Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

In a fab­u­lous pre­sen­ta­tion on June 29, at the Geor­gia Dome, At­lanta, thou­sands of del­e­gates and mem­bers from 200 na­tions re­spond­ed in a vol­canic erup­tion of praise as Pas­tor Steve Ri­ley, of the Stan­more Av­enue Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church, pre­sent­ed the in­spi­ra­tional top­ic, "Se­cret Ser­vice."

He was con­vinced that God some­times hides His most trea­sured bless­ings in un­sus­pect­ed places. Ex­plain­ing how God turns tragedy in­to tri­umph, he con­clud­ed by show­ing how God works in mirac­u­lous ways: God can cause a reser­voir of re­fresh­ing springs to be hid­den in a rocky place. An un­named cap­tive maid can help bring about de­liv­er­ance to a promi­nent lep­er, Naa­man. Eli­jah can take a wid­ow's last meal dur­ing an eco­nom­ic melt­down and trans­form it in­to the first meal of her fi­nan­cial re­cov­ery. A ban­quet for more than 5,000 peo­ple can be held with just five loaves and two fish­es. Eli­jah can be fed veg­e­tar­i­an food from an un­clean raven.�Pas­tor Ri­ley fo­cused on grace in the chal­leng­ing sto­ry of Joseph and demon­strat­ed how tri­als, test­ing, and temp­ta­tion are es­sen­tial el­e­ments of dream ac­com­plish­ment.

Pas­tor Randy Roberts, se­nior pas­tor of the Lo­ma Lin­da Church, moved the au­di­ence to tears as he paint­ed a graph­ic pic­ture of the sto­ry of Abra­ham and Isaac. He stirred the au­di­ence as he nar­rat­ed "The Jour­ney To­ward Mount Mo­ri­ah." He cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the del­e­gates when he ar­rived at the point in the ser­mon when Isaac asked his fa­ther, "Fa­ther, here's the wood and here's the fire, but where's the lamb?" Many years af­ter this tense ex­pe­ri­ence, John, The Bap­tist, preach­ing the re­pen­tance mes­sage in the wilder­ness, would pro­claim, "Be­hold the Lamb." Now read­ers must re­mem­ber that God asked Abra­ham to sac­ri­fice his on­ly son. Through the agony of a bleed­ing heart, Abra­ham de­cid­ed to obey God's com­mand. But then God in­ter­vened, and Abra­ham passed the test with fly­ing colours. Pas­tor Roberts asked the packed Geor­gia Dome nag­ging, headach-ing ques­tions about our re­quests to God. Let us ex­am­ine some of his ques­tions: Is God just a great can­dy ma­chine in the sky? Do I sim­ply de­posit my dol­lar of obe­di­ence and then ex­tract my sweet, can­dy con­se­quence? What about us to­day? Does a trust re­la­tion­ship with God ask for obe­di­ence even when we don't un­der­stand God's com­mands?

He con­clud­ed by stat­ing that we "must be will­ing to obey with­out un­der­stand­ing; to act be­fore the fact. But to those who do, God's promise rings tri­umphant and true–God will pro­vide." One of the very touch­ing mo­ments was the sign­ing of the tem­per­ance pledge by lead­ers from every con­ti­nent.�The 59th Ses­sion of the Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence was blessed by the pres­ence of the US Sur­geon Gen­er­al, Vice-Ad­mi­ral Regi­na M Ben­jamin. She con­grat­u­lat­ed the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church for its lead­er­ship, for its abid­ing faith in God, and its unique but healthy lifestyle mes­sage that has im­pact­ed sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties through­out the globe. She launched a sus­tained at­tack on to­bac­co use and ar­tic­u­lat­ed her goal to move Amer­i­ca to a smoke-free so­ci­ety. She said that she was anx­ious to work with Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tists be­cause of our out­stand­ing work in pro­mot­ing pub­lic health out­reach.

A very in­ter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion was made by Kenyan Pas­tor Ezra Okioma. He spoke on the trop­ic "Liv­ing by Grace Dur­ing Vi­o­lence and Per­se­cu­tion." Let us think about this sec­tion of his ser­mon: "The Great Con­tro­ver­sy, which be­gan in Heav­en, has es­ca­lat­ed to plan­et Earth, and Abel be­came the first ca­su­al­ty. The Bible spares us the grim de­tails; we are not told pre­cise­ly how Cain ac­com­plished this hor­ri­ble deed. The world's first ba­by be­came the world's first mur­der­er, and nei­ther he nor the world will ever be the same again. Cain does not know it, but his sin will set off a chain of vi­o­lence that will af­fect the en­tire plan­et." Pas­tor Okioma, re­count­ing the vi­o­lence in his home­land and his ex­pe­ri­ence in the ghet­to, stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that one can live by grace in times of vi­o­lence and per­se­cu­tion. He ex­plained that "grace guides the crushed, grace warns the tempt­ed, and grace pities the wan­der­er." Op­por­tu­ni­ties for the de­vel­op­ment of cross-cul­tur­al re­la­tion­ships were abun­dant. We saw a re­port from the Trans-Eu­ro­pean Di­vi­sion. We were priv­i­leged to hear and see the sto­ry of our Ser­bian broth­er, Slavko. Slavko was a de­pressed and sui­ci­dal ad­dict. He was a tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian, a cele-brity who was crushed by his poly-drug habit. But he had an en­counter with Je­sus.

At the mas­sive ex­hi­bi­tion, del­e­gates were very im­pressed with the one-day school mod­el. This pro­gramme is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween Maranatha Vol­un­teers In­ter­na­tion­al and Ad­ven­tist Lay­men' Ser­vices and In­dus­tries. This lat­est ini­tia­tive is pat­terned af­ter the suc­cess­ful one-day church pro­gramme, which has led to more than 800 one-day church­es be­ing built world­wide since 2009. The one-day school in­cludes "a com­plete build­ing with walls, win­dows, doors, and desks." The Hait­ian del­e­ga­tion ex­pressed their thanks for the mil­lions of dol­lars that were giv­en to them to help in the re­cov­ery process. The 59th Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence Ses­sion was sim­ply stun­ning and fab­u­lous. We re­ceived re­ports from hos­pi­tal, uni­ver­si­ties, pub­lish­ing hous­es, well­ness cen­tres, me­dia cen­tres, the Ad­ven­tist De­vel­op­ment & Re­lief Agency, prison min­istry, the Aids task force, fam­i­ly min­istries, the End it Now cam­paign against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and many oth­ers. High on the agen­da of this glob­al lead­er­ship con­vo­ca­tion was a spe­cial sec­tion on pas­toral lead­er­ship. An­drews Uni­ver­si­ty pas­tor and schol­ar, Dwight Nel­son, ini­ti­at­ed the dis­cus­sion with a pro­found sem­i­nar, "Of Sheep and Shep­herds, and Oth­er Such Lead­ers."

He pre­sent­ed four spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship lessons: You must lead your peo­ple to God; You must feed your peo­ple with God; You must move among your peo­ple for God; You must evan­ge­lise your peo­ple on be­half of God. He re­mind­ed the pas­tors that in spite of the vast ar­ray of tech­no­log­i­cal de­vices, there is a "hu­man hunger for the per­son­al touch." He ap­pealed to the del­e­gates to cul­ti­vate a pas­sion­ate bur­den for the lost. We had many scin­til­lat­ing re­ports, but one of the most im­pres­sive and in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries was about South African pas­tor Paul Mawela and his wife, Martha. They had a con­cern about or­phans af­fect­ed and af­flict­ed with Aids. Now they and their team are tak­ing care of 794 or­phans, giv­ing them one meal a day at sev­en dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions. They al­so sup­port 90 child-led fam­i­lies, in which or­phans, some as young as 12 years old, take care of their sib­lings. Let us pray for this cou­ple. Grace must and will af­fect our re­la­tion­ships. Grace leads to for­give­ness. Grace prompts rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Grace heals fam­i­lies. Grace de­liv­ers. Grace en­cour­ages. Grace sets high stan­dards. Grace mo­ti­vates. Grace elim­i­nates re­venge, and pro­duces peace.