Future Faith

Alumni talk more effective mission in Zoom video series

A conversation with an Avondale alumna who marched with pastoral colleagues in a Black Lives Matter protest launches a video series about re-imagining faith.

Then the lead pastor of the Oasis Christian Center in Vancouver, Washington, Pr Moe Ioane Stiles organised ministers from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Oregon to gather June 3 on the streets of Portland as a protest against the injustice of racism. Joining the gathering: President Dr Dan Linrud. “When a leader like Dan, a president at that, lends his voice . . . what that says to the rest of the people [who] are following him, or her, [is] that you are a safe person to be around,” says Stiles. The gathering and a subsequent march through the city “affirmed the need for us to show up . . . in the public square.” A colleague subsequently thanked Stiles for making a stand because it encouraged him and others to say more about the issue.

These comments come from a Zoom interview with friend Nathan Brown soon after Stiles’ release from two weeks of coronavirus quarantine in Melbourne, Australia, where she has returned on sabbatical. “It’s just a snippet of a larger and ongoing conversation we have about life, faith and the humble task of changing the world,” says Brown, the Book Editor at Signs Publishing.

The interview launched a Sydney Adventist Forum initiative called Future Faith, a series of conversations with Seventh-day Adventists who are re-imagining their church and their faith for more effective mission. “Looking back gives us perspective on who we are and how we’ve come to where we are now,” says alumni Clansi Rogers, who hosts the series in her role as Sydney Adventist Forum Vice-President, “but looking forward gives us hope and allows us to live out our purpose. Looking forward is also the only way to engage with our community and contemporary issues of faith, ethics, and mission.”

The Stiles–Brown conversation is the first of five in the Future Faith series. Others reimagine church, ministry to refugees, fundamental beliefs and finance. Each episode features a different Generation X Adventist interviewer and an interviewee. All but one of the interviewers and all of the interviewees—Stiles, Dr Peter Roennfeldt, Pr Andre van Rensburg, Dr Ray Roennfeldt and Dr Ken Long—are alumni.

Peter Roennfeldt, a church planter, challenges viewers to look beyond traditional assumptions for a revival of the Jesus movement. Van Rensburg, a minister for refugees from the Middle East, speaks about his parishioners being more interested in belonging than believing. Ray Roennfeldt, a theologian who is the former vice-chancellor and president at Avondale, asks whether we can reframe Adventist theology and doctrine so it is inclusive rather than exclusive? While Long talks Me- and G-economies.