Connecting Columbia Union Seventh-day Adventists

June 2022

Image of delegates at the 2022 General Conference Session. Image by Tor Tjeransen Adventist Media Exchange

Tuesday’s first late-evening business session addressed two items on the clarification of election and ordination for elders who are female and deaconesses. The discussion, which lasted almost until the close of the meeting, was filled with numerous questions and comments from assembled delegates, both in person and via Zoom videoconferencing.

 

Guillermo (Billy) E. Biaggi, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Artur A. Stele, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Abner De Los Santos, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Geoffrey G. Mbwana, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Thomas L. Lemon, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Maurice Valentine, General Vice President, General Conference (GC); Audrey Andersson, General Vice President, General Conference (GC). Per Tor Tjeransen/AME

Tuesday morning’s general business session featured the election of seven vice presidents to the General Conference executive team, an addition of one position since the 2015 Session. They are returning leaders Guillermo E. Biaggi, Abner De los Santos, Thomas L. Lemon, Geoffrey Mbwana, and Artur Stele. Ella Simmons, the first female general vice president in the church’s history, is retiring.

 

GC Secretary Erton Köhler and his wife Adriene Marques. Image by Bryant Taylor/ Southern Union

GC Secretary Erton Köhler, accompanied by Undersecretary Hensley Moorooven, GC associate secretaries Claude Richli, Gerson Santos, Karen Porter, Gary Krause and Elbert Kuhn, alongside Director of the office of Archives, Statistics and Research (ASTR) David Trim, and VividFaith manager Fylvia Kline, presented the Secretariat Report, which celebrated the mission work executed across the global Adventist Church over the past seven years.