Warnings Against Consolidation of Institutions

For many in business, “consolidation” suggests cost-savings and greater efficiency. Yet, many in business have discovered that bigger is not always better. Great international corporations have learned to their dismay by lost sales that consolidation can also mean the inefficiency of centralization and loss of touch with the potential buyer.MOL 187.2

In the church, the plea for unity must be understood in terms of the church’s purpose. Decision-making must never be far from the people who must implement decisions and live with the consequences. Unity in goals, as history has demonstrated, need not be defined in terms of decision-making by the few.MOL 187.3

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has learned through experience the perversion of unity when overcentralization, without appropriate checks and balances, produces “kingly power” and the ominous potential of error overwhelming the church body. The early Adventists, fearful of “Babylonian” power in church organization, kept their institutions legally separate from each other and from the General Conference. For example, in the late 1890s the Health Institute founded in the mid-1860s had grown into a chain of twenty-seven sanitariums—all administered by the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, an entity independent from the General Conference. At the beginning of the twentieth century, other more integral departments of the church, such as the International Sabbath School Association, the International Religious Liberty Association, and the International Tract and Missionary Society, also were administered by boards distinct from the General Conference.MOL 187.4

Was this decentralization good or bad? Not good, when the various departments of the church were spending unnecessary funds to operate their programs, often in competition with one another. Yet, there was something positive in that each organization was pursuing its goals without another level of decision-makers above them that would possibly slow progress and thwart the plans that were devised by people closer to the problem or challenge.MOL 187.5

But all of the major associations and departments had their own problem of overcentralization. Most were headquartered at Battle Creek, some later in Philadelphia and New York. Decisions were made at these head offices with very little freedom by local conferences or churches to meet their immediate needs. The problem with the Adventist Church in the 1890s and early 1900s can be understood in terms of rapid growth and of long-time leaders who were not used to a multiplicity of challenges, not only in numbers but in variety. The charges of “kingly power” and sluggish decision-making were all too accurate. ^{28Testimonies for the Church 8:233; Schwarz, “The Perils of Growth, 1886-1905,” in Land, Adventism in America, pp. 123-125.}MOL 187.6

Throughout this period Ellen White sounded the alarm regarding the problems caused by the consolidation of top decision-makers in Battle Creek. She had reason to be even more alarmed when the publishing leaders planned to merge the Pacific Press Publishing Association with the Review and Herald Publishing Association, as well as all other publishing houses of the future. ^{29“Notwithstanding frequent counsels to the contrary, men continued to plan for centralization of power, for the binding of many interests under one control. This work was first started in the Review and Herald office. Things were swayed first one way and then another. It was the enemy of our work who prompted the call for the consolidation of the publishing work under one controlling power in Battle Creek.” Testimonies for the Church 8:216, 217.}MOL 187.7

Her clear voice against consolidation of publishing houses, medical institutions, and educational institutions rested on the principle, enunciated in 1896, that consolidation “shows that men are seeking to grasp the scepter of power, and hold control over human minds.” ^{30Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 291.} In the consolidation of the church’s work in one place and in the hands of a few men, she wrote, “Mistakes have been made in this line. Individuality and personal responsibility are thus repressed and weakened.” ^{31The Publishing Ministry, 157.} Further, she foresaw the danger in terms of bad policy that would diffuse everywhere under consolidated management: “When so great power is placed in the hands of a few persons, Satan will make determined efforts to pervert the judgment, to insinuate wrong principles of action, to bring in a wrong policy; in so doing he cannot only pervert one institution, but through this can gain control of others and give a wrong mold to the work in distant parts.” ^{32Testimonies for the Church 7:173; Testimonies for the Church 8:217, 218; The Publishing Ministry, 131-158; Schwarz, Light Bearers, p. 272; Bio., vol. 3, pp. 449-452.}MOL 187.8

Counsel from Ellen White eventually quelled the surge for consolidation. Publishing houses and schools remained sovereign with their own boards. ^{33In the mid-1870s, Mrs. White had been shown that the west-coast publishing house “was ever to remain independent of all other institutions; that it was to be controlled by no other institution.” Letter 81, 1896, cited in The Publishing Ministry, 141.} Only the medical work resisted the messages, and this led eventually to the separation of the Battle Creek Sanitarium from denominational control. ^{34See pp. 200-204 regarding the Battle Creek Sanitarium crisis.} The radical and innovative reorganizing of the church structure in the 1901 General Conference session further decentralized decision-making; union conferences worldwide could now make many decisions that hitherto had to wait for Battle Creek permission.MOL 188.1