GRAND TERRACE, Calif. — The search committee seeking to replace recently retired Azure Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church Senior Pastor John Brunt has confirmed that they have asked current General Conference President Ted Wilson to consider the post.
“As exhilarating as it is to be GC President, I think it is easy to get disconnected from the real issues in the field,” said Wilson in an email response to the call while on an overseas trip. “I am American and it might be time for me to reconnect with Adventists from my neck of the woods.”
Although he did not give a “yes” or “no” answer to the call, Wilson added that “due to the rapid secularization of the West, the United States is emerging as one of the most critical mission fields in the world, so I will not take this call lightly.”
Analysts do not expect a final decision from Wilson for some time, but have pointed out a potential sticking point: the Azure Hills Church is very much in favor of ordaining women, a position that Wilson famously opposes.
“If President Wilson were to abandon the GC bureaucracy and take this front-line position at Azure Hills, he would come face-to-face with a tough reality,” said Los Angeles-based Church Planting Strategist Sola Fide. “The cookie-cutter approach the General Conference has taken in forcing policies on churches worldwide without regard for cultural realities has done a massive disservice to the work of sharing Christ.”
Fide added that, “what works in Rome doesn’t always play well in the provinces.”
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