Seventh-day Adventist denomination - said to be 5th largest Christian denomination world-wide

SabbathBlessings said:

@BobRyan did not write the Christian Today article, so it's not his job to audit the article

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Nor did I ask him to audit the article.

He was simply sharing an independent article that the Adventist Church is doing just fine despite the few posters on CF trying to make a case that its doom and gloom for the church, when that far from the truth.

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I don't know what the future holds for the church. They are very dedicated to outreach,

However, retention has been going down now for decades, and that is a concern.

Certainly some are doing well in outreach, and Amazing Facts is among them. They have been quite effective even since the days of Joe Crews, who I enjoyed hearing in person.

BobRyan said:

I am not ChristianityToday and I do not know the method they used for grouping denominations.

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Nor did I ask you that, and you know it. In fact, I specifically was addressing your earlier objection that they used groupings in the first place, and noted the Liturgist's list which avoided that. You have been studiously avoiding that list.

I did not audit their work and also did not audit these guys in this next example:

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Nor did I ask you to, as you are well aware.

COVID year 2020 is the first year in a long time that we fall below the "A pentecost influx of 3000+ baptisms every single day on average"

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Also not what I asked about.

"The actual question"? I assume you have a topic where I personally am the auditor and categorizer of all Christian denominations if I dare to quote two independent sources that do not agree with your POV.

I am ok with you having that POV.

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Bob, if you care so little for your credibility that you will not answer the straight-forward question that came from your own objection to grouping denominations, so be it.

But I will leave it here one more time in case you change your mind, or anyone wants to take a look at it for themselves:

The question:

Do these specific churches have more members than the SDA church?

the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church
the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate),
the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church,
the Church of Christ in Congo,
the Church of England,
the Calvary Chapel
Assemblies of God in Brazil

tall73 said:

Nor did I ask him to audit the article.



I don't know what the future holds for the church. They are very dedicated to outreach,

However, retention has been going down now for decades, and that is a concern.

Certainly some are doing well in outreach, and Amazing Facts is among them. They have been quite effective even since the days of Joe Crews, who I enjoyed hearing in person.

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I personally wouldn't worry about the future of the SDA church, I have no doubt the church is going to be just fine.

tall73 said:

Nor did I ask you that, and you know it. In fact, I specifically was addressing your earlier objection that they used groupings in the first place, and noted the Liturgist's list which avoided that. You have been studiously avoiding that list.



Nor did I ask you to, as you are well aware.



Also not what I asked about.



Bob, if you care so little for your credibility that you will not answer the straight-forward question that came from your own objection to grouping denominations, so be it.

But I will leave it here one more time in case you change your mind, or anyone wants to take a look at it for themselves:

The question:

Do these specific churches have more members than the SDA church?

the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church
the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate),
the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church,
the Church of Christ in Congo,
the Church of England,
the Calvary Chapel
Assemblies of God in Brazil

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The answer is of course yes and I do hope we can universally acknowledge this and move on.

By the way, the article @BobRyan linked to measured communion sizes, in which the SDA scored roughly at 10th place, given the variable of the SBC, so based on updated stats I have showing the Anglican Church in Nigeria at 25, and the Evangelical Church in Germany within the statistical margin of error of the SBC, so the same size or larger, this incoherent change of focus to individual churches, which ChristianityToday did not measure, looks like it literally had no effect. But I am glad we measured them anyway.

This whole thread is frustrating to me because to quote Yogi Berra, I had this conversation with @BobRyan a year ago, so its deja vu all over again, concordantly a systemic anomaly, ergo a meta-glitch in a glitch in the Matrix causing a catastrophic systems crash which will kill every living thing connected to the Matrix, which coupled with the extermination of the humans in the Earth’s core, will mean the annhilation of our species, to paraphrase the Architect, simultaneously the first Matrix sequel’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. My main regret of the new film was the revelation . But I did like it, especially .

BobRyan said:

They all practice Believer's baptism... so do Adventists
They all have 66 books in the Bible ... so do Adventists
They all believe in a literal death burial and resurrection and ascension of Christ... so do Adventists
They all do not consider themselves to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention if they are actually not part of it.. as do Adventists

Indeed many similarities across some of these denominations

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Sure, but there are also many differences. For one, aside from Seventh Day Baptists, Baptists don't do the whole Saturday Sabbath thing.

We also deny annihilationism, and affirm a traditional Christian view on heaven and hell.

There's also disagreements over soteriolofy and Ellen White.

While Baptists and Adventists have many surface level similarities, it's like saying that Baptists and Church of Christ are quite similar due to credobaptism, congregational polity and sola scriptura.

BobRyan said:

The different Baptist denominations do not submit to or agree with each other on policy, practices or doctrines and do not even claim to be part of one single higher level denomination.

People "who wish" them into a single denomination are welcome to have that opinion however.

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To my knowledge, most of the differences between the various Baptist denominations is often political, or diverging on one or two different points of doctrine.

The Southern Baptist Conventiom infamously split off from a larger Baptist group over the slavery issue, and a more recent split with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship due to the Conservative Resurgence.

Seventh Day Baptists think you should worship on Saturday, but otherwise they don't seem too different from any other Baptist denomination as far as I can tell.

Free Will Baptists believe you can forfeit your salvation, when most other Baptists don't.

BobRyan said:

And using almost the same list for the first four places - as did ChristianityToday - I suspect a similar criteria was used in both cases.

However they do not put SBC denomination as 5 .. rather they lump all Baptist denominations into one fictional denomination entity that none of them would agree "exists"

I have added that note to post #2 in case folks have a hard time finding it.
Friday at 12:44 PM #2

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Umm no, that’s not the case, the Baptist World Federation is a communion of some Baptist churches, and the list measured communions. Just like the Anglican communion is a communion of some Anglican churches. Not ACNA, not the Continuing Anglicans, not the Reformed Episcopal Church, et cetera.

But on measuring individual churches the SBC itself probably is as large as the SDA, the size difference being in the margin of error.

Remember, I broke down the numbers for both communions, which the CT measured, and individual denominations. The bottom line is the SDA is not in fifth place in either of them; tenth, at best. Which again, is nothing to be ashamed of. You still have more members than the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church USA combined. Although probably not in the US.

BobRyan said:

Because the reality is a "pentecost event of 3000 baptism per day on average" every single day for over a decade - and all of them used that same set of doctrines icedragon has proposed that we change.

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I believe if the SDA listens to @icedragon101 and has a respectful dialogue with him, and implements some or all of his proposals as a result, it could convert 6,000 a day on average, based on what you say about it. And probably retain all of them.

Also, of those 3,000 a day, people who converted from other Nicene Christian churches obviously don’t count. For that number to be meaningful it has to be Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, African tribal religions, Jehovahs Witnesses, and especially Atheists who were never baptized being baptized for the first time in a Christian church. If you take 3,000 people a day from the Roman Catholic Church or the Southern Baptist Convention or the Assemblies of God that may be an internal gain for Adventism, and suggest you are doing something right in terms of some aspect of your ministry, but it is a net zero for Christianity, and not a Pentecost moment, since the people already were Christians and just changed ecclesiastical affiliation from their existing church to one more pastorally appealing or geographically convenient.

There is one area which is an exception, I know of people becoming Adventists because of the pernicious trend of youth sports teams at public schools in the US to schedule practice for Sunday morning. This is preferable to them becoming unchurched, but I see it as a wakeup call for denominations to have daily services in as many parishes as possible, especially on Wednesday, Friday evening and Saturday morning and evening.

@The Liturgist
@tampasteve

BobRyan said:

I agree that any loss of members is a concern and all denominations experience it. But "net growth" is in all cases a function of new baptisms as offset by loss of members and of course "how accurately" that loss is actually tracked or hidden in a given denomination's yearly statistics report.

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Despite their efforts, there is still a need for more auditing in the Adventist church.

https://documents.adventistarchives...0.1276442506.1642790773-2002902401.1642790772

As has been stated here many times before, a regular and rigorous program of auditing is necessary to obtain a clear picture of how well we are retaining members. Charts 1 and 2 dramatically illustrate this point. In 2018 the Southern Asia Division (SUD), for the first time, conducted a far-reaching audit, the results of which were reported in early 2019. They removed 491,657
names from their membership records. This is a laudable step toward more accurate statistics for SUD, but highlights why regular audits are needed to understand retention: there were clearly many members leaving, whose departure was not noticed until now, and such a large spike of old departures hides the data regarding more recent departures. (It should be noted that the Inter-American Division also reported significant audit figures for 2019.)

How about we share something positive for a change.

I love this Adventist singing group. They have been around for decades. Hopefully this song will cheer you up!


PS If you watch this very short uplifting video, you will see its not doom or gloom for the SDA church. I hope everyone is blessed watching it.