How the Church Works

Ellen G. White is one of the most well-known figures in Adventism.

 

She was a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and Adventists regard her as a "prophet." She's even listed on Smithsonian's 2014 list of "100 Most Influential Americans of all time."

 

That's a big legacy. And with that legacy comes a lot of lore, tradition and baggage.

 

So how do we find out who Ellen White really was, and what her role in the Adventist church should be?

 

Guests: Dwain Esmond of the White Estate and historian Michael Campbell

After Ellen White's death in 1915, the Seventh-day Adventist Church had to answer several questions about both the past and the future.

Would there be a successor to Ellen White's "prophetic gift?" How did prophetic inspiration work? And was she inspired at all?

As the church wrestled with these questions, the world was also dealing with the existential aftermath of a World War I. This journey would bring many interesting chapters - controversy over Ellen White's writings, a furious debate that split the church into factions, and even murder - that we're still living through, generations later. 

Guests: Dwain Esmond from the White Estate and historian Michael Campbell

The local church is the foundation of everything the Adventist church does, but sometimes we think that local church ministry is a one-size fits all approach. 

If we've learned anything from this podcast series it's that context matters.

So for this episode, instead of looking at the larger institutional church, we're zooming back into the local setting: four "churches", four different communities, four approaches to ministry.

In the last 10 episodes of this podcast, we've explored who the Seventh-day Adventist Church is and how it got to be that way - its mission, beliefs, structure and struggles. But the world we live in has a changed a lot since 1844. And really, it's changed a lot since 2014. 

So in our final episode we look to the future and ask - what's next?

 

Guests: G. Alexander Bryant, George Knight, Lowell Cooper, Pedrito Maynard-Reid, Berit von Pohle, Frank Hasel, Kevin Burton, Ken Denslow, Gary Thurber, Joseph Kidder, Dwain Esmond. 

Miss How the Church Works? Check out our sister podcast They Also Served, which explores the untold stories of women who impacted American Christianity, Adventism, and the world. 

Subscribe over on the They Also Served feed so you don't miss when the first episodes drop in Summer 2024! 

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