Depends who you ask, and whether their union just lost a vote.
On paper, a General Conference session is the highest authority in the Seventh-day Adventist Church under God. Then Working Policy B 05 hands the rest out. The local church decides membership. The conference hires the pastor. The union decides who gets ordained. The session defines what we believe. Divisions are not a fifth level sitting above the unions. They are the General Conference with a regional office and a different accent.
San Antonio is where that got tested. On July 8, 2015, delegates voted 1,381 to 977 against letting each division decide women’s ordination for itself. Five people abstained. Afterward, Secretariat said the line that “entrusts” ordination to the union is delegated authority, not a blank check. The criteria still belong to the world church. Columbia and Pacific had already voted, back in 2012, to ordain without regard to gender. Policy B 95 lets a higher body dissolve a union it calls rebellious. Nobody pulled that lever. We got documents, compliance language, and two practices living under one policy.
The money is less Silver Spring than people think. Tithe goes to the conference storehouse. Conferences and unions send agreed shares up the line. The General Conference does not take the envelope out of your hand.
The bigger change is who is in the room. On July 4, 2025, Erton C. Köhler, a Brazilian and the first South American in the job, was elected 1,721 to 188 after Ted Wilson’s fifteen years. The church counts more than 23 million members, most of them outside North America, and session delegates follow that map.
The General Conference is powerful when it is in session. Between sessions it is a committee, a policy book, and a reminder that your union is not the whole church.
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