Some educators at Adventist colleges have joined the fray as well, resentful that church leaders want to formally assess their and their students total commitment to God with annual reports and outside evaluators. Some women, meanwhile, are voicing objections to the irony that a church co-founded by a woman, although it allows women to serve as pastors, limits their duties and refuses to fully ordain them. Overseas where membership is swelling controversy is also swirling. Questions about the church s use of international relief money have mounted, a power struggle among Ethiopian Adventists has erupted, and a pastor from Rwanda has been charged with genocide for allegedly orchestrating the executions of thousands of people who sought refuge at a church compound in 1994. Even though only a small percentage of Adventists are openly challenging their leaders, historians of religion say the church may be facing some of its most serious upheaval.
Some congregants desperately don t want to hear anything negative.
He dismisses much of it as the baseless griping of a disgruntled few among a membership of roughly 10 million, most of it abroad. A History of Complaints Dogs Adventist Aid Agency Back and forth they volleyed under the Rwandan sun, the minister and the church auditor. Too distracted to finish the match, the minister idled to the net. Pained, he began to reveal to the auditor what had gone so terribly wrong in the African nation s Seventh-day Adventist hunger relief program the purloined food, the misappropriated U.S. taxpayer money, the wasted hopes. Not one but two courts were built with U.S. government relief aid the second constructed so players would not have to squint in the sun.