Editorials | Seventh-day Adventist Church

Total Commitment for Total Involvement

Editorial by Jerry Lutz

It is remarkable to see how God can use the least likely people to do amazing things. For example, take the apostles Peter and John. The New Testament reveals enough about their personal lives from before they knew Jesus to all but guarantee they’d be overlooked as candidates for discipleship, let alone commissioned for key leadership in His church. While these Galilean fishermen were indeed colorful individuals with as coarse and unrefined characters as they come, Jesus sdaw in them what others did not: Potential. And what potential there was!

The Pierced Hands, Feet and Ears

Editorial by Stephen Lee

“I Will Go: Making Disciples” is the overarching theme that we pray will motivate every member in the New Jersey Conference. One may ask, “How am I to accomplish or even attempt such a feat?” or “What’s in it for me?”

In order to find the answers, we need to explore what Jesus meant when He gave us this command. How did He accomplish it? He not only taught through His words, but through His life of servitude. What was in it for Him? That is more difficult to answer, if not impossible to understand with our finite estimation. He allowed the ungrateful human race to ultimately reject Him by piercing His hands and feet and nailing them to the cross.

Bold Blessings

Editorial by Emmanuel Asiedu

When I arrived to the United States as an international student in 2004, I was faced with a financial challenge. How would I pursue my education with so little money in my pocket? In God’s infinite wisdom, He had already provided the answer for me, found in Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (NIV). Claiming this promise, God provided immeasurably more money than I ever thought was possible, and I graduated debt-free thanks to the generosity and prayers from my friends who helped me along the way.

New Opportunities

In Philippians 3:14, the apostle Paul writes, “Forgetting those things which are behind” (NKJV), a concept that can be applied to us spiritually and also by looking at the occurrences of the past year.

‘Moving Beyond the Walls' … TOGETHER!

Editorial by Charles A. Tapp

For the past several years, our mission here at the Potomac Conference has been to grow healthy disciple-making churches. That is because we believe our denomination’s foundation lies within the local church’s success. That, in a nutshell, is the reason we exist.

Recently, we have adopted the motto “Moving Beyond the Walls” because, regardless of how good a mission statement might be, success might easily evade our grasp without a way to achieve our goal. Moving beyond the walls means that here, in the Potomac Conference, we are no longer content that our churches merely have services inside its walls; instead, we are encouraging them to seek creative ways to assist others by moving beyond their walls. As devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, it has provided us with the necessary “push” to go into our communities as never before so that we might become the salt and light that Jesus has admonished us to be. As we all know, salt is only effective when it leaves its shaker.

By God’s grace, this year we are determined to move beyond the walls and to do it as a TEAM: Together, Everyone Achieves More! We believe this mission should not be left up to our churches alone; to make this a reality, it will take a cooperative effort from our schools, conference administration and every member. Let’s achieve this goal together!