What is Hartland’s relationship to the General Conference?
A. Our staff members are faithful Seventh-day Adventists in regular standing with local Conference churches. Many hold offices in their churches. Hartland is ever ready to work in corporate efforts with denominational leaders and workers while retaining its self-supporting status.
Q. Does not this self-supporting status tend to cause a rift from the denominational structure?
A. That is always a possible danger, but there is no good reason for such to be the case, as has been shown over the 25 years of Hartland’s history.
Q. What model does Hartland College follow to ensure that this does not happen?
A. We do not operate a church on our campus. All staff and students scatter to about ten local churches in the region, where many are active as officers and are involved in local outreach endeavors.
Q. Is there any inspired counsel that guides your ministry in its relationship to the Denomination?
A. We follow the counsel provided by Sister White to the Madison School, the model self-supporting school where she served as a member of the board of directors. “Talked with Mrs. E.G. and W.C. White re. our plan for organization. She said we were not to go under the domination of the Southern Union Conference and seemed to have no objection to our general plan.” Dr. Percy Magan, Diary, August 9, 1904.
Q. This seems to imply that there should be quite separate work by self-supporting workers.
A. From my broad reading, I do not believe that was Sister White’s intent. Self-supporting workers are called to do the same kinds of ministry as denominational workers. However, she believed it was best that self-supporting work not be controlled by conferences, but that there should be no hesitation to work together where it would help fulfill the gospel commission.
Q. Has Hartland followed this practice?
A. Yes. We work with any self-supporting or denominational worker who is faithful to God. We have joined forces in evangelism, Bible studies, cooking schools, health seminars, the CHIP program, etc.
If you have a question about Hartland that you would like to see answered in a future Hartland Ministry Report, please contact Joan Reichard at sm@hartland.edu.
