MCA
Members for Church Accountability Inc.
2000 Second Quarter
This is the quarterly newsletter of Members for Church Accountability. The objective of this organization is to promote accountability within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. MCA itself is primarily an umbrella organization within which representative/agents and their supporters can work to further this objective.
Section 1 - Financial Report
Summary financial statement for second quarter 2000:
Section 2 – Trustees’ Reports
Norm Smith - Secretary Treasurer
For any of you that would like to contact us by e-mail our address is: advmca@aol.com. Our web site address is: http://www.advmca.org. Again we would like to encourage MCA members to read this web site and to invite their friends to read it. If you don't have access to the web, perhaps you could ask a friend who does, to let you read it. This is an economical means of spreading the word about MCA. Mailings are quite expensive by comparison. Information about a web site can spread quickly on the Internet. If each person mails the site address with their recommendation to several friends, and they in turn tell others, the word is soon passed to a large number.
The second quarter went by quickly. Activities of the treasurer were focused on working with the accountant to get the federal tax return prepared and sent off. The General Conference Reform Group leaders have been making arrangements for another "invitation to membership" type mailing. They have started this mailing. Work has also been started on preparing a presentation that would explain what MCA is all about, for use whenever the opportunity arises.
If there is a member who would like to help with (or take charge of) a project, a very useful one comes to mind. It would be good to have a collection of constitutions and bylaws for the various church conference levels. It would not need to be a complete collection for every conference but a good sampling would really be helpful. If there are one or more of you that would be willing to work on such a project, you could let me know so that we could avoid duplicated effort.
Section 3 - Amendments and Elections
- Nothing this quarter.
Section 4 - Member Letters
This section is for printing the letters that members send in. It provides the means for members to communicate with one another. It is also one way that representative/agents can communicate with those in their group. Needless to say, these letters do not speak for the MCA organization itself. So far as time and budget allow, we intend to print all letters from members which appear to be written for inclusion in the newsletter (please say so if you do not wish your letter to be printed). We will print the shortest letters first. Where it seems appropriate, the editor will make comments in response to letters.
A member who would rather not be identified writes (in part):
I notice some of your correspondents are not interested in your newsletters because they contain "gossip". The dictionary defines "gossip" as "groundless rumors" which means the correspondents feel you are spreading lies. But are these people not interested in the truth ...? But merely dismissing the truth as "gossip" is utterly irresponsible!
I also find that many Adventists are confused. They assure me "the Lord is in charge." Does that mean we have to sit back and do nothing? Why should we preach the Gospel if God is in charge? Was God in charge when the Jews had Him (Jesus) crucified? He certainly was in charge, but the devil had to be unmasked. I find that some Adventists don't like to hear the truth about conditions in the SDA church... Elijah was accused of "troubling Israel" when he pointed out the sins of Israel, when in fact the church leaders were "troubling Israel". I have been taught that we need the "Elijah message" in these days, but Elijah is "troubling the church" with his "straight testimonies". Adventists need to wake up. We are living in serious times and we need to address the problems in the church like God's prophets ( including E. G. White ) did.
EDITORIAL COMMENT: We at MCA take the matter of distinguishing between fact and gossip very seriously. Allegations are sent to us that are not printed in this newsletter or in our other mailings. We appreciate the information that is sent to us, but we are not yet in a position to obtain the facts in many of these cases. However, when extremely serious allegations have been made or the allegations have already been made in a public manner, we believe that it is responsible to report the fact that such allegations have been made. In reporting on such allegations we try to be careful not to claim that the contents of the allegations are indeed true, however, that the allegations have been made is in itself a true and verifiable fact. Our goal is to eventually be in the position to responsibly obtain the true facts whenever serious allegations of misconduct are made. We believe that church members should have a means to take responsible action when "whistleblowers" come forward or others report on misconduct. We also believe that church members should have the opportunity to arrange independent audits so that they know as a routine matter, the true facts ( good and bad ) about the church's conduct, and also so that honest church employees are less likely to be put into the position of needing to step into the role of a "whistleblower".
We too are sensitive to being called troublemakers. However, we do not consider ourselves troublemakers any more than we consider the regular church auditors to be troublemakers. The simple fact is that responsible church members should know what is going on in their church. Something is terribly wrong when church members first find out about some problem in their church by reading about it in a public newspaper. Even when a newspaper makes false allegations, we think that church members should have a means of knowing for sure that the allegations are indeed false. We make trouble only to the extent that church leaders are uncooperative with the efforts of church members to be responsible for the conduct of their church. We do not think that it is right or shows accountability when church leaders ask or imply that church members simply go away and mind their own business ( as when church leaders ignore letters and petitions from groups of church members ).
We want to emphatically repeat that MCA is not in the business of claiming that our church is an evil organization or that its leaders are evil people. We are in the business of preventing and correcting problems ( that are likely to occur in any large organization ). We believe that if members take the responsibility to make sure that problems are corrected when they occur, the problems need not be pervasive.
We include the following blank for use in recruiting new members. ( Make lots of copies to pass around. )
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MEMBERS for CHURCH ACCOUNTABILITY, INC. (MCA) APPLICATION (nl1Q99)
Name:
Address:
Telephone (optional):
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/__/ I wish to be a member of the General Conference Reform Group
Signature:
You will receive the MCA newsletter.
Send to: Members for Church Accountability, Inc.
PO Box 1072
Morrison, CO 80465
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