Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9–11, ESV).
We previously looked at how employees in Seventh-day Adventist institutions reacted when they were given a list of possible goals and asked which they thought were the most important. This week, we will look at which goals were considered the three most important to educational and non-educational employees.
The top three goals for both educational and non-educational employees were the same:
- Lead people to accept Jesus as their personal Saviour
- Share the message and teachings of Jesus with the world
- Prepare people for the second coming of Jesus.
Interestingly, the International Pastors’ Survey showed the same rankings for the top three goals.
There was slightly less concurrence at the bottom of the rankings, where the non-educational church employees ranked reducing poverty at 4, while educational employees ranked it at 7 and 8, but persuading people to join the church through baptism, teaching an ethical viewpoint, and convincing people of Seventh-day Adventist doctrine were situated in the lower part of the ranking for all three groups of people.
Church Activities Ranked Based on Percentages for “Should be One of the Top Two or Three Goals of the Church”
Participants were also specifically asked whether any of the goals suggested should not be a goal or mission of the Church. These answers aligned with the lowest-ranking goals of the previous question: 7.8% of educators and 9.3% of the others felt that persuading people to join the Seventh-day Adventist church should not be a goal of the church, while 8.6% of educators and 9% of the others believed that convincing people of the teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist Church should not be a goal.
Although worldwide, none of the activities had more than 10% of respondents claiming that it should not be a goal of the Church, when broken down by division, higher percentages can be seen. For example, 23.6% of North American Division educators and 20.1% of South American Division non-educators believed that convincing people of SDA doctrine should not be a goal of the Church, and 33.3% of non-educators in the Southern Asia Division believed that persuading people to join the Church should not be a goal.
Ellen White wrote, “By accepting Christ as his personal Saviour, man is brought into the same close relation to God, and enjoys His special favor as does His own beloved Son. He is honored and glorified and intimately associated with God, his life being hid with Christ in God. O what love, what wondrous love!” (Ellen G. White, Manuscript Releases, vol. 4, p 120). It is heartening to know that church employees around the world agree that the most important goals for the Church are not just increasing numbers or teaching ethics, but are the core beliefs of both Adventism and Christianity: leading people to Jesus as their personal Savior, sharing the message of Jesus with the world, and preparing people for His second coming.
You can access the full report here.
Created in collaboration with the Institute of Church Ministry.
Published by ASTR on 2/24/2026.
Photo: Tor Tjeransene/ Adventist Media Exchange (CC BY 4.0)