Reviewing the Adventist Reviews of November

November 8, 15, 22
Vol. 189, Numbers 31, 32, 33
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1531
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1532
http://www.adventistreview.org/index.php?issue=2012-1533

NOTE TO READERS:
WORLD NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES is an important section of each magazine. I don’t usually report on its contents because it is available at the online address I provide with every review.

GENERAL COMMENTS
When I tried to work up the enthusiasm to review single issues, I couldn’t. Perhaps I’m becoming jaded or bored, but I felt overwhelmed by devotional pieces that seemed to smother my desire to be a better Adventist. Consequently, this is a Review trifecta in which I give props to those writers that engaged me intellectually.

In the November 8 Review I learned that the ADVENTIST CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IS GROWING OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE AND SOON OVERSEAS TITHE WILL ECLIPSE GIVING FROM NORTH AMERICA. The reporter was Edwin Manuel Garcia from the Adventist News Network.

Tithe that originates in the North American Division has long provided most of the Seventh-day Adventist world budget, but a dramatic membership surge in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is reversing that decades-old trend.

If the religious landscape continues its rapid population shift, funding provided by countries in the so-called Global South will likely overtake the amount given by the Global North within five years.

“Europe and the United States 
are no longer at the epicenter of the Christian world, because the majority of Christians now reside outside of these two continents,” secretary G. T. Ng told about 350 delegates.

The implications for Adventism are potentially far-reaching, Ng suggested, ranging from a redistribution of church funding to a “reverse missionary movement,” where the notions of “sending country” and “receiving country” are tossed aside.

In 1960 the Adventist Church sent out 490 long-term missionaries, and about 90 percent of them originated from North America, Europe, and Australia, known as the Global North. But in 2010 the Global North’s share of missionaries dropped to 54 percent, because of an increase in missionaries sent from the Southern Asia-Pacific Division, South American Division, and Inter-American Division.

“The paradigm,” Ng said, “highlights the potential for the Global South to evangelize the Global North.”

The explosive growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America coincides with slow and stagnant growth in Europe and the United States, in part because of an aging membership, Ng said. All of the 15 union conferences whose membership declined between 2000 and 2010 were in the three European divisions.

In 1960 the church in the Global South had a membership of 675,000, or 54 percent of world membership. A half century later, by 2010, membership in the Global South had climbed to 16 million, or 91.5 percent of world membership.

The Global North, meanwhile, had 570,000 members in 1960 and reached 1.5 million, or just 8.5 percent of total world membership, in 2010.

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LETTER TO A MISSIONARY DENTIST by Doyle Nick in the November 15 Review was a gem. It’s a MUST READ for potential mission dentists. The following is a sample of the advice offered.

Identify as quickly as you can the features of your adopted culture that are superior; there will be several. Embrace them, incorporating them permanently into your personal and family culture. This will enrich your life, make it possible for you to better appreciate your adopted home, and allow you to work on equal footing with those around you…

You must care for your practice and your profession. In some parts of the world, church leaders have considered dental clinics to be little more than a source of cash, and some clinics have been destroyed because all resources were drained, starving the business and depleting professional effectiveness. Educate those around you and resist this. Your practice must have modern equipment, current materials, and cutting-edge techniques. Anything less misrepresents our mission and our God. Likewise, be sure that you invest adequate time and money into your own professional development, knowledge, and skill. Take care of the staff members on your dental team, and be sure that while they are held accountable, they are also secure, well trained, and respected.

STRANDED! by Brittany Harwood provided the following arresting quote.

Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno wrote, “Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not God Himself.”

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The November 22 Issue included medical advice from my favorite duo of docs, Allan R. Handysides and Peter N. Landless. As usual, they provide invaluable information about common medical conditions. For PSORIASIS sufferers, this is a MUST READ.