The quinquennial secretariat advisory of the Northern Asia-Pacific Division (NSD) was held at the NSD headquarters office in Ilsan, Korea, from May 31 to June 2, 2016. As most of the executive secretaries of the unions, local conferences, and mission had been newly elected for this quinquennium, the three days of advisory meetings served as a timely training program.
The executive secretary works closely with the president as the executive officers are the secretary and the treasurer/chief financial officer in the Adventist Church organization from the General Conference to the local conference/mission/field levels.
The duties and relationships of the secretary are involved with various leaderships and more broader human relationships. In order to address these issues, General Conference (GC) undersecretary Myron Iseminger gave helpful lectures to the participants, especially on the topics of “Spirituality and Leadership, Officer Relationship, and Leadership Responsibilities.”
John Thomas, GC Adventist Volunteer Services (AVS) director, talked about the AVS programs, missionary care with West-East cultural differences, and crisis management. In his presentation on AVS, he suggested that more young people should be invited for AVS missionary programs. He showed interesting statistical figures that the volunteers’ second greatest area of interest is youth ministry, but the calling organizations’ most requested position types do not include it as a priority, and it ranked only 9th.
Two major areas of the secretariat are mission and administrative/clerical works. Church policies, structure, and committee meetings, recording work, and archives support the mission as important administrative functions. Karen Porter, GC associate secretary, provided detailed instructions on committee meetings, including agenda preparation and minutes and record management including archives.
One of the highlighted agenda items was the issue of nurture and retention. The NSD assistant to the president Joo Minho who has been serving as the vice-chair of the NSD Nurture and Retention Committee was invited to report on the NSD retention issue and to share the progress of the world church and the NSD retention meetings and strategic plans.
Relating to this retention issue, Myron Iseminger suggested that membership audit is a revival and reformation issue and should function for finding and reclaiming lost members in a redemptive way. He recommended that the GC membership software be implemented in our territory in order to help with membership management, including accurate tracking, counting, and transferring. It was introduced as a powerful tool that can provide live-statistical analysis online.