The Seventh Day...Advent Christian Church?
I am always interested in what comes up when one Googles, “Advent Christian.” Mixed among links about Christmas, you can usually find some relevant information, including directions to the nearest Advent Christian church. To capture some essentials and offer some visuals, Google provides a window with a Wikipedia summary and a slideshow of images associated with our denomination.
Among the featured images, you might find a rather crisp image (shown above) as I did, apparently representing one of our churches - “Advent Christian Community Church.” By all appearances, this would seem to be the quintessential Advent Christian church.
Clicking the included link (adventchristianchurch.org), takes you to a church located in Hollywood, FL (Miami area). Being on the east coast of Florida, it is almost a 4 hour drive away from the next closest Advent Christian church (Dover ACC). If you live in that part of Florida, this would certainly be the top search result for an Advent Christian church near you.
When I came across this church, I was completely unfamiliar with it despite its prominent name and website. As I tried to learn more, you can imagine my surprise when scrolling down the home page of Advent Christian Community Church I came to their “about” section which immediately states, “We are a Seventh-day Adventist congregation…”
A Seventh-Day Adventist congregation that calls itself Advent Christian? I had to learn more. For a fact, this church is not a member of the Advent Christian General Conference. However, based on the Seventh-Day Adventist church finder, it appears this church is also not a member of that denomination. The church dates back to 1989, originally founded under the name “Advent Christian Cathedral”, later changing its name and acquiring the website domain adventchristianchurch.org in 2017. So in summary, this seems to be an independent church using the Advent Christian name while embracing Seventh-Day Adventist theology.
Now let us imagine this church never knew there was an Advent Christian denomination. Let us also imagine that realizing this and desiring to join us, they applied for membership in the Advent Christian General Conference through the local Florida conference. Should they be granted membership?
Every Advent Christian knows the frustration of regularly explaining to others that we are not Seventh-Day Adventists. Granting membership in this case would seem to make a lie of that denial. However, as has been pointed out, ACGC has no standards of belief for membership. Additionally, as has been argued by others, our noncreedalist tradition would seem to compel us to grant membership. The rule of noncreedalism is “No creed but the Bible.” Further down in their about section, Advent Christian Community Church states, “Our Church is deeply rooted in the Word of God (sola scriptura).” If the Bible is their basis of belief, if they are a church of good character, how could we object if noncreedalism is our rule?
This example brings to life why I have maintained that we must abandon noncreedalism and set forth a clear standard of belief for membership in the denomination. Advent Christians must be able to say that we are not Seventh-Day Adventists, that we have no part in that denomination. We should be able to confidently present ourselves to others within the frame of identity captured in the 2026 Declaration of Principles: biblically orthodox, evangelical, favorable to conditionalism, yet open-handed on so many secondary issues, because we are altogether Adventist. I proudly claim that heritage in our time - the SDAs with all their idiosyncracies don’t own Adventism.
Now, as it is, it is practically unlikely such a church would gain membership in any of our conferences, despite our noncreedalist tradition. In fact, the Florida Conference already requires churches to subscribe to the Declaration of Principles to be members of the conference:
A Church making application for membership in the Conference must state therein that it subscribes to the "Declaration of Principles" of the Advent Christian General Conference of America, and subscribes to the guidelines for a Church in good standing. (conference bylaws - Article I, Section 2)
With the example of this conference in mind, the proposed changes to the bylaws recommend that the denomination as a whole does the same - that we be upfront about our standards across the board. It will not only guard us against Seventh-Day Adventism, but also rebuff any other teachings that are either fundamentally false and/or would unravel our coherent sense of identity. We have an awesome opportunity to sure things up this August at the Triennial convention.
If you haven’t been following this conversation closely, the following selection of articles will help get you up to speed:
The Open Borders Denomination
Restructuring Proposal Summary
As Congregationalist as the Congregationalists
Will Only Advent Christians Be Saved?
We Look to the Future: A Reply to David E. Dean
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.