: pre-concert talks, hosting public Q&As, etc. Two projects I'm most proud of: 1) I host a concert series at the LA Philharmonic called Inside the Music, which includes a video series tied to each concert. 2) I'm the Resident Host for a chamber music organization called the Salastina Music Society. We present concerts where, in the first half, I deconstruct a certain piece of music that has been deemed a "masterpiece," basically answering the question "Why is this a masterpiece?" Then, in the second half of the concert, the musicians perform that piece. It has proven to be a very popular concert format that really helps connect audiences to the music. I also produce podcasts for various arts organizations like LA Opera and the LA Chamber Orchestra.

What are your ultimate career goals?

My goal is to share the power and the joy of great art with as many people as possible. Through my work, I hope to show how that art connects to their lives, helps bring people together, and contributes to a well-functioning society.

Tell us a little bit about your family.

My wife, Brianne Slusarenko, is a physical therapist and co-owner of Body Synergy Physical Therapy in Pasadena and we have two rescue cats, Jacques and Fiona.

Do you consider yourself an Adventist still?

It's difficult for me to claim the label of "Adventist" given how the church currently treats women and LGBTQ individuals. Right now, official church policy is that women are less qualified to serve the church than men are simply because of who they are. Right now, official church policy is that, if you identify as LGBTQ, who you are is not acceptable in God's and the church's eyes and you must change. That is oppression. If I claim to be an Adventist, I am complicit in that oppression. Growing up in the church, I was taught that Jesus fought oppression and injustice every time he encountered it. As long as the church runs counter to His example, perpetuating oppression and injustice while marginalizing large groups of people, I question whether I can claim membership in that organization.

I'm grateful to have been raised in the Adventist church. I still agree with many of the church's fundamental beliefs. But in its insatiable quest for correct doctrine, the church has instead found dogma. The casualties of this are human. It makes me sad.

In 1924, a jazzman and Broadway composer named George Gershwin wrote a piece of music for piano and orchestra called Rhapsody in Blue. It was neither classical music, nor was it jazz. It was a hybrid style that lived in the liminal space between genres. It could have easily been dismissed as not fitting into either world: not jazzy enough for the clubs; not serious enough for Carnegie Hall. But instead, Rhapsody in Blue was embraced by both the jazz crowd and the classical music elites.

That's the kind of inclusion I wish the Adventist church would strive for. Rather than denouncing the music because it didn't "fit" the genre, the music served as a tool to open both jazz and classical audiences' ears to new sound worlds. To me, religion and spirituality is far too vast and wonderful of a mystery to allow a corporate entity to limit and exclude people from the process.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Welcome to The Adventist Podcast. This week's edition covers topics around the intersection of religion and politics. 

Featuring: sociologist Landon Schnabel on gender, sexuality, and religion and investigative journalist Sarah Posner on Ben Carson.

Music by: Coyote Bandits, The American Dream, “Song for the Revolution” 
 

Audio: 

Adventist Podcast 2.mp3

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On December 15, 2015, my husband Tom Kim was in a mountain bike accident that caused a dissected carotid artery and resulted in a massive stroke. As a result of the stroke he was left with deficit to his right side limbs as well as severe apraxia and aphasia, which has left him unable to communicate.

After being released from Loma Linda University Health’s Acute Rehab, Tom went to Casa Colina, and Neuro-IFRAH center for physical rehab and is currently finishing up a 6-week program at the University of Michigan Aphasia Program.

Before the accident, Tom was a successful endodontist who enjoyed serving others on mission trips and living life to the fullest. Tom, our 3 children and I are longtime members at Calimesa Seventh-day Adventist Church in California, where Tom was one of the worship leaders.

Michigan, Day 36 and 37

I have been missing Tom's voice more than words can say. I understand what it means when they say, "with every fiber of my being." I miss listening to him speak, sing, laugh...

I miss it so much that sometimes I'll call his cell phone and listen to his recording on his voicemail prompt. Frankly, I don't know how to cope with not being able to communicate with him. I'm having a hard time.

I wish Jesus was here to touch him.

He would have surely touched Tom and loosed his tongue as he did for the man who was deaf and couldn't talk. He would've placed his hand on Tom and healed his lame arm and strengthened his leg.
He would have said, "Go. You are made whole again." His touch would have been enough to accomplish all that.

This morning, as Tom and I gave each other a hug, I held him tightly. I held him tightly—as if the fervent touch, and all its urgency, could somehow bring about a miraculous cure.

I also wanted my touch to convey what my words cannot.

As we held each other, we tried to communicate to each other our hopes and desires.

I wanted to let him know that I love him.
I wanted him to know how much I miss him and for him to keep persevering to talk.
I wanted to share with him my pain because that's what we do—share.
I wanted him to feel whatever strength I had in me and draw from it, if he needed to.

And he wanted to console me.
He wanted to reassure me that it was going to be alright.
He wanted to protect me. But at the same time, he was unsure—so he was sharing with me his fear.

I'm sure it looked like anything BUT a Norman Rockwell painting—both of us in our pajamas with Tom sitting on a chair, and me, standing next to him, holding each other, while my tears fell on his head along with a silent prayer...

But what life is like a picture perfect painting?

I know that even though my life may have looked like one on the outside before Tom's accident, inside, there were many traces of a Picasso painting. I think every person's life painting is like that. There is always a worry, a concern, something that causes a tear or anger...

We are not perfect paintings, I remind myself. But God, our Master, who wants to create a beautiful picture in our lives is capable of perfection. With every brush stroke, every perfect color, with every perfect touch, He creates a masterpiece. He devotes all His time, energy, effort...all His being into us- because He loves us.

I want to erase and photoshop my life's pictures.

Reality is that I need to hand it to the Master.

With His touch, no matter what we may look on the outside, we will be a beautiful picture to behold. We will be a masterpiece.

He has made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
For we are His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10).

Images: Above, Tom and Caroline Kim with their three children on New Year's Day at Loma Linda University Medical Center's Acute Rehab facility. Below, Caroline and Tom after his discharge from acute rehab with custom made shirts.

Caroline Kim is a parent of three. The younger two, ages 13 and 14, she homeschools. Her oldest, after being homeschooled, just completed his first year at Southern Adventist University. Caroline’s meditations on Tom’s rehab are all at her blog, One Day’s Journey.

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In this exclusive interview with Spectrum, Don Jernigan, the man at the helm of the largest Protestant not-for-profit healthcare system in the United States, talks about his soon-to-be-published book, why Adventist Health System keeps expanding, the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, and the goal of showing “uncommon compassion” for every patient.

You have served as president and chief executive officer of Adventist Health System for almost exactly 10 years. What has been the best thing about your job so far?

During the time of my tenure as CEO, we have had some tremendous blessings, but without contradiction, the thing that has been most satisfying during this period is the growth, maturity and performance of our next generation of leaders.  Nothing is more important for someone in leadership than the development of their people, especially the next generation of leadership.  In this regard, we are truly in a blessed position.  I believe this next group of leaders will take the system far beyond where it is at this point.

What is the hardest thing?

I really don’t think about anything in my work as being hard.  I would say that the most challenging part of the work is to ensure that the cultural changes that we are embedding in our system take firm root and there is no rebounding to previous expectations or ways of thinking.   We are emphasizing that every part of our system, wherever located, must perform at a high level. This is crucial because we are on the verge of making a system-wide brand promise, and no one can be allowed to hurt the brand by not hitting high performance.  This would be the closest thing to something I would consider hard.

What takes up the largest percentage of your time in your job?

In terms of my time commitment, the area that would take up the most time would be standing meetings with people who are my direct reports.  Closely following this would be standing corporate meetings such as our quarterly board meetings and all the committees that meet before that board meeting.  There are also management committees that are a critical part of how we get our work done.

What do you believe sets Adventist Health System’s 45 hospitals apart from other hospitals in the US? What do you do, in your job, to set the vision for the hospitals and your 79,000 employees?

The thing that absolutely must set our hospitals apart from other community hospitals flows out of our mission “To Extend the Healing Ministry of Christ.”  Close to that mission statement would be our unique understanding of the makeup of humankind which leads us to promote and propose our CREATION Health philosophy as a means of helping people live a healthier life.

However, at the same time we must meet their medical needs, whatever they may be.  Our hospitals must meet the same expectations as many fine community hospitals concerning quality, safety, and patient experience.  But when it comes to that added dimension, I can say that part of it flows from programs such as CREATION Health.  

The acid test is how we treat each other and how we treat those who come to be served.   We have talked about, for example, whether our hospitals exhibit through each member of staff  “uncommon compassion,” or empathy and concern that goes beyond what patients would typically find in the world in general.  

Every individual employee must internalize what it means “To Extend the Healing Ministry of Christ” and our new mission peer review integration program is built around the importance of each employee understanding the question of why they do their work and whether that work meets that standard.  So, we must make sure that housekeepers, for example, understand the question of why their work contributes to the healing ministry of Christ and how important their work is in terms of patient experience — as well as controlling dangerous infections.  

This is truly a tall task and we must rely upon God’s blessing and presence to get it done.  Emphasizing this mission and doing everything we can to create the environment in which this type of behavior can flow is a never-ending task and one that will truly never be finished but it is what we strive for do every day.

You have written a book called The Hidden Power of Relentless Stewardship: Five Keys to Developing a World-Class Organization, to be published this July. Can you give us a preview? What are the five secrets? What made you want to write the book?

Those who worked with me to help produce the book would probably dispute the idea that I wanted to write this book, but that they were determined that I needed to do it and it was going to get done!

Now that we are through the process, I am very glad that it has been done because these principles do represent my working philosophy during my career. And I am very thankful that so many of the stories that I otherwise would not have remembered are now documented.  

The reason that stewardship was such a critical principle for me is it kept me from feeling that my work was schizophrenic; for example, sometimes I was talking about our mission and the high moral ground and another time I was just talking about the realities of producing a successful business from a financial perspective.  Stewardship integrated everything; leaders have influence and as good stewards they must use that influence to impact every aspect of an organization’s life, from mission to how leaders use and preserve resources under their control.  

The book and the stories in the book are intended to elucidate how stewardship should influence an organization’s statement of its mission or reason for existence; the values by which the organization will live that are recognized through behaviors of every staff member; the vision statement that assures you are pursuing the big ideas that will position the organization to not just cope with the business environment, but excel and prosper.  Stewardship extends to community responsibility, and the vision statement that we operate under is explicit about that community responsibility.  

Stewardship, understood properly, allows executives to make decisions (and especially those decisions that are controversial with competing stakeholders) based upon the mission and values of the organization — removing executives from making a decision about themselves and their own personal needs or influence.   This is liberating for leaders because people, over time, will recognize a consistency in decision-making and will come to understand that it is driven by mission and values and not personal agendas or ego.  

Finally the book challenges an executive to be a steward of his or her own personal influence and behavior, including how that person treats key associates, employees at large and the community.

Adventist hospitals seem to be announcing many significant expansion plans. Are these boom years for Adventist health? To what can you attribute the growth? Is this expansion just what it takes to stay competitive in today's healthcare market?

We have experienced a decade of significant growth in Adventist Health System and there are several reasons for that growth.  We experienced a growth, first of all, that goes back 15 years when both the Mid-America Union hospitals and the Lake Union hospitals decided to be a part of Adventist Health System.  That brought us a group of hospitals in the Chicago area, Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Kansas City, and five hospitals in the Denver market.   

Also, we experienced very significant growth in Florida due to hospitals and systems basically asking us to take them over.  We didn’t really purchase them, but assumed their liabilities and took all their assets and made some commitments about upgrading their facilities.  This process added approximately 10 hospitals to our Florida Division.  

In both of the above cases, it was the future stresses and challenges of the changing healthcare system in the United States that caused hospitals to question whether they could make it on their own because of the capital investments that were necessary to prepare for payment based upon quality outcomes.  

We have also had very substantial growth making additions to existing facilities; this has been driven primarily by demographic forces.   We are blessed by being in some markets that are growing extremely rapidly.  When population is growing significantly you have to meet the need, and that scale helps you be more competitive by lowering your overhead cost.   

In summary, the growth is due to both forces: the healthcare marketplace that caused others to seek us out, and expansion to meet the needs of rapid population growth.

As you say, healthcare in the US has changed significantly in recent decades. What do you see as trends in the near future?

Both in the near term and in the longer term, the changes in healthcare are forcing hospitals to take on financial risk for far more than just what happens between their four walls and during hospital stays.  In Florida we are rolling out, in a very measured way, what is called a Medicare Advantage Program, in which we take full capitation risk for a population of patients for a year’s time.  In that model, your concern for patients broadens to when they are not in the hospital, and if they require a hospital stay you have to be very concerned with how they recover after they are discharged.  Even if you do not take full capitation, the reimbursement that Medicare and other payers are moving toward puts you at financial risk for the post-discharge course of care for at least 30 days after the date of discharge.  This is what has come to be known as value-based purchasing or at-risk value-based care.  

In either case, those who pay for healthcare have basically decided to make the 5,000 United States hospitals responsible in a more global way for the health of their communities, which also brings some very rich opportunities for mission.

Is the Affordable Care Act good for the country’s citizens? Is it good for hospitals? I believe it has increased your revenues? What is your vision is for a more equitable, affordable American health system?

We supported the Affordable Care Act when it was being debated and remained supportive along the way even though there clearly are things about the Act that could be improved.  We supported it because we thought it was good for our communities and for patients.  The burden that we all had for caring for people who had no insurance was growing to the point where it was going to crush providers.  It also caused patients to seek care at the worst time and in the worst setting.  

If you really think through the financing of healthcare (and your goal is to make sure that most people are covered), there really are only two ways to go about it.  You either do something like the Affordable Care Act which keeps the private system in place and uses subsidies to make the market more affordable, or you go to a single-payer system[in which the state, rather than private insurers, pays for all healthcare costs].  I personally hope that the Affordable Care Act with future modification will work well because it seems to fit the values of the American public.  

I understand you were the initiator of the Adventist Health Policy Association, which works to inform members of congress as they create healthcare policies. What do you hope the Association can accomplish?

It is true that we felt the urge to reach out to the other healthcare organizations in North America and form something like the Adventist Health Policy Association.  We were all involved to some extent in advocating for good healthcare programs, working through both state legislators and the federal government.  There are real challenges under our 501(c)3 status about running afoul of federal regulations.  The legal structure under the Health Policy Association allows us to advocate for good policies and we don’t have to worry about doing something that would be considered inappropriate.   

Our hope is that, over time, the contributions of the Adventist Church through healthcare can be better known, and that our voice will be appreciated because we speak with integrity and advocate for policies that are good for patients and communities  — not based on our self-interest.

What makes your hospitals “Adventist”? How is the Adventist mission integrated into Adventist hospitals?

Going back for almost 25 years, we have been very intentional that our hospitals are fulfilling our mission of “Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ” and doing it in such a way that what we do reflects the most positive vision of the Adventist Church and its passion for health.  

We have a Mission Peer Review process that we have just recently upgraded into a Mission Integration Peer Review, whereby our hospitals are visited by a mission peer review team every other year. That team goes through a very detailed “inspection,” examining everything each hospital is doing to fulfill mission.  Every hospital  —  and specifically every CEO  —  must submit a mission plan for each coming year, and a portion of the accountabilities for the executive are based upon fulfilling that mission.  

We also have held an annual Mission Conference for about 25 years, where we bring in people from around our system and focus on a particular topic of mission fulfillment.  When it comes to the question of “What makes a hospital ‘Adventist’?” the obvious things we focus on are: 1) operating in a way consistent with the church’s desires around food, 2) the non-use of alcohol at all of our sponsored events, and 3) Sabbath policies that are appropriate.  This we do on a very consistent basis, but what is really important is how the people who come for care are treated, and whether somewhere in the process, if they are receptive, they are exposed to our CREATION Health principles to help them lead a more productive life.  

When a person comes into one of our facilities they must encounter “uncommon compassion” and until that happens, we are not fulfilling the mission of being an Adventist hospital.  Of course, this standard is so high that you will never be done working on trying to fulfill it.  It is the thing that calls us forward.

What is your vision for the strategic relationship between the Adventist Church and its health systems?  How do your plans for Adventist healthcare reflect the plans of the Adventist church?

One of my personal dreams that I have shared with our Board and our management team is that our hospitals would be known in the United States as well as someone would know the Mayo Clinic.  We are going through a process now of rebranding our system and identifying every part of our system as clearly Adventist. We are putting our identity front and center for all the world to see.  

It would be my hope that if we do this correctly the broader public will come to know the Adventist church though what we do, and know us in a positive sense as people who are passionately concerned about the communities we serve and the health and welfare of the people in those communities.  

When the denomination makes plans for "comprehensive health ministries," those plans typically do not include the health systems. Is that a problem? Could the church and healthcare systems work together more effectively if they shared a compelling vision for the health of all citizens?

It is true that sometimes the coordination between what we do under our CREATION Health program and the health and ministry efforts of different segments of the church are not as coordinated as would be ideal.  However, there are also wonderful examples of coordination.  Those tend to be in the territories we serve in the four unions that govern us.  

Yes, sometimes above the union level and outside our territory there isn’t good coordination, but I have found in discussion with church officials that there is a desire to be better coordinated.  So, I have no reason to be negative about the future possibilities.

There has been significant discussion about the salaries of Adventist healthcare executives. Are salaries too high? Are they really necessary to recruit and retain top talent?

There is no question that from time to time there is discussion about compensation in Adventist healt care.  We recognize that even if we had compensation levels well below what our most senior people are currently paid, that compensation would be deemed out of line by many.  

Back in the mid-1990s when we asked the North American Division to sign off on our current philosophy, we recognized that we could not completely ignore the marketplace.  However, we decided we wanted to be conservative and based on data from our consultants and everything we see around us, we believe we have maintained a significant conservative posture in compensation relative to other systems like ours.  

We target the median for our executives, or in the case of the CEO, the 40th percentile.  When it comes to our non-executive staff, we may pay well above the median in order to attract the kind of talent we need.  This would be true for clinical talent, for example.  So the only cap restriction is at the executive level.  

It is true that we have had a good track record of retaining executives but we have occasionally lost some really talented people who did go on to take positions in other systems that compensated at a significantly higher level than us.  

We believe that we can maintain the current philosophy and be successful.  I have also learned that compensation alone is not sufficient to judge commitment and sacrifice.

I believe Florida Hospital is in the eye of a storm over its tax-exempt status.  Can you explain why a system that is so successful financially should get tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks?

Not just Florida Hospital  — there has been active discussion during my 35 years in healthcare about whether a given hospital should keep its tax-exempt status.  When people focus on this, they look only at the question of what you do for the community that you are not compensated for versus the value of the tax exemption itself.  On that basis, we clearly earn our tax-exempt status at this time because our community benefit dollars (things we do that we are not paid for), far exceed the value of the tax exemption.   However, the important thing about this whole question is:  Who do you want the system to be accountable to?  

We have resisted efforts to ever go the for-profit or investor-owned route because we do not want to be split in our allegiance to shareholders or the communities we serve.   Whatever happens with this issue, we believe it is critical that a system remain in place where hospitals can have their loyalty focused on the needs of the community and not the insatiable desires of shareholders.   

Finally, people are frequently misinformed about the issue of profits or surplus.  A system that doesn’t run an appropriate surplus  —  and even though we’ve been successful, ours has always been less than 10%  —  then you will not be able to invest for population growth, bringing new technologies that will greatly benefit the community you serve, or have the resources to develop new lines of clinical care.  Without those surpluses, you simply will not be stable or you will not be able to really meet the needs of communities.  It is very important that people become better educated on this topic.  

What goals have you accomplished in your position as president of Adventist Health System? What goals do you still have?

During my entire time as CEO, we have focused on a succession of Vision Statements which have culminated in the one we are operating under now: the 2020 Vision.

We have made good progress in implementing this vision, and have already achieved some items even though we have not yet reached 2020.  Other goals we feel confident of reaching by 2020.   In the case of a few Vision 2020 goals, we have instituted some major projects this year as a way to overcome any plateauing and get us where we need to be.  Accomplishing that vision and creating the best possible ambassadors for Adventist healthcare are the sum total of my dreams.  I have no goals beyond achieving that vision and making Adventist Health System the kind of mission-driven system that members of the church can be proud of.

Don Jernigan is President and Chief Executive Officer of Adventist Health System – the largest Protestant not-for-profit healthcare system in the United States. With a net revenue of $7.1 billion, Adventist Health System’s 45 hospitals in 10 states, 79,000 employees and nearly 9,000 affiliated physicians serve more than four million patients each year. The system’s flagship hospital – Florida Hospital in Orlando – is the state’s largest with more than 2,400 beds. Florida Hospital also serves as the single largest Medicare provider in the country.

Jernigan earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physical Chemistry in 1972 from Baylor University and a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Texas - Arlington in 1967 Dr. Jernigan served in higher education in the positions of professor, chemistry department chairman, vice president for academic affairs and executive vice president. Jernigan also served on active duty as an officer in the United States Navy.

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Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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Welcome to Spectrum’s weekly Adventist Podcast.

This edition features a chat with Dr. Aubyn Fulton, professor of psychology at Pacific Union College. He discusses academic freedom, why he invited an atheist to his class, and why so many faculty are leaving PUC’s Psychology and Social Work department.

Here are a few helpful summaries of what’s going on regarding academic freedom between some faculty and the current president of Pacific Union College:

Pacific Union College Psychology Professor Greg Schneider Resigns as Department Chair
Free PUC News: What Is Happening?

Audio: 

Podcast 3 Aubyn Fulton.mp3

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A number of religious organizations havefiled amicus briefs in support of a church that is suing the state of Missouri for discrimination when churches are categorically denied funding under the state constitution, but at the same time want to reserve the right to discriminate against groups and individuals when it comes to the use of state-funded church-based infrastructure. Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley is ostensibly only about the availability of direct funding for a church playground, but could it open the door to state regulation of the funded infrastructure in the future?

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case of whether the state of Missouri can be compelled to pay to resurface a church playground with recycled material under an otherwise neutral and secular aid program when such funding to churches is barred by the state constitution.

When the court first decided to hear the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Pauley, Justice Antonin Scalia was still on the bench, and it seemed that the court would be poised to overturn the lower court rulings, which had found that Missouri’s “no-aid” clause (also known as the Blaine Amendment) prohibited the funding on grounds that the clause is inherently discriminatory.

Advocates for the church argue that Missouri is discriminating against religious institutions by categorically prohibiting the funding to religious organizations and that state aid does not violate the Establishment Clause because the funding program, according to the World Vision brief, is “neutral and evenhanded.” The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America argues that blanket prohibitions of government aid “expose religious institutions to significant health, safety and security dangers,” while others argue that emergency assistance such as police and fire services are always available and that infrastructure repair is a separate matter.

Several states, including Nevada, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, also have joined in a single amicus brief, claiming that state aid to churches should be constitutional. All of these states also have Blaine Amendments and further argue that the Blaine Amendment punishes churches by depriving them of a “civil right” to state funding.

Churches Claim State Discriminates Against Them in Denying Funding, but Churches Still Want Right to Discriminate in Use of These Funds

Churches that argue for equal protection when it comes to compelling state funding of their institutions, and claim that they should be on equal footing when it comes to similar secular civic organizations, should recognize that civic organizations are also held to a higher standard when it comes to discrimination claims. Churches that receive funding and simultaneously seek to reserve the right to discriminate should expect that they will be held to the same nondiscrimination standards as other civic organizations as a condition of receiving such funding and that they will need to take “equal protection” into account when it comes to people and other organizations that seek to access and use churches’ state-funded infrastructure.

Thus far, there have not been many cases on point, and where they exist it has been because the religious facility was advertised as generally open to the public, but the church later denied access on the basis of sexual orientation, or where a church institution that discriminated against biracial couples wanted to maintain their tax-exempt status.

Those arguing on behalf of the churches also have been known to argue that laws prohibiting discrimination do not affect churches because of the separation of church and state, and if, better said as when, these churches face litigation over neutral access to their facilities, they will likely argue that church–state separation prohibits the government from telling them what they can do with their own property. But the briefs, as they currently stand, are arguing for a strict formal equality between funding to churches and secular interests, which is a position they will have to abandon should the equality argument be used against them in the future.

Churches are arguing for a strict formal equality between funding to churches and secular interests, which is a position they will have to abandon should the equality argument be used against them in the future.

Until relatively recently, it was a given that state-level no-funding Blaine Amendments, found in about half the states, duplicated the Establishment Clause (via the 14th Amendment) in prohibiting state funding of religion, but now that Blaine Amendments are being attacked on their own merits, I believe we are seeing a chipping away of the principle of church independence from the state in which the Establishment Clause was forged.

Churches Argue: Get the Money Now – Worry about Regulation Later

At this stage, a clear but thin line is separating struggling churches from state funds, and most denominations will likely support Trinity Lutheran Church in its quest to compel state funding. Most churches are satisfied to defer the inevitable issue of “exemption from state regulation” to a future case. Indeed, my own denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, hasjoined an amicus brief on behalf of the petitioners, arguing that the Missouri Blaine Amendment discriminates against churches and that the state should be compelled to fund them if they apply for neutral state-aid programs.  In the event that the state is ultimately compelled to provide the funding and somebody sues the churches claiming that the churches denied them access due to their protected class (i.e. sexual orientation, religion, etc.), the churches would likely claim the right to discriminate in the way that they use the state funds.

Even if it were possible that religious exemptions from non-discrimination laws would rise and fall regardless of who wins this case, what is undisputable is that the petitioners and their amici in Trinity Lutheran Church are arguing that the wall of church–state separation must be weakened to benefit churches.

What is undisputable is that the petitioners and their amici are arguing that the wall of church–state separation must be weakened to benefit churches.

State money does not come without regulation. As the prominent Baptist minister John Leland observed in 1804, “The fondness of magistrates to foster Christianity has done it more harm than all the persecutions ever did. Persecution, like a lion, tears the saints to death but leaves Christianity pure: state establishment of religion, like a bear, hugs the saints but corrupts Christianity, and reduces it to a level with state policy.”

Sometimes it is better to leave the money on the table and walk away.

Michael Peabody, Esq. is editor of ReligiousLiberty.TV, an Adventist jurisprudence website celebrating freedom of conscience where this article was first published. It is shared here with the author's permission.

If you respond to this article, please:

Make sure your comments are germane to the topic; be concise in your reply; demonstrate respect for people and ideas whether you agree or disagree with them; and limit yourself to one comment per article, unless the author of the article directly engages you in further conversation. Comments that meet these criteria are welcome on the Spectrum Website. Comments that fail to meet these criteria will be removed.

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As the title suggests, in his book, God’s Problem: How The Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer, Bart Ehrman argues that the Bible has nothing compelling to say about the problem of evil. Well, I just put down a beautifully written four-hundred and fifty page book that compellingly argues the exact opposite.

In God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense, Sigve Tonstad argues that the Bible is from beginning to end oriented around the question of why God does not intervene to prevent suffering. And the answer the Bible provides, he argues, is as beautiful as it is compelling. Unfortunately, this answer has been largely buried under theological “traditions of non-sense.”

Tonstad fleshes out aspects of the sensible answer that the Bible provides to the problem of evil by masterfully retelling key Bible stories while weaving in other literary and philosophical material. While I cannot begin to capture the richness and highly nuanced nature of Tonstad’s arguments, I’ll briefly outline four general aspects of the answer he finds in Scripture.

First, Tonstad reviews biblical stories that make it clear that biblical authors didn’t assume that God’s character and will were inscrutable. For example, the story of Abraham debating God about the justice of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18) presupposes that God’s sense of “justice” is congruous with our sense of “justice.” This perspective strongly contrasts with a theological tradition that dates back to Augustine and that holds that God’s morality is altogether different from ours and is therefore inscrutable. For example, theologians like Augustine, Luther and Calvin held that we must affirm that God is loving and altogether good, despite the fact that he predestined the majority of humans to eternally suffer in hell. There is no denying that God’s “love” and “goodness” are inscrutable (if not completely meaningless) in this view, but, according to Tonstad, this simply confirms that this view of God is not biblical and that this tradition is a “tradition of non-sense.”

Another closely related aspect of the sensible answer the Bible provides to the problem of evil concerns freedom. Tonstad does a great job demonstrating that the God of the Bible is a lover of freedom, for freedom is the premise of love, which is the ultimate goal of creation. For this reason, God governs the world not by coercion, but by means of loving influence. This was the uniform view of the early church, but as Tonstad powerfully demonstrates, this changed quite suddenly once the church assumed a role in running the state in the fourth and fifth century, for running a state requires the use of coercive power. It’s no coincidence that Augustine, who was the first to justify Christians using torture to coerce professions of faith, was also the first to defend the view that God coercively controls everything.

On this note, one of my favorite sections of this book was Tonstad’s brilliant analysis of “The Grand Inquisitor” in Theodore Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. This is a “poem” that Ivan Karamazov, who is an atheist, tells his brother Aloysha, who is a priest. The setting for this poem is Spain at the height of the Inquisition, when untold numbers of non-Christians and heretics were tortured and executed by the Church. Jesus suddenly appears amidst this horror, and everyone recognizes who he is. But the elderly man who is heading up the Inquisition has him arrested to interrogate him.

In the course of this interrogation it becomes clear that the Church of Christendom, as represented by the Grand Inquisitor, is opposed to Jesus because this Church wants to offer people a different kind of freedom than what Jesus offered. Tonstad summarizes this poem by saying,

Jesus empowers individual choice, freedom of conscience, and personal responsibility. The Church, as Ivan’s poem envisions it, offers humans the freedom not to decide for oneself. In a curious sense, the Church offers to take away from the individual precisely the freedom that Jesus extends to each person (p.330).

Tonstad makes the case that God has always been on the side of empowering people to make morally responsible choices while Satan has always been on the side of trying to control people, thereby giving them the freedom not to have to make morally responsible decisions. And he does an excellent job demonstrating that this battle has been waged not only throughout Church history, but also throughout the biblical narrative.

This brings me to the third aspect of the sensible answer the Bible provides to the problem of evil, according to Tonstad. It is the aspect that is the hardest to accept, but Tonstad correctly argues that it is absolutely indispensible for a proper understanding of Scripture as well as for an adequate theodicy. Throughout the biblical narrative, but especially in the New Testament, biblical authors reflect an awareness that our world is engulfed in a cosmic conflict, headed up by God, on the one side, and Satan, on the other. Tonstad makes an overwhelmingly compelling case that this conflict is a fundamental aspect of the biblical narrative and that this narrative cannot be properly understood if this conflict is neglected.

By contrast, while the Church has always affirmed the reality of Satan, his significance was completely undermined in the “tradition of non-sense” that conceived of God preordaining everything. Of course, theologians within this tradition have always claimed that Satan is significant, for God ordains what Satan does in such a way that Satan remains morally responsible for the evil that God ordained him to bring about. But this traditional perspective simply demonstrates why Tonstad is correct in labeling it a “tradition of non-sense.”

The fourth and final aspect of the biblical answer to the problem of suffering that I’ll discuss concerns the character of God and the deceptiveness of Satan. Tonstad stresses the importance of the fact that the serpent beguiled Adam and Eve by engaging in a character assassination of God (Gen 3:1-5). Rather than being a lover of freedom, the serpent suggests that God inhibits freedom and rules by manipulation. He is a God who can be feared, but never loved, which is why Adam and Eve feel the need to hide from him when he shows up after their rebellion. And, not surprisingly, this is how people have tended to view God or the gods throughout history. According to Tonstad, the entire biblical story, from Genesis to Revelation, should be read as God’s response to the serpent’s accusation.

The centerpiece of God’s response, of course, is Jesus Christ. In Christ, and especially in his self-sacrificial death, God reveals that he is nothing like the fearful manipulative monster that Satan has always deceived people into thinking he was. He is rather a humble God of self-sacrificial love who honors people’s free will to the point of allowing them to crucify him. And in doing this, God exposes Satan to be the deceiver that he is. But, true to his character, even this revelation is not something God forces on anyone. There is enough light for anyone who wants to see the truth, but enough ambiguity so that no one is forced to see the truth.

There is, in my opinion, only one shortcoming of this otherwise superb book. While Tonstad was usually surprisingly good at demonstrating how the biblical stories that he addressed make sense, at certain points I think he could be charged with whitewashing the biblical material. To illustrate, his extensive treatments of Moses and Elijah are full of insights, but Tonstad never addressed the darker side of these individuals. For example, what sense can be made of Moses’ instructions to slaughter all the Midianites except the virgin women, whom his soldiers could keep as spoils of war (Num 31:15-18)? And what are we to make of Elijah’s decision to slaughter the four hundred priests of Baal after he had beaten them in a spiritual contest on Mount Carmel (I Kg 18:40)?

Related to this, Tonstad never addressed the many Old Testament narratives that depict God in ways that don’t make sense and that seem to blatantly contradict the revelation of God in the crucified Christ. For example, what sense can be made of the portrait of Yahweh commanding his people to mercilessly slaughter every man, woman, child, infant and animal in certain regions of Canaan (e.g. Deut 20:14-20)? Or what sense can be made of the portraits of God causing parents to cannibalize their children (Lev 26:28-29; Jer 19:7, 9; Lam 2:20; Ezek 5:9-10) or ruthlessly smashing parents and children together (Jer 13:14)? I think Tonstrad’s work would have been strengthened had he not bypassed this material.

This omission notwithstanding, this is a superb book that is well worth reading. In fact, it is so packed with rich exegetical, literary, philosophical, and sociological insights that this review frankly feels rather paltry. I suppose this is inevitable for any review of a book that is this rich in content.

Greg Boyd is co-founder of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota where he serves as Senior Pastor. He is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author. His website, Re|KNEW is where this review first appeared. It is published here with the author's permission. Boyd will also be the keynote speaker at the 2016 Adventist Forum Conference.

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This episode of The Adventist Podcast focuses on education and includes:

• Jared Wright, Spectrum Online Managing Editor on the state of Adventist education;
• Hallie Anderson, Walla Walla University student and Spectrum intern on covering higher ed news;
• An anonymous student leader of #freepuc on campus activism;
• Ramona Hyman, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Oakwood University on the meanings of Magic Johnson’s big donation.

Audio: 

Podcast 4 Education.mp3

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In this wide-ranging interview, Alexander Douglas, principal of the Music and Worship Academy for the South England Conference and professional musician, explains why worship does not equal music, and why something unmusical cannot be spiritual.

Question: You hosted a three-day Worship Leaders' Conference for the South England Conference a few weeks ago, bringing together pastors, elders, praise teams, singers and musicians. How did it go?

Answer: It went very well, all things considered. It was the very first major event for the South England Conference Music Department in this quadrennium and although we did not have as much time to put it together as would have been ideal, we exceeded our target numbers in terms of attendance and received some very useful and very positive feedback that was heart-warming indeed.

No event runs without some hitches but right across the March 18-20 weekend there was a very nice spirit that permeated all of our work together, and the worship services were especially meaningful – an important outcome given the subject matter!

We are planning to make  the Worship Leaders’ Conference an annual event for the rest of the quadrennium, but we want it to be earlier so that the impact can be felt earlier in the year. The SEC Music Director, Mike Johnson, has been increasingly unequivocal in stating that education is the number one priority for the Department, and this was a very auspicious start, for which we praise God.

Conference attendees could choose from a range of sessions, including things like "Basic theology for music and worship ministers" and "Rhythm section skills and musicianship." What were the most popular sessions? What was the main lesson you hoped attendees would take away with them?

This is not such an easy question, as there was a genuine appetite for pretty much everything and Mike and I were glad for that, as we spent a very long time on the program. As principal of the Music and Worship Academy for the Conference, a huge part of the program design fell on my shoulders.

I would not have said that it was the most popular or most important but that rhythm section skills workshop was possibly the most eye-opening of our non-liturgical sessions. My plan for it was that everyone would learn more about how the instruments of the rhythm section (primarily bass and drums, but also the “harmony instruments” – usually piano/keyboards and/or guitar) are supposed to work. There were a number of attendees who expected nothing, but even after we had well and truly overshot our time they did not want the session to end!

Consequently, Mike determined that we need to make practical sessions an even more fundamental part of our Music and Worship Academy programs. The main lesson? That the business of being a music minister and being a musical Levite is not for everyone, and that talent is not synonymous with anointing. So if this really is your calling, you have plenty of work to do – spiritually, musically, technically and theologically.

Victor Masondo from South Africa was the lead facilitator for the conference. How were his skills helpful?

Victor Masondo is one of the best musicians in South Africa and even more capable than I’d realised. His bass guitar playing is truly international class. He has been on a real journey in life, faith and music and has made sacrifices for his people. Being an indigenous black musician in the apartheid era could not have been easy, and he has an intensity about him that resonated with me very strongly.

Victor also made a very strong impact on the attendees and his commitment to excellence in music and faith has led to a big clamor for his return. He was approachable and knowledgeable. It was a blessing for me to get to know him and his wife, Gail Hamilton-Masondo. They both brought something rich to the event just by being who they were – and Victor’s insights in that aforementioned rhythm section skills session were reasonably mind-blowing to the attendees – some of whom were well-trained musicians who knew enough to know that we were really only scratching the surface.

The Music and Worship Academy, host of the conference, is the education arm of the South England Conference's Music Department, and you are its principal. The Academy is described as a "virtual center." Can you tell us more about the Music and Worship Academy and what it does? Are there similar organizations in other conferences?

To the best of my knowledge, there are no other similar organizations in either our union (the British Union Conference) or our division (the Trans-European Division).

There are various music/worship enterprises that have been initiated, but the roots of the Music and Worship Academy come from two main sources. The first – and primary – is the ministry calling and vision of the South England Conference Music Director, who I believe has been uniquely prepared to take the helm at this time. The second is my previous experience as the Advisor for Music and Worship Ministries for the North England Conference, a two-year period that really was the hardest – and also the most formative – of my life.

As far as I was concerned, I was out of music and worship ministry and God was taking me elsewhere to a new season. But it turns out that God has not finished with me yet, and for reasons that you would have to ask the SEC Music Director about, he appointed me as principal of the Music and Worship Academy. Many of the things that I had hoped to do in the North England Conference are now being done in the South England Conference. And because  England is a tiny country, North England Conference members can come to any of our programs if they choose.

That background is important for a genuine understanding of the South England Conference Music and Worship Academy. There are some enormous gaps in the understanding of music, worship, liturgy and ecclesiology in British Adventism (and also in our world church). I am personally very tired of being able to work as a music leader and veteran music educator outside the church walls but have no means or framework to share my best work with my church community. Mike Johnson is tired of church services being “endured” rather than celebrated.

We have limited means and purview, but we are going to push our budget as far as we can and trust in God to lead us. Mike has some wonderfully ambitious aspirations, and I am with him all the way. We’re just starting out, and we’re still embryonic, but we are going to do our best to create teaching and learning opportunities.

Why is it important that worship leaders receive musical training?

It has become a total scourge of a situation that worship = music and vice versa in the minds of so many people. Worship is a more fundamental paradigm than music. One of the ideas I teach is that music is not in any way “essential” to worship. However, the two main constituencies of “music minister” and “worship leader” cause the church very significant problems:

• Those who are more interested in the mechanics and minutiae of music-making than in the true devotional life that includes Bible study and personal prayer;

• Those who are actually very faithful to their calling as disciples of Jesus in ways akin to those described above – but who then feel that such faithfulness allows them to sing out of tune, play out of time and still claim the anointing of a music minister or worship leader.

It’s quite a preposterous situation and now essentially endemic. But it is simply impossible for something to be unmusical and still be spiritual; certainly not if you are claiming the anointing of a worship leader! And so, if that is what you do, then you need the best level of musical understanding that you can get. Not necessarily a degree – but you should be looking to understand music as best you can in your context so that you can be the best servant leader of the musicians and singers that God has granted you the privilege of leading.

To be a musician is a privilege – not a right. The same is true of ministry.

You are a professional musician, who started as a jazz pianist and evolved into a choral conductor. I believe classical, jazz and gospel are all key musical genres for you. What are your current projects?

Well, there are things happening in each of those three genres. In classical music, I have a professional engagement as conductor of a chamber choir that rehearses weekly and I am the first conductor in their 140-year history they have allowed to not conduct secular music during the Sabbath. Also, I have kind of refused to conduct any theology in which I don’t believe, which in the professional classical music world has been even more revolutionary than keeping the Sabbath! And with my company, ADM Productions, I am gearing up to undertake a massively significant project that involves performing all 198 sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach over the next 15 years, starting in December 2016. As one of my brothers in music ministry has put it, this is basically an “evangelistic campaign” but using sacred classical music with the podium as a pulpit – which is how I approach all my work as a conductor in classical music.

In jazz, I have quite a story which will have to remain for another occasion, but there is a septet called Saravan that will play the gospel side of jazz, but with “teeth.” I also have a new quartet that will make its debut later this year where we will – by God’s grace – play the landmark spiritual chamber work in the history of jazz: John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. This work is a very serious cry of the heart to God and one of the most doxological things I have ever experienced. There is also a two-tag jazz orchestra project called the Veritas Orchestra (“veritas” is Latin for “truth”), which is dedicated to playing a type of jazz that is intrinsically spiritual.

Gospel music is something I could talk about for a very long time but as things stand, I have a project of my own, the Lifted Voices Choir, who have recently reached the final of a national competition.  Let’s see what happens! And I am working with another gospel choir on an externally-funded outreach project, and that is proving to be very exciting. I have consistently done my best work in gospel music outside the church, and this is going true to form.

You sound very busy! I know that you also have an interest in theology and philosophy – how do all of these interests converge?

Five years ago, after a period of intense prayer and serious fasting, a mission statement for my life emerged. Three years later, the bigger vision emerged. They are both as follows:

Personal Vision Statement:

My vision is to understand, promote and inspire true worship to a holy God.

Personal Mission Statement:

My mission is to share Christian faith and the (Seventh-day) Adventist message to the highest standard of my ability using both words and music.

In a sense, you could say that Matthew 22:37 is the guiding text of my life. To love God with all of one’s heart, soul, mind and strength is wonderfully comprehensive and far too big for us – which is why the righteousness of Jesus Christ is indispensable to being able to participate in the divine life. And of course that itself is only possible through the ministrations of the Holy Spirit.

I understand that I am not only to enjoy my status as a redeemed child of God, but that I am to grow in depth and knowledge of who God is. Music has been one of the purest ways in which I have experienced the presence of God. But studying theology was effectively a reconversion experience, and philosophy has become increasingly important as I realize the epistemic limitations of theology. The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, but philosophy is itself the love of and pursuit of wisdom.

I have the strongest of opinions regarding the way Seventh-day Adventists have understood “philosophy” as both word and discipline, but let us simply say that certain objections of Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre and various others regarding the way we live in religious Christian communities are in fact scarily closer to the minor prophets (for example) than many of us would be willing to countenance. And if one were to add Ellen White to that conversation, things would become explosive, because that lady’s work is so abused by various “conservatives,” “liberals” and “progressives” at times it’s not even funny.

Music is phenomenal. But it is not enough. Theology isfundamental. But it is also not enough. God has to be experienced, not merely studied. He is not an object of knowledge (“God is not in the world; the world is in God” – Emil Brunner). However, is my religious experience a manifestation of the Holy Spirit working supernaturally within the natural in my life; or merely an emotional response to stimuli; or am I mentally deluded? How would I think about that? Those are philosophical issues that are linguistically-conceived and linguistically-dependent, because theology is predicated on the fact that God exists. What if He did not exist? Are we capable of considering that possibility? Because a faith that we are too scared to test is not faith at all. So philosophy iselemental.

The bottom line: all of that mental work needs a counterbalance, where one can think outside of language. As Mahler is reported to have remarked: “Music begins where words end.” I need music for my sanity just as surely as I need language to be able to communicate with God in more specific ways. So I’ve built a set of triangles for my life!

How does your background help you with church music?

Excellent question. At times I have felt that becoming a professional musician was almost the worst thing I could have done for my church life. And the answer to the question includes the fact that sometimes my background does not help me at all – in the sense that our local church music celebrities often live off the “applause” that they receive. So the uncomfortable truth is that I live my Levitical identity much more outside the church than inside.

What, in your opinion, is the state of music in the Adventist church? Is it high-quality? Is it too repetitive? Is it too modern? Not modern enough? What do you think the Adventist church can do to enhance its musical offerings?

I am truly sorry for all those who would be hurt by what I am about to say, but music in global Adventism is a train wreck in many ways. If it is not conceptually bankrupt, it is technically under-powered. If it is technically proficient it is spiritually bereft. If it is spiritually meaningful it is only meaningful to those inside the church, and too inward-looking to affect lives outside the church. (And in that regard, the whole concept of art and the aesthetic has been maligned and impugned by our church, so artists in general are an endangered species.)

We have orchestras and choirs and soloists who often sound very impressive, but how much of our music actually inspires a person to take God more seriously? Inspires a person to greater holiness? Edifies us in ways that force us to think about things – and make necessary changes?

We spend so much time fighting the wrong battles, and so many of our best musicians are simply not the role models they (and we) should be. We don’t need better musicians and singers. We need more consecrated musicians and singers, but the congregations are now audiences who consume worship experiences in worship malls. And since many of our church leaders work on the basis that a successful event is one that the church members approve of and patronize, we are supposed to serve the members – many of whom are not even clear on why they are Adventist.

The Laodicean church does not believe that it has need of anything. God has given us so much as a people, but music in this church is one of my greatest disappointments, and I think it will not improve until persecution. That will be the end of the worship wars!

Has the Adventist church as a whole tried to create music that is too homogenous for its membership? Should congregations in Tanzania be singing the same hymns in the same way as congregations in China, in Russia, in England?

Genesis 11 begins with one language and ends with several. I’ll spare you an ethnomusicology lecture for now, and an anthropology lecture. I will say that I love hymns dearly, but in the same way that we would not insist that a congregation in Tanzania should be fluent with the KJV for salvation, there should be an understanding that music will also vary as language varies.

The Adventist church has fallen prey to a fallacy on this subject that is wholly secular in origin and practice and many have sought to build pseudo-theologies to justify what was never Biblical in the first place. When cultural apropos masquerades as theology, we’re in serious trouble.

What is the music in your local church like?

I will now plead the Fifth Amendment!

If you could offer just one piece of advice to a new music director/worship leader of a church/congregation, what would it be?

Examine yourself, your gifts and your motives every day and prior to every time you step up to lead. If Jesus Christ in human form came and took a seat of the front row on a Sabbath morning when you’re on rota, what would he find as he looked at you and through you?

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Do you remember the felt board from your childhood Sabbath School? Betty Lukens has been creating felts to illustrate Bible stories for children for over 60 years, and still ships the sets all over the world.  In this interview, she explains the genesis of the felt stories and how they have evolved over time.

Question: Generations of kids have grown up learning Bible stories from felt characters placed on felt boards, made by Betty Lukens. How did the Betty Lukens felts come to be? Can you tell us the story? Did it all start with your mother?

Answer: Yes, the original concept of creating a visual aid for teaching the Bible stories started with my mother, Marie Lukens, over 60 years ago.  She was very much involved with teaching children about Jesus, and in teaching Sabbath School.  And one day she said to me, “I am going to create a set that illustrates every story in the Bible.” And to make a long story short – we did. 

There were days and weeks and months of creating artwork and writing the stories and cataloguing the pieces into a set.  The set evolved over time as well.  We now have beautiful colors and detail in the felt pieces that have come with newer technology in our manufacturing process; the original felt sets were very plain-looking.  In the end, we have one of the best visual aid resources you can find for teaching Bible stories to children in a classroom or home setting.  We have people that call in to buy a felt set and will tell us they remember using the felts at church when they were younger, and now they want them to teach their children.

The Through the Bible felt set contains 600 figures and objects and can be used to tell hundreds of Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments. How many of these sets do you sell around the world every year? How many have been sold overall?

The set containing 600 figures is the complete Bible in felt, which tells 182 lessons from Genesis to Revelation.  We sell around 1,000 sets each year, to locations all over the world.  As far as how many sold overall, that number would be a guess – maybe 20,000 sets in total?

And so the Bible felts have changed over time?

There was one major revision about 25 years ago where we updated the stories and improved and added some felt figures.  But for the last 25 years, the set has seen very few changes.  We have added some different scenes and backgrounds, but the original 600 pieces have remained virtually unchanged.  So much planning and detail went into creating the set that it really hasn’t needed much improvement as time has passed.

How did the images in the felts originate? Who drew them?

We worked mainly with two different artists: Clyde Provansha and Jim Arribito.  

Where are the felts manufactured?

We do our manufacturing in California, not too far from where we started many years ago.

The felts are still sold on a "sheet" and must be cut out, correct? Isn't that is a time-consuming process for customers? Could this change at some point?

Yes, we compare the cutting of felt to an act of love.  The best way to create the bright and colorful colors is using a complex printing process.  We have to use a large sheet of felt during that process - we cannot print the pieces individually.  Pre-cutting the felt sets has been a topic of conversation in our office for many years now.  We will hopefully find the right type of technology that will help us do this one day in the near future.

You also sell some non-Bible story felts, such as farm animals, dolls that can be dressed up, the planets, and other educational items. Who designed these felts? How long have they been available?

All of these sets were designed and created by me, using different artists over time.  We have been selling these other educational items for about 12 – 15 years now.

And you also sell some felts that represent early Adventist history? 

Yes, there is a set for Ellen White, and we also have a set that teaches Daniel and Revelation.

Are most customers Adventist? Or are the felts just as popular among other Bible-believing Christians? Do you market to other churches?

The stories, especially children’s stories, from the Bible are popular among most Bible-believing Christian churches.  We sell many sets to interdenominational churches, as well as Adventist churches.

Are felts becoming less popular as teachers and parents have greater access to other resources online, etc? Have sales decreased over time?

Yes and no.  We have seen technology change our culture here in America in a dramatic way in the last 10 – 20 years.  You can now obtain a copy of the Bible on your cell phone, which you carry around with you at all times. 

There is definitely a group of people that view felts as old fashioned and an old technology, but not as many as you would think.  You can use a computer screen to show an animation of figures, but it is not a direct replacement to something you can hold and touch and feel.  Children are still fascinated by felts, and they love to hold them and play with them.

Also, the internet has transformed the reach we now have.  We are selling more sets internationally than ever before.  Most people around the world have access to the internet, and therefore they can view our products online and order them in that format.

Where are the felts most popular?

We sell felt Bible sets to all corners of the world.  We still sell more sets in the US than internationally, but there are many that ship to Europe, South America, Canada, Australia, and some into Asia.

What are your goals for the Betty Lukens felt company? What does the future hold?

Only the Lord truly knows the answer to this question.  I want to continue following his plan for my life.  I hope to continue manufacturing materials that will teach children about Jesus - the same mission my mother had over 60 years ago.  She was a great woman, and the Lord did an amazing work through her that I want to continue.

I understand you are semi-retired. What are your plans?

You are never retired if you are doing the Lord’s work.  I am spending a little less time in the office these days, but I want to focus more on missions – working with people to get these felt sets into the hands of people around the world in remote areas. I want to make sure they reach people who have the desire to teach children about Jesus, but not the resources.

The Betty Lukens company is located in in Palm Desert, in southern California.

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Biology professor Stephen Dunbar and PhD student Dustin Baumbach talk about the app they developed, and how they hope to track individual sea turtles around the world using image recognition software and pictures taken by citizen-researchers. They also talk about why we need to spend our time and energy caring for creatures and the environment instead of trying to prove the creation story.

Question: You have created a sea turtle-tracking app, which went live this April. Why do sea turtles need their own app?

Dustin: Last summer we started creating a web map, so that dive tourists could go online and add sightings of sea turtles, giving us a better picture of where they travel. But then we started thinking that not all dive tourists would go back to their computers and log sea turtle sightings. So then we thought a mobile app might make it easier for dive tourists to log the sightings. An app also has global potential -- not just for one specific location. So anyone anywhere in the world can log a sighting: from Peru to Japan to Thailand to Honduras.

Are people logging any sightings?

Dustin: We have several people who have started using the app, but it seems like most people are still just testing it. The sea turtle research season hasn’t really started. We are hoping that during June and July (the summer vacation season) more people will start using the app.

How are you letting people know about the app?

Stephen: We are sending info about the app to dive operators around the world. We have been looking online for dive shops -- so far we have been focusing on the Caribbean, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Using an Excel spreadsheet we are making lists of dive companies, and then we are firing off an email form letter to all of them with info about the app.

We are expecting those shops will share the information with their customers.  We have had a pretty good response so far.

How many dive shops have you contacted to date?

Dustin: We have sent emails to about 240 so far, mainly throughout the Caribbean, in Thailand, and in Malaysia. Aruba and the Antilles. We are just starting another list for Malaysia, and Indonesia, Australia, Africa, and the South Pacific regions. And we will keep going around the world.

We have also sent information about our app out through the sea turtle networks, which we are very familiar with.

Stephen: And it’s important to note that the app is not only for divers. Tourists might go and sit on a beach or go snorkeling. They may see a turtle come up to bask in the sun. Someone might photograph a turtle just resting on a beach.

And then there are tourist interactions at sea turtle nesting beaches. And speaking of nesting, we are hoping that nesting events can be recorded on this app as well. Lots of people go to Costa Rica or other places to get involved with nesting tourism.

Is the app easy to use for different languages?

Dustin: We haven’t really thought about that issue yet. But we are hoping to deal with that in the future.

Stephen: The really interesting thing about the app is the potential for photo identification of specific, individual turtles. Using that software, over the years we can track different individuals in different places.

One of the things I am hoping will come out of this is that we will develop a global sea turtle database. So when you upload a photo of an individual turtle from, say, the Bahamas, you as the user would have this photo search through the database and return a little history of the turtle to you. So that specific turtle might have been on a different island, or spotted in a different country. All that history would be returned to you when you log a turtle and it’s picture.

You won’t have all the information about sightings of turtles around the world -- just info about the turtle you have logged.

So it will use image recognition software?

Stephen: Yes, we are working with a company called IBEIS (Image Based Ecological Information System), which has done amazing work with zebras, for example. The zebra’s stripes make each animal unique, and the computer system can learn to identify specific animals.

IBEIS looks at the pixel relationships between millions of pixels. So we are working with them to develop a variant of their zebra ID system for turtles.

Our database will also house all kinds of other data. But the more photos and information people upload, the smarter the system will be.

This has been my dream since I started getting into photo identification with turtles, five or six years ago. I have always wanted to be able to upload a picture, and be sent a history of that turtle.

So the more people involved, the better.

Stephen: This app lets people really get involved -- this is what’s called citizen science. It’s for anybody interested in turtles and conserving them. Everybody can contribute information. And then those people will get something back.

You won’t have access to all the information people log. But what we have on our end is a global map. If you sight a turtle in Hawaii, right away we get a point on our map, and we researchers can see where people are sighting turtles. We can start identifying trends. But it really changes the game when we can identify an individual.

The app is a great tool to add into that whole resource collection.

Dustin: Hopefully within the next month or two, the app will be able to support multiple photos. Then people will be able to upload many photos of one turtle. (Right now you can upload just one photo.)

Stephen: Also, we are working on a version of this same app for researchers. That more specialized app will have many more fields; researchers will be able to add information about having taken blood samples, tag numbers, and other information that tourists wouldn’t have.

What is wrong with the old method of just tagging the turtle?

Stephen: There are two main issues. Any time you tag an animal, there are certain implications to that interaction. First, you have to capture the animal, and may need to pierce the skin. In turtles we put a little metal tag on the flipper. As far as we know it doesn’t cause pain, and we don’t see any adverse reaction, but we don’t actually know how much stress the tagging causes them. And that is the case when tagging any kind of animal. You may be changing some of its behaviour. Then, of course, to re-identify an animal, you have to recapture it to read the tag, etc.

The other issue: animals very often lose their tags. As small turtles grow up they often lose their tags. When you recapture that turtle, you have lost all the data on the animal.

In using photo identification, we still have to capture the turtle initially to take blood, weight, and measurements. But months later, if we are able to identify that turtle by a photo, we don’t necessarily have to recapture the animal.

Now there is still a need for tagging the turtles. It is best to have a positive ID, and theoretically we could have a mismatch with the photo ID. But we see the day coming when we may not need to use flipper tags at all anymore. It’s really exciting to look toward that advancement.

How long did it take to develop the app, from idea to completion? Have you made apps before?

Dustin: From the basic web map we started with, it took about 9 to 10 months.

I have never made an app before. I fiddled around with some computer science in undergrad at Pacific Union College, but realized I wasn’t picking up the code as quickly as I should be, so dropped it as a minor.

But a lot of the work creating the turtle app was just working the ESRI mapping services. I went through the template of code to see how it was all arranged, and organized, and how I could manipulate the data to what we needed.

Stephen: Before the app was launched, we had various ideas, tried different things -- then Dustin would go away and make it happen. For instance, I would say, let’s try symbols for each species, and Dustin would have it done. Recently we put in links and little descriptions of each species for people to see. The app links to the ProTECTOR Inc. website so people can find out more about the species.

How did you come up with the idea for the app?

Stephen: It started with the map that Dustin developed in Honduras. First it was just a printout. Then we thought it would be cool to have a computer-based map we could put the info into. We were developing that map to give to the dive shops. Then right away we started thinking how cool it would be if it were mobile, and people anywhere around the world could add their info. Dustin said he would play around and see what he came up with. We came up with many iterations to figure out what might work.

You have been studying sea turtles off the coast of Honduras for a long time. How long? Why Honduras?

Stephen: This is the start of my tenth year down there. I go several times a year, sometimes during the March spring break, but mostly between June and October. I go three to four times a year, and spend a week to eight weeks at a time. In the summer, my graduate students go. Dustin is a PhD student, and Marsha Wright is also a PhD student. We have an intern program as well, and interns and volunteers also go. Some come from other Adventist colleges, and there are also some non-Adventists.

I first went in 2004, when someone here at Loma Linda who had been born to missionary parents in Honduras, took me there and introduced me to some non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

I had only started here at Loma Linda in 2002, so that was quite early on.

I got a few contracts with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to do some rapid assessments for lobster and conch off the coast of Honduras. I happened to organize to dive with a resort owner who was also Canadian like me, and new to Roatan. Some local fisherman brought him dead sea turtles they were selling, so he could serve the meat in the resort’s restaurant. He told them not to bring him dead turtles, but that he would pay for live turtles.

He wanted to get into conservation, so I started weighing, measuring, and tagging the turtles before releasing them. The fishermen would catch them again, and we would pay them again.

So this was a good start to getting a project up and running. Now we have done projects all around the area, and have various projects running around the country.

How would you say that your work complements your Adventist beliefs?

Stephen: I think that we as a church have not put a strong enough emphasis on our responsibility as stewards of creation. We spend a lot of time, money and energy trying to essentially uphold the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, and I strongly believe in those accounts. But they are accounts of the past. I feel that we should be doing a much better job of caring for creation in the present.

While we tend to look both back to the point of creation and forward to the point of re-creation, we are not very strongly engaged in caring for creation in the present. That has been a disappointment to me. I think we need to do much more to be part of the solution to problems on the planet here and now.

As an example: there is now a great solution to the problem of plastic cutlery. Have you heard of edible forks and spoons? A guy in India makes them out of millet. They are very tough and last for several hours in hot liquid. What a fantastic way to start getting rid of plastic.

Now a guy in Florida has come up with edible beer can rings. Animals in the ocean can safely eat them!

I would like us as Adventists to get more involved in those kinds of solutions -- instead of spending our time trying to find ways to prove the creation account.

I am a strong believer in those accounts but I feel as though trying to come up with stronger arguments to support them rather than working to find problems we are facing today is an abdication of our responsibility as caretakers of creation. This is a real passion of mine.

I edited a book called Entrusted: Christians in Environmental Care which deals with many of these issues. It is the first Adventist book that deals with questions of the environment. All the essays included are written by Adventists, from ethicists to architects to conservationists. One chapter talks about how to incorporate environmentally friendly activities with your family in your own home. Another talks about building urban spaces according to a biblical model.

Are there other Adventists doing this sort of ecological work?

Yes, there are a few. There are several Adventist biologists doing conservation work. There are very few doing marine research -- probably about five or six of us marine biologists actively doing research. One colleague, Dr. William Hayes, works on iguana and bird species in the Bahamas and on rattlesnake species here in California. I have a few colleagues at La Sierra, Andrews, and Walla Walla who also work on marine conservation research.

What are your future plans, Dustin?

Dustin: I am hoping to go into teaching at a university level. It would be nice to teach in an Adventist setting, but if that doesn’t happen, so be it.

And I still have a lot of work I’d like to do with the app: photo identification, the capability to upload multiple photos, and hopefully create the researcher app within the next year. We also hope to figure out how to make these apps available offline as well.

What is next for your turtle research, Stephen? Do you have other interesting projects in the pipeline?

Stephen: I’m heading down to Honduras in a little less than a month. Dustin and Marsha will be there from June to September. I’m also looking at the potential to do sea turtle work in Thailand. And then of course looking for ways to get the new app into more hands.

And I am always trying to attract more interns and students into this great field of marine biology.