After facing perplexing racial problems at different levels of the church organization, and not finding satisfactory resolution of them, the General Conference leadership, in coordination with the Black leadership, voted "that in unions where the Colored constituency is considered by the union conference committee to be sufficiently large, and where the financial income and territory warrant, Colored conferences be organized." Regional (Black) conferences were formed in 1944, affecting both the Black work and the entire Adventist Church in the United States.

During the Participative Governance stage (1944-1951), regional conferences, along with Black leadership at the General Conference, division, and union conference levels, became central in the coordination of the Black work from this point on. This new organizational configuration facilitated a period of unprecedented evangelism, leadership experience, and promotion of initiatives. It allowed for new types of intraconference and interconference mobility in the Black work. Black membership increased from 20,000 in the early 1940s to more than 70,000 in the 1950s. Membership in regional conferences increased to more than 130,000 in the 1980s, and to more than 220,000 today.

The Cultural Activism period (1952-1969) and the former stage were the most stormy racial periods in the church in the United States. This was the period of backlash to Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. Additionally, it was the time of the civil rights and Black power movements. Black and White Adventists were confronted with the influence of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and others.

The country experienced a reordering of its laws and attitudes toward its African-American citizenry with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These laws prohibited discrimination because of color, race, religion, or national origin in accommodations, employment, and public schools. Adventists also reassessed their own practices and attitudes toward the Black constituency of the church. The church commenced a period of racial redress. Those who lived through this period remember it as a time of profound racial sensitivity and intense organizational introspection. The effects are still being felt.

The Affirmative Resolution stage (1970-1977) saw the church struggling with its practical relationship to issues of discrimination, equal opportunity, and affirmative action. During this stage the church still had some segregation in its churches, schools, other institutions, and administrative levels. In an effort to cause the church to address the issue of race and equality, Black membership demonstrated, even boycotted.

E. Earl Cleveland, premier evangelist and spokesman for SDA African-American causes, in his earlier years.

During the 1970 spring session of the General Conference Executive Committee, measures were taken to rectify conditions relative to Black leadership inclusion in the administrative structure of the church. A set of 16 points was developed to help guide the church in affirmative action. As a result of the 16 points, Black representation was included in administrative and departmental positions on the union level and higher. These points, though adjusted. are still valid today.

Coming to the 1990s, we have the Spiritual Empowerment stage (1978-present). During the latter part of the 1970s the church's Black leadership recognized the need for periodic consultation and planning. As a result, the regional presidents formed the Caucus of Black SDA Administrators. The caucus includes the leadership of regional conferences and Black institutions, and other representatives. It was recognized that the caucus provided Black leadership a unique opportunity to fulfill the objectives of the Black work through evangelizing, ministering, nurturing, strategizing, networking, facilitating, and promulgating.

Charles E. Dudley, president of South Central Conference and founding chairman of the caucus, says the caucus "is an avenue for the spiritual empowerment of the Black work. It regularly allows Black leadership an opportunity to address issues, promote needs, and seek to resolve the problems indigenous to the Black work."

Black leaders in the various levels of the church have a deep desire to keep the spiritual focus central. Yet they must wrestle with the challenge of addressing the issues of residual prejudice that too often subtly and imperceptibly appears in the church. E. E. Cleveland, a member of the caucus, maintains that "the laws and policies checking discrimination and racism and guaranteeing civil rights are in place, but the implementation of these rights is slow in coming.

And Now

Since this last stage is not yet over, no one knows when the next one will begin. Or, for that matter, if there will be a next one. Jesus may come before then. But one thing is sure. Now is the time to test the power of the spirit of love and brotherhood in the multicultural environment of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Will the church be able to come together in unity and equality to solve the problems of race and culture? Will there be genuine sharing of leadership, responsibility, and decision-making?

The world is waiting to see an organizational model of the kind of love and unity Christ spoke about in John 17:22:

"That they may be one, even as we are one."