Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

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DISCOVERING THE NEW COVENANT
my Lord. Because of the obvious choices my ex-wife made,
I was permitted to maintain my seminary sponsorship and
ministry assignments (part-time while at Seminary).
While at Andrews I made the acquaintance of a pretty
young communications student named Paula Wesner. We
became well acquainted through campus ministry activities.
While we never dated until after I graduated from the seminary,
we enjoyed long conversations and developed a lasting
and meaningful friendship. Upon leaving Andrews our
friendship developed into a long-distance relationship and
finally marriage in March of 1985. Paula has been my loving
wife and faithful partner in ministry ever since.
Paula and I dedicated ourselves to the Seventh-day Adventist
ministry. At first we pastored in a couple of districts
where I was a circuit riding pastor. We held regular evangelistic
meetings, Revelation seminars, and other outreach
events as requested by our conference. I loved the preaching/teaching
side of ministry and the relationship development.
I loved helping people come to Jesus. But I became
increasingly uncomfortable with the traditional evangelistic
methods. It was expected that ministers hold a “crusade” at
least once each year, especially if they had not yet been ordained.
I needed to prove my calling to ministry by effective
“evangelism.” But the focus on last-day events and prophetic
interpretation was clearly targeted at the individual already
attending some other church. This felt more like proselytism
than evangelism to me. It was an effort to win Christians
from other churches into Adventism so that they would become
part of the “remnant” church. This emphasis felt wrong
to me. I felt my calling was to reach people with the Gospel
of Jesus Christ, to lead them to Him as their Savior, and help
them learn to live in relationship with Him. Traditional Adventist
evangelistic meetings dedicated only one or two
nights to the Gospel, and the rest to their distinctive doctrines.
I felt much of the methodology of concealing the SDA
name and using a public hall was deceptive. Much of the