Adventist Record

18/09/2026

Few things in life make you feel as special as arriving in the Pacific Islands for the Church. I’ve been privileged to visit a couple of Pacific Islands in the past year or two and, let me tell you, not even my own family welcomes me with such excitement and fanfare.

I started writing this editorial while in Kiribati. I was there with two colleagues covering the Kiribati for Christ campaign—or KFC as the locals love to call it. The experience was rather intense. From the moment I stepped off the plane, my whole body was inundated by the heat and humidity.

But as soon as we exited the airport, we were inundated by the warmth of the people. A sea of lovely church members was excitedly waiting for us. After church leaders greeted us at the door, we walked through a Pathfinder corridor with a special choir at the end, singing a welcome song I still hum at least once a day. Pacific Islanders have a way of making visitors feel special, and for us in Kiribati, they went above and beyond.

But why is it? Why were they so excited to welcome us into their country? News of our arrival spread across the whole island, and many were excited to see us come to their churches and meeting sites.

The Mission youth director told us that our presence there was important for the young people because it gave them a better sense that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was not limited to Kiribati. For such an isolated community, there are immeasurable benefits in making the effort of crossing the distance and showing up. And isolated it is.

Kiribati is one of the most remote and scattered countries in the world. To get from the capital, South Tarawa, to the eastern part, Christmas Island, it takes almost five hours by plane. Its 33 atolls and islands are spread across all four hemispheres.

Living on an atoll also brings challenges: There’s barely any land—and the little they have is being threatened by rising sea levels. The soil is sandy, fresh water is limited, almost everything has to come from somewhere else, waste has nowhere obvious to go and infrastructure is limited. Those physical realities then create sanitation, nutrition and health challenges.

Those realities also create challenges—and opportunities—for the Church. Health initiatives are already demonstrating what happens when the Church meets a community need. During KFC, 10,000 Toes health screenings brought hundreds of people to the evangelistic meeting sites, and many of them will continue the follow-up program to improve their health.

Imagine what more could be done. There is incredible potential for sustainability projects—from recycling initiatives to innovative ways of growing fresh food—as well as partnerships and mission groups bringing skills and expertise in areas identified by the local Mission.

There are many communities across our Division that would benefit from more of us showing up. But perhaps we would benefit just as much from going. I know I did. During our time there, I asked the international speakers from Australia, Fiji and French Polynesia what they learned from their experience there and what they will bring home with them.

Their responses highlighted the generosity of the local people, their dedication, commitment and faithfulness despite limited resources—aspects I have also experienced and been inspired by. It’s easy to think of mission in terms of what we can bring—our resources, expertise, programs, funding—but there is plenty to receive as well. I-Kiribati Adventists made me want to be more patient, more willing to serve others, more generous.

It’s been beautiful to see our church uniting through South Pacific for Christ. Many connections were formed with our church family in the Trans Pacific and more will be formed across other parts of the Division as we move forward with this movement. My hope is that those connections don’t end with the campaign.

Where could you show up? What expertise do you have that could meet a genuine need? Who could you partner with? Find an opportunity and go. You may be surprised to discover that mission is just as much about what we receive as what we have to give.

(Juliana Muniz is the news editor at Adventist Record)

17/09/2026

Before it was the Great Commission, it was a story (see Matthew 28:16–20). A mismatched group of believers—“but some of them doubted!” (see verse 17)—gathered on a rocky mountaintop, looking across the Sea of Galilee sparkling blue in the springtime sunshine and to the hills of the “foreign lands” beyond.

In the previous few weeks, they had been through the most traumatic and confusing time of their lives. When Jesus was welcomed by the crowds in Jerusalem, they had hoped that He was about to become their King, but less than a week later He was crucified as a political rebel, executed among thieves. Barely had they time to grasp the brutal reality, cruelty and injustice of His death that there emerged claims and stories of His resurrection—and then He began appearing to many of them: to Mary at the tomb, on the road to Emmaus, in the Upper Room, on the beach in Galilee and more.

Then they met Jesus on this mountaintop in Galilee, “where Jesus had told them to go” (verse 16). And He gave them the instructions to go and tell and teach and baptise that we now know as the Great Commission.

But before it was the Great Commission, it was a story. Which means we should first read it as a story. Which means Jesus was not primarily talking to us. If anything, He was talking about us.

As much as we might wish we were, we weren’t there. We were not among the group of disciples described in verses 16 and 17, but in the instructions given to the disciples in verse 19: “Go and make disciples of all the nations. . . to the end of the age” (see verse 20). We find ourselves in this story, not at its centre but at its fringe.

These verses are so familiar to many of us that we often miss how remarkable it is that we read them together in a church or small group almost 2000 years later—in a place they could never have imagined, so far away, in a society so different from theirs, using technology—whether a bound book, printed magazine or a small screen—that would have boggled their minds, in a language that would not be recognisable for almost 1500 years.

It’s an amazing story of the stories of Jesus being told and re-told, translated and transmitted across the generations, from person to person, group to group, people to people, and from continent to continent and island to island. And somehow across all those people and places, the story came to our place and to us.

When we recognise ourselves situated at these farthest reaches of this commission, we can understand more of its great scope and inclusivity. We find ourselves in this story first as recipients and beneficiaries of this commission and of the faithful response of those first disciples—and the countless others who have taken on the story as their own. They and their stories are only reasons why we can then read it as our commission.

When we read it first as a story, this climactic command in Matthew’s story of Jesus should first invite a response of wonder, gratitude and humility. We receive before we are asked to give. We are amazed—and then invited to take our place in this great story of the Great Commission. It is a story that we have received only because of the goodness of God, the reality of Jesus and the sacrifices of so many of His followers across the centuries since. The invitation to be His disciples in our time and place begins with reading the Great Commission for the unlikely and awe-inspiring story that it is.

(Nathan Brown is the book editor at Signs Publishing)

17/09/2026

With approximately 250 registered participants, it was the first time a local Adventist church in Papua New Guinea had organised a stewardship convention of this scale.

Koki Seventh-day Adventist Church hosted its inaugural Stewardship Convention, attracting approximately 250 registered participants. It was the first time a local Adventist church in Papua New Guinea had organised a stewardship convention of this scale. Held at APEC Haus in Port Moresby, the convent...

16/09/2026

Barbed wire—it’s something I am all too familiar with having grown up in a rural environment.

In my many outdoor adventures growing up with my brothers and their friends (there were no girls my age in my neighbourhood until I was about 12), I encountered barbed wire a lot. We also had to navigate barbed wire while mushroom picking as a family across the paddocks surrounding our house. Usually there were gates we could open but some of these were loosely termed gates made by the local farmer—a mix of Number 8 Wire with barbed wire running across the top and middle—and were likely to collapse as you released the catch. If you weren’t careful and were standing in the wrong place, you could get caught up in the spiky nest.

Our back fence had barbed wire and sometimes an electric fence as well due to the cow paddock behind us. I can remember clearly getting a boot from the electric fence because I touched a branch from our back hedge that was touching the electric fence. Somehow, the current went directly through the branch to me. After we moved to a property with acreage, my dad often had cows in one of our paddocks and would sometimes strip graze them. This meant we had to navigate the electric fence to get across the paddock to the shed and gardens.

One crucial time the electric fence didn’t work was when our local church had a plot of capsicums growing in one of Dad’s paddocks as a fundraiser for the new church building. The cows were so determined to get to those tasty capsicums that they bulldozed down the electric fence and bolted in to enjoy the treats, eating the lot. Needless to say, the church didn’t use Dad’s paddocks for their fundraiser growing after that.

Back to the barbed wire. Have you ever experienced that feeling when you are trying to climb through or over a barbed wire fence and almost making it through the narrow spiky gap unscathed, when one of the barbs catches you on the back of your shirt or pants just out of your reach to unhook yourself? You don’t know whether to go backwards or forwards, but you do know if you move you will likely hook yourself further, or worse, the barb catches your flesh in a meaty grab. Ouch—I have—multiple times!

But isn’t that its purpose? To catch you, or a curious animal that doesn’t know better, or to stop you when you think you know better, but really don’t, from progressing further than you should. It’s a boundary, a dividing line, a safeguard, a protector of sorts. A little fear or pain as a small warning that there could be something more dangerous lurking on the other side.

Most of the time, the biggest danger we encountered on our childhood adventures was the fence itself. I do recall though, being chased by an angry mare across a nearby paddock when I attempted to go and pat her newborn foal. I have never run so fast in my life. I didn’t wait to undo the gate to get to safety. I vaulted it with that angry mama horse hot on my heels. I have had a healthy respect for horses ever since.

As children, when we got ourselves into difficulty with the barbed wire, we would call out for a saviour to unhook us. In my case, it was usually in the form of my big, strong dad. Or, if Dad wasn’t present, my older brother who was taller than me and had learned how to climb across the fence safely.

Most of the animals in my childhood wanderings across barbed wire-laced paddocks were cows who weren’t very clever—albeit stubborn and curious. On the odd occasion, we also encountered sheep who were no different. Which is why I believe that we are likened to sheep a lot throughout the Bible. We all need barbed wire fences as boundaries to protect us from ourselves. Little warnings that something might not be good for us or others, to stop us in our tracks.

God in His loving wisdom has given us plenty of practical examples of boundaries in the Bible. These apply to many areas of life, including relationships, raising children, marriage and health, to name a few. Most lead us directly to a loving relationship with Him. But in that same loving wisdom He gives us free choice. Choice to make the decision as to whether we are going to try and climb those fences, despite the barbs of consequences, or whether we are going to trust Him and stay where we need to be. With this freedom of choice comes a warning: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love” (Galatians 5:13,14). It is important that we recognise those barbs on the fences as the warning that they are. Sometimes breaching them hurts.

God, when He was desperately trying to reach Israel to bring them back to Him, said in Hosea 2:6, “Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.” God let Israel experience the spikes of hardship to hinder their wilful, destructive behaviours. The thorny wall of affliction protected them from straying further into sin so they would call on God and return to a faithful relationship with Him.

Life’s fences, whether they have barbed wire, are laced with electricity or are covered with ivy, can be teachers that help us develop and fortify our trust in Jesus, ensuring we stay on the path that He has set before us.

Choose today to see the barbed wire fence not as a symbol of hurt, pain and discouragement but as a hedge of protection guarding your soul.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5,6).

(Wendy Hunter works in the People and Culture team at Adventist Senior Living and attends Lakeside church in Bonnells Bay, NSW. She writes as a way of pausing to notice and remember the God moments woven through ordinary days.)

16/09/2026

🎨 More than a decade after first appearing on Hope Channel, Masterstroke is entering a new chapter—taking conversations about art, faith and life’s big questions into galleries, cultural centres and communities.

Masterstroke uses the lives and works of well-known artists as a starting point for exploring meaning, suffering, hope and faith.

15/09/2026

Part of Samoa for Christ, the messages to the inmates focused on salvation, forgiveness and hope in Jesus.

Fifty people, including correctional officers and the prison commissioner, were baptised at Oloamanu Correctional Centre during Samoa for Christ. The baptisms followed evangelistic meetings conducted by Pastor Laneselota Seufale, who serves as the government-appointed spiritual pastor at the correct...

15/09/2026

🏥⚕ Staff at Sydney Adventist Hospital swapped their scrubs and uniforms for sporting jerseys recently, supporting an organ donation initiative with a personal connection to the hospital.

Staff at Sydney Adventist Hospital swapped their scrubs and uniforms for sporting jerseys on September 4, supporting an organ donation initiative with a personal connection to the hospital. Jersey Day was inspired by 13-year-old Nathan Gremmo, who became an organ donor after he died following a road...

14/09/2026

🎥 Which video gets your vote? Watch the entries on the ACA Health Benefits Fund page and “Like” your favourite to cast your vote.

Voting closes Friday, September 18.

Students from Adventist primary schools across Australia are bringing health education to life as part of the ACA Health Benefits Fund Health Resource Video Competition. Eleven short videos have been created by participating classes, showcasing students engaging with health and wellbeing topics thro...

14/09/2026

Most of us know the storybook version of Jonah: man overboard, big fish, three days, dry land. But the part we often forget to zoom in on is where Jonah sits outside Nineveh, furious that God showed the people mercy.

In this episode, Pastor Quintin Betteridge joins us to unpack one of the Bible's most reluctant prophets. We talk about what Jonah's story reveals about the limits we place on God's grace, why it's easier to receive mercy than to extend it and what it looks like when our image of God is shaped more by culture than by Scripture. Quintin also draws on his experience growing up in apartheid South Africa to explore what it really means to love people we'd rather God just judged.

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