www.sdaforme.com–a new website defending Adventist truth

Rocky Mountain pastor Michael Campbell, one of my good friends, believes in connecting with his community. He’s enjoyed good success in forming bonds with local civic and Christian leaders in Montrose, Colorado—until he interviewed to be a volunteer board member for a respected Christian agency. To his surprise, Dr. Campbell met intense opposition to his participation from a lady who just one week previously said she had not known anything about Seventh-day Adventists. To learn who we are and what we believe, she did what everybody does these days and “Googled” the name of our denomination.

Instantly she got connected with a host of hostile websites that slander the Adventist message, mission and our founders—particularly Ellen White. Michael told a camp meeting audience in Minnesota that he has never experienced anything quite like it before—instant rejection through Internet slander.

Seventh-day Adventists around the world are beginning to encounter similar organized opposition over the Internet. Every time an evangelistic brochure gets mailed to your neighbors, we are at the mercy of getting Googled into rejection before people even have a chance to meet us and know who we really are. The same is true when you invite a coworker to join you for Sabbath worship.

Our good name is getting massacred by an assortment of anti-Adventist websites, usually run by out-of-touch former members. People who dislike or even despise Adventists are defining us to our neighbors. It’s a huge problem, getting worse all the time. We have to do something about it.

Several of us here in Lincoln, Nebraska have just set up a website—www.sdaforme.com—responding to anti-Adventist opposition with a positive presentation of God’s mercy and truth in our message and mission.

This new website was born the night of June 26, when a former Adventist pastor came to town to do a weekend seminar at a local community church. That Friday evening I heard my Seventh-day Adventist faith defamed hour after hour. The attacks focued on our beliefs regarding 1) the Sabbath, 2) the pre-Advent Judgment and 3) the role of Ellen G. White. The main speaker declared: “You can’t be an Adventist without being tainted” by legalism and other unbiblical errors. One of his leading assistants declared to the audience: “God removed from me the Adventist spirit and gave me His Holy Spirit.” As if we Adventists are possessed or at least hounded by evil spirits!

The anti-Adventist presenters advertised their own websites, along with half a dozen others, similar to the ones that had poisoned the mind of the woman Pastor Campbell tried to connect with in his community.

Frustrated and heartbroken to see many of the 350 people in the audience confused and led astray, I retreated after the meeting to the Mid-America Union headquarters office. In the basement, our communication department has storage closet with a private prayer location. With nobody else in the building past 10 p.m. Friday night, I cried out to God to do something to defend His truth. Just then my cell phone rang. It was my friends Chris and Candice McConnell (who had redesigned our Union website). Although I’m three decades older than they are, the three of us share a common bond of confidence and appreciation for God’s grace and truth reflected in the fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists.

Chris and Candice also had attended the meeting that night. They felt impressed to propose a plan—why not start our own website on which we could address all those misunderstandings and misrepresentations against Seventh-day Adventists? I perceived their proposal as God’s answer to the problem I was praying about. The result is the website, www.sdaforme.com.

Although we have set up this online resource with the blessing of the Mid-America Union president, Roscoe Howard, all its content is our own–not supplied by an official church committee. The website name (also accessible as www.sda4me.com, if that’s easier for you to remember) tells you what it is: simply our personal expression of conviction and appreciation for the privilege of belonging to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Chris and Candice contributed their technical professional expertise, and I contributed the doctrinal content, based on articles, graduate papers, scripts and sermons that I’ve written over the past three decades on the points of Adventist truth under attack.

Our goal is not to counterattack the enemies of Adventism, but rather to counter their attack in the spirit of God’s grace and truth. We don’t pretend that the Adventist Church is everything it ought to be. In fact, we are quite candid in confessing ongoing issues with legalism, inconsistency and intolerance that have disheartened thousands of formerly faithful and fervent Adventists, influencing them to leave our denomination. We hope to reconnect with their minds through authenticity and credibility while winning their hearts with love.

That’s our goal, anyway. My lead blog post is titled: “Please forgive us!—and don’t forsake us.”

Chris, Candice and I extend our welcome for you to visit www.sdaforme.com, and to invite your friends there too. There is something else you can help us with, and this is really important: When people Google the controversial issues being agitated against our church, we want our new website to show up among all the opposition websites. For this to happen, we need to get www.sdaforme.com linked to as many Adventist websites around the world as possible. Please have your local church website list us as a link. Also, if you have a personal Facebook page or similar social networking account, we have a “widget” you can use to create an automatic link. Click on the “Tell a Friend” tab and you will get connected.

One more request: please pray that this website will minister to members among us who are quietly agonizing over questions raised about the Sabbath, the pre-Advent judgment, and the ministry of Ellen White. We don’t want to scold them for suffering conscientious doubts after somebody else challenged their faith. Nor will we offer superficial platitudes—denominational “happy talk”— intended to brush aside their questions. These precious brothers and sisters have honest questions that deserve honest answers. Chris, Candice and I want our new website to be a safe place where they can get the information they need to remain faithful Seventh-day Adventists, happy again in the grace and truth that God has entrusted to our church.

Pray also that we can reconnect with former Seventh-day Adventists, precious sheep now scattered from our flock. May God help us engage them in a conversation that will eventually guide them home with us again.