In this second part of an interview with the Loma Linda University Seventh-day Adventist Church's senior pastor Randy Roberts looks at the changing role of religion and the church.
By Gina Tenorio
1:31 am
Pastor Randy Roberts leads one of the largest Adventist congregations in the world right here in Loma Linda.
As senior Pastor for the Loma Linda University Seventh-day Adventist Church, he ministers to some 7,000 members. Many travel in from as far as San Diego and Orange counties.
Pastor Roberts recently sat down to speak with Redlands–Loma Linda Patch about the church, the Adventist community and religion. Part one of our interview was published April 27. He spoke about his background and what led him to become a minister.
In part two, the pastor discusses how some perceive the church, the role of religion in today’s world and the University Church’s role in the city.
I’ve gotten a mixed response when I’ve posted stories about the church and the community. My experience has been, quite honestly, nothing but positive. Dr. (Rhodes) Rigsby, the Mayor, has always been very open that he is a member of the church. His philosophy has always seemed to be one of, to paraphrase, live and let live. But not everyone seems to see it this way. Do you think people misunderstand the church?
I think so. Anytime you hear of a church that either isn’t well known, or is in some way, some fashion different than maybe many other churches that are more familiar, people tend to have questions about them. And since as Seventh-day Adventists, we worship on a different day, we worship on Saturday rather than Sunday, that sets us apart as somewhat different. And most of us (people in general) are at least a little bit uncertain, if not outright suspicious, of any kind of thing that is different -- whether it be a church or some other organization or a group of people. A lot of that is just based on uncertainty, lack of knowledge. We’re not sure who these people are, those kinds of things. So it’s not surprising there would be some different kinds of feelings.
But I hope that once there is an opportunity to interact with Seventh-day Adventists, get to know some of them better, get to know what they stand for ... I hope that that disappears and that there’s a positive impression.
From your perspective, is the church growing in numbers?
I can say this, it is a growing church that reflects the growth patterns of the larger Protestant Christian Faith.
What I mean by that is that in the northern world and in the western world, the numbers tend to be shrinking. In the Southern hemisphere and moving toward the east toward Africa and so forth, the numbers are really growing. So if you take it on balance, is the Seventh-day Adventist Church growing? The answer to that is, yes it is, in fact, quite significantly. But the places were it’s growing reflects where Christianity as a whole tends to be growing -- South America, Central America and Africa. Those are the places of the greatest growth.
Not so much here in North America. In fact in North America, and again I think this is reflective of Christian faith in general, the numbers are a little more, maybe static, and in some cases even declining.
Do you believe then that we are drifting away from our faith?
I think certainly, in America today, religion occupies a very different place, a very different prominence than it occupied even in my childhood a few decades ago. It’s a very different world than it was at that time. In same ways, yes people have stepped away from that. George Barna’sorganization, which does a lot research into these matters, says that the rates of Biblical illiteracy are very high. The kinds of things that society in general would once have known and recognized as being from the Bible many now don’t know and recognize that. They just don’t know.
They asked different questions of people, even people who claimed to go to church. One of the questions Barna’s organization asked was about the Epistles. And one of the comments they got back was that the Epistles were the wives of the Apostles. And yet, the Epistles are the letters that Paul and Peter and James and others wrote.
His organization says that that kind of lack of awareness, that Biblical illiteracy, is pretty high. I even read, just in the last two or three months, of one pastor who heard that stat and quoted it the next week in his sermon. Somebody stopped him at the door and said, “Well if the Epistles aren’t the wives of the Apostles, who’s wives are they?” So even the people sitting in church will have a lack of awareness.
I think the answer is yes. There is an America that has a very different emphasis on religion. In some cases, religion is not welcomed. In other cases, it’s mocked and derided, the Christian faith. I think there is a real difference than the world I knew in what years I did spend in this country. Like I said, I spent a lot of years out of this country when I was growing up, but we would always come back for vacations and furloughs. I did spend two or three years here. But even in my college years, Christian faith occupied a very different place from what it once did.
Having said all that. I think that gives the church the opportunity to be the church, to be the light of Jesus, the love of God in the world in a very unique way.
What do you teach people? How do impress this love and devotion to faith?
My role here, probably the most central way in which I do that, is through a preaching ministry. I do a lot of teaching as well. And my focus personally is for my wife and me to pour our lives into our two kids so they will grow up to be positive citizens who contribute to their world, who love God, who love others, who serve others.
So that maybe one of the ways you outlive your life is by the people who you disciple, the people who you pour your life into. Our kids are really our first order of business for us, and then our congregation after that.
A lot of people felt the church took a stand or should have taken a stance on some issues, including a proposed McDonald’s coming to the city to the loss of Sunday mail delivery, which conflicts with the Adventist belief of observing a Saturday Sabbath. What role do you feel the church should play in city politics?
Well, in this congregation, you will probably find people representing the whole spectrum. From one side of the people who will fight with all their strength to keep (McDonald’s) out to the other side and the people who would say this is a free country, allow people to make their own choices.
You would find the entire spectrum seated right here every week in worship. From an official angle, otherwise the official church, we do not and did not take a position on that. Our position is we are for health. We want to do everything we can to promote health for ourselves, for others, for everyone in our community. We’re very supportive of that. At the same time, we are for freedom of choice. Freedom of people’s ability to choose what they’re going to do.
That doesn’t mean that people can’t stand up against whatever they oppose -- whether it’s McDonald’s or whatever other organization might be building down the block. They have a right to do that. We’re not going to tell them we can’t. As a church, while we want to be healthy and want to encourage our members and friends in our community to be healthy, we do believe that any business has a right to do what it can to expand and to grow. I think we can understand that.
I can tell you that we decidedly, intentionally, avoid in our church, from the front, encouraging people to vote this way or to vote that way or to take this stand or take the other stand. That’s not something we get involved in. In fact we have a policy here among the pastoral staff that when an election is coming around for … two months or three months before the election, we will not knowingly or intentionally have any candidate participate publicly up front in the service because we’re not trying to promote this candidate over that candidate.
We’re here as pastors to pastor to our entire congregation. Whether they are on this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, our goal it to minister to each and everyone one of them, not to take political stances.
Could there be a scenario in which we would? I would hope so. But I haven’t seen it yet. The reason I would say I would hope so is because I just finished reading one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time, a book called "Bonhoeffer" written by Eric Metaxas. It’s one of the best sellers right now in Barnes and Noble. It’s a powerful book on life of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in World War II who took the exceedingly unpopular stand of opposing Hitler far before others did. He could just see where things were headed and he began to speak out against that. He was ultimately executed by the Nazis.
My point is to say, could there come something in which conceivably the church would take a stand, yes. I don’t know what that could be. But as Bonhoeffer did, there could conceivably come a time in any community or any country where people of faith or people of conscience would have to stand up and say we simply can’t go along with this, whatever that might be.
But in general terms certainly with city politics and other things like that, we intentionally as a church leaders pull back and respect people’s right to make those choices.
Now we can say we encourage you to get out and vote. We encourage you to get involved in your community; we encourage you to be active; we encourage you not to sit on the sidelines; but we don’t go a step further and say “This is how we expect you to vote. We expect you to stand.”
I hope we can teach some principals about ethical living and all the rest that will help inform people’s decision-making process as they make those choices, but Adventism has a pretty strong emphasis on free moral agency. And that is the right that God has given each one of us as individuals to make choices of conscience informed by our relationship with God, but which are true to our conscience.
In fact one side note, not the principal reason, but one side note is, like I said a moment ago we have the whole spectrum sitting in our pews. There have been times when I can look here and see this person and look there and see that person and know that they are in leadership on opposing sides of the same issue. They’re both there and they’re both worshipping. We respect that.
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