A General Conference (GC) Session year means potential changes in leadership in many levels of the Church—especially at the GC and their divisions and unions all around the world. The changes in leadership all occur through the process of the nominating committee. Most local church members know that every year or two there is a process to choose the local leadership of the church—elders, deacons, Sabbath School, Youth, Women, Pathfinders, etc. A selection committee chooses a nominating committee, approved by the church. This nominating committee fills all the various ministry roles needed. Time is spent in prayer seeking God’s will. Most people know those who they are nominating and voting for. The nominating committee is loosely modelled from what the apostles did in choosing a new apostle in Acts 1. The same process happens at the other levels of the Church all the way up to the GC.
The challenge is that people do not know those who are being nominated—unions have 20,000 to 600,000 members and the GC has 23 million. Those who are used to usual HR practices expect a job description, search committee, applications, interviews and recommendations. To help deal with this lack of knowledge at the GC nominating committee, the GC has asked all division and union people in elected positions nominated for a role to provide a brief CV-type document which includes their academic qualifications, their last five roles and at least five ministry achievements. The SPD does the same thing for all union and conference/mission people in elected roles. This means that at least people will have some knowledge about those who are options for various leadership roles.
For incumbents in the roles, the nominating committee is an ad hoc appraisal of the work that God has been doing through them. However, in the SPD we expect most of those incumbents to also go through a formal 360 appraisal process. Up to 10 people who work with the incumbent are asked to rate and comment on the major aspects of the person’s job description. My fellow officers and I went through the results of our appraisals recently. It was an affirming and challenging time. People recognised our strengths and these same people challenged us to improve our work with God. As the worldwide Church goes through this process for many people please pray with me that God’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).
