SAN ANTONIO, Texas — “We are satisfied the deck is sufficiently stacked with gray heads and testosterone,” said General Conference Session logistics spokesperson Sonny Viejo to Adventist reporters as he reported on the composition of the delegate pool for this July’s San Antonio-based world meetings. According to official statistics, over 80% of the delegates chosen for the meetings are male and well over half are old enough to be grandparents several times over.
“Our delegates have been handpicked to ensure the least possible work gets done and hardly anything changes in top leadership,” said Viejo. “We do have some work to do to make sure we shore up previous convictions against challenges from fresh thought or inspiration but we trust these delegates will ensure we don’t get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Viejo explained that with rapidly growing church membership and important issues like that of women’s ordination to consider, church leaders were especially keen to pick the best men available for the delegate slots. “Who better to decide whether women are allowed to function as ordained ministers than the wise men who have been doing such a great job pastoring so far?” asked Viejo.
“At the very beginning of our history as a church we had to make do with very young leaders, the most influential of which was a woman,” said Viejo, shaking his head. “Man, we’ve come a long way since then.”
