The Adventist Church isn’t losing its best minds because people don’t love Jesus.
We’re losing them because the moment someone starts thinking deeply, we make them feel dangerous.
We say we want young leaders. But when they question, critique, or innovate, we quietly push them out of the room.
We love the word “truth”—just not when it challenges our version of it.
So we end up exporting our most creative, thoughtful Adventists—to podcasts, NGOs, startups, and spiritual-but-not-religious corners of the internet.
They didn’t stop believing in God. They just stopped believing that curiosity could survive in our pews.
We’ve built committees when we needed laboratories.
We’ve protected doctrines when we should have been protecting thinkers. And we’ve confused loyalty with silence.
But here’s the good news:
We can win them back.
Not with better branding or a new logo.
With humility. With leaders who can say, “I don’t know, but let’s explore that together.”
With churches that treat tough questions as sacred, not subversive.
With a culture that rewards courage more than compliance.
If Adventism truly believes truth can stand investigation, then let’s stop being afraid of the investigators.
Because our best minds never wanted to leave.
They just wanted to be taken seriously.
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