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Perspective On The 1901/1903 Restructuring
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Nov. 30 - Perspective On the 1901/1903 Restructuring

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I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field. Ezek. 36:30, NIV.

The restructuring of the church set it up for productivity and efficiency as its worldwide mission program sped forward in a way that would have been impossible with the problems of the old structure.

We should note, however, that the 1901/1903 organization was not a new structure. It retained the general outline of the 1861/1863 plan, but modified it to meet the needs of an evolving church.

Modification, however, was not the ideal that some of the delegates brought with them in 1901/1903. The Jones/Waggoner faction had sought total revolution. In the end their bid for a drastic reshaping of the church lost out for several reasons. Not the least was that their model was theologically inadequate in the sense that it focused on the individual church member and left no room for a practical approach to unified action. Theoretically, it sounded fine to say that every person would work in harmony with every other person if they were converted, but the biblical picture reflects both less perfectionism and a more complex view of sin than did Adventism' would-be revolutionaries.

The revolutionary party also regularly took Ellen White's quotations out of their literary and historical contexts and thereby made her say things that she did not believe. She, for example, had no problem with the title of "president" and regularly used it.

The approach of Daniells was more down to earth and was quite in harmony with that of
James White who had engineered the 1861/1863 organization. Both men looked for an efficient structure that would complete the task of carrying the Adventist message to the ends of the earth in as short a time as possible so that Christ might come.

Efficiency for mission is the keyword in Seventh-day Adventist organizational history.  While most delegates at the 1903 session agreed with its final conclusions, M. C. Wilcox made an important point when he noted that the church should not be organizationally inflexible. It should leave itself open to adapt as the needs of mission demanded.

 

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Thank You, Father, for a church structure that can reach out to the entire world in a unified manner. We want Jesus to come more than anything else.
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