Together in Mission Celebrations Foster Conversation

This spring across five geographical regions - Vancouver, Medford, Bend, Springfield, and Portland - Oregon Conference administration and local church members gathered for worship, fellowship, and current updates on the state of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in our territory in an initiative called “Together in Mission.” Though we were able to connect with many of our local church members face-to-face, we wanted to make the information and statistics shared during those weekends available for anyone who wasn’t able to make it!

Five Primary Goals for the Upcoming Years:

Oregon Conference President Dan Linrud shared the top five primary areas of focus during his report:

Growing healthy people and healthy churches
Implementing a comprehensive plan for church growth, evangelism, and church planting
Loving and engaging all generations and people groups
Expanding the impact of Adventist Christian Education
Strategic leadership development

“As a church, we're at a crossroads,” shared Elder Linrud during his report, “and this crossroads necessitates focused attention on the health of our churches and our schools. We believe that with God's help and through strategic intentionality, we can be a vibrant church preparing for the Lord's return. Building toward this, we're focused on five major initiatives:

The first is growing healthy people and healthy churches. There is little more important than having healthy church communities. Healthy people and healthy churches are attractive places to be. People want to be a part of that type of family and to be impactful in their communities together. Our second goal is to implement a comprehensive plan for church growth, evangelism, and church planting. In Matthew chapter 28, before Jesus ascended to heaven, He called us to help others become his fully devoted disciples. This is what evangelism and church planting really are all about. By God's grace, we will plant even more vibrant churches over the next five years, connecting even more people in community together with Christ.

The third initiative is loving and engaging all generations and people groups. When we look around our churches, we can see that active membership is aging. We value and cherish every generation and every person as being part of our vibrant church family. Ensuring a robust future for the church requires us to engage all generations and all cultures and peoples on this journey of faith. That's going to be a focus we continue to lean into over these next five years.

The fourth initiative is expanding the impact of Adventist Christian education. We need our schools. We need our teachers and principals and local staff and volunteers that make our schools go! They are a vital link as we seek to pass on faith to the next generations. The pastors engaging in those schools together with them is important in this conference, and that's why we will be focused on that as well in the coming years.Our schools are reaching more community students today than we've ever reached before. There are opportunities there to connect more people with Jesus together through their impact.

The fifth initiative is strategic leadership development. Recently I learned that in the North American Division, 50% of pastors have reached retirement age while far fewer young people are actually committing to becoming pastors. Education is facing a similar challenge in getting new teachers. We are rapidly approaching a leadership crisis in the church. We believe that it is our calling to do our part by engaging in innovative strategic leadership development to grow the next generation of dynamic leaders for this church.

As we move forward in this five-year term, I'm excited about how God is already bearing fruit through these initiatives. This year we focus more attention on what it means to be in community with Jesus and others. I hope you'll join us at our Gladstone camp meeting this July 18 to 22 to worship and fellowship in ways that will remind us of what it means to be in community.”

Membership Statistics:

Pastor Kara Johnsson, Oregon Conference VP for Administration, shared that every membership metric moved in a positive direction over the course of 2022. Here are some quick numbers:

There are currently 171 congregations in the Oregon Conference - 135 churches, 20 groups, and 16 companies
Baptisms, professions of faith, and incoming membership transfers have all increased for the second year in a row
Nearly 400 of the 528 baptisms in 2022 can be traced to just four of our local Hispanic churches
Though our community is aging on average, 56% of new baptisms and professions of faith were people at or under 42 years old
More than twice as many members transferred into the Oregon Conference (769) than transferred out (341)
Though nearly 1000 people joined the Oregon Conference community through baptism, professions of faith, or incoming transfers in 2022, 372 of our members went to rest in Jesus, 68 memberships were removed, and 341 transferred to other conferences, bringing our total membership to 36,598 at the time of this report

Financial Report:

Brent Plubell, who served as the Oregon Conference VP for Finance until his recent move to the North Pacific Union, shared this during his financial report: “Today we'll look at a brief snapshot of where 2022 ended financially. The first thing that we look at is tithe. Tithe is the major driver of everything in the conference, and when we're talking about tithe, most of the time we’re talking about tithe from every local member that decides to give throughout the conference - we refer to that as ‘ordinary tithe.’ That is the tithe we budget on. ‘Extraordinary tithe’ is tithe that comes from maybe one or two members per year and is a significant amount. Our ordinary tithe decreased a small amount from 2021 to 2022. However, in 2022 we had no extraordinary tithe. Overall, when you add those together, tithe decreased about 10% - though the ordinary tithe decreased just 2%.

A major portion of our tithe, roughly 60%, goes to pay for pastors and teachers and everybody else in the ministry field - and most of that is directly through salaries and benefits, but a little bit goes to retirement for those that have come before us. A small portion is passed on to the North American Division, the North Pacific Union, and the General Conference for use here in the Northwest, across North America, and around the world. Roughly 7% goes to support church ministries like Big Lake Youth Camp, Children's Ministries, Pathfinders and Adventurers, or anything else that happens at your church that is supported by the conference. An additional 6% goes to fund support ministries such as Risk Management, Human Resources, and other general support functions that, while they may not be the most exciting things, are crucial to an organization the size of ours. A small percentage, roughly 1.7% went to support camp meeting this last year. An additional 2.7% goes to support administration. The last percentage, a very small 1.2% goes to support our smaller sister conferences - not only here in the Northwest with Alaska and Montana, but across the North American Division.

In addition to tithe, we have a couple major conference offerings - the first being Oregon Conference Youth Support. This offering goes to support Young Adult Ministries, Big Lake Youth Camp, and Adventist education. Oregon Conference Youth Support offerings have increased over the past two years! This is a trend we are excited to see as this offering saw the largest decrease during COVID. The second major conference offering that we look at is evangelism. Of course, evangelism happens twice a year in January and then in July at camp meeting. In 2022, evangelism offering saw a significant increase from 2021, but previous years have been significantly higher than in 2021. The major reason for that is that in past years we have had different donors step up and provide matching funds for the camp meeting offering.”

More to Come:

“I'm really excited about the innovative, dedicated team of servant leaders that God has assembled here in Oregon Conference,” shared Elder Linrud. “God is on the move in Oregon, and I'm thrilled to see how He will lead us in the coming years. Ask any of our team about the mission of our territory, and they'll tell you it's all about Jesus!”

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