On graduation day at Andrews University (AU) on May 5, 2019, Teresa Reeve was surprised to receive the award of the John Nevins Andrews Medallion for distinguished service to the university and the surrounding community.

AU provost Christon Arthur presented the medallion and the citation.

A faculty committee chooses a nominee from a list of submitted names and chooses someone who exemplifies the missionary spirit of J. N. Andrews, the 19th-century Adventist pioneer missionary to Europe for whom the university is named.

Reeve was lauded for several contributions she has made to AU and the community around it. She has led the campus Interfaith Committee, organizing events that honor religious liberty for all. “Her leadership in the Interfaith Committee helps in our dialogue with Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Berrien County reach,” Arthur said.

Within the university, Reeve stands out as the first female associate dean in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. And as a New Testament scholar, her publications have advanced both her academic field and the spiritual edification of the community. “She has contributed to commentaries and encyclopedias and enhanced and enriched our theological understanding,” Arthur said.

As an active member of ATS, Reeve continues to deliver both theology and theological application in her work and community efforts.

At the annual board meeting at Loma Linda, California, United States on April 14, 2019, board members voted several travel sponsorships to promote the strength and visibility of ATS around the world.

A weekend religious education conference will take place in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in July 2019, and two Andrews University doctoral students from PNG are being sponsored to attend and present at the conference. ATS president John Reeve will also be a presenter. The students will also assist in establishing a new ATS chapter in PNG.

ATS is sponsoring Andrea Moskolova Jacobsons, an Old Testament scholar and church youth pastor, to present a week of spiritual emphasis at Middle East University in Beirut, Lebanon, November 1-10, 2019. Past president of ATS and current MEU president Larry Lichtenwalter issued the invitation.

An ATS Bible conference will be held on the island of Guam in December 2019. Jiri Moskala will be the presenter, and his wife, Eva, will speak to the pastors’ spouses.

The Symposium on the Trinity is scheduled for June 19-22, 2019, at Italian Adventist University in Florence, Italy. Papers will be presented by John Reeve, Teresa Reeve, and others.

Several ATS scholars and officers will present at a Bible conference at Montemorelos University, including Felix Cortez, Jiri Moskala, and John Reeve.

Clinton Wahlen will visit AIIAS in the Philippines in November and work to build up the ATS chapter at the school.

Boubakar Sanou, who teaches world mission in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, has been sponsored by ATS to travel to Burkina Faso to present at a Bible conference.

ATS will sponsor Adriani Milli Rodrigues, theology professor at Brazil Adventist University (UNASP) in Sao Paulo, to attend and present at the 2019 ETS conference in San Diego in November.

In mid-June 2019, Ekkehardt Mueller will present a workshop on the book of Revelation at the Chesapeake Conference camp meeting near Hagerstown, Maryland, United States.

President-elect Rahel Wells has proposed a social media program for ATS, including the hiring of a part-time worker to create ongoing and consistent social media messaging. 

“We would start Facebook, Twitter, and maybe even Instagram accounts. And then [we would] also be looking on a weekly basis at what is being published in ATS, putting out some interesting quotes, and of course highlighting all of the different events and publications,” Wells said. In addition to regularly scheduled posts, inexpensive Facebook ads would be targeted at particular audiences such as, for example, certain age groups and geographical clusters that would be interested in an upcoming event.

In a proposal to the ATS executive committee, Wells is preparing a budget, a process, and a job description for a part-time position, along with a short list of candidates. She said it’s likely that the person hired would be a doctoral student who is both familiar with social media platforms and in tune with the theology and aims of ATS.

Wells is also proposing that a separate person be recruited to work on revamping the ATS website. Her intention, she said, is to try for a website that draws young people as well as serving the traditional ATS audience, and when it is in place, ramp up social media messaging to spread a net and guide new groups of people to find the resources and events ATS offers.

ATS Academy’s video series on YouTube can benefit from the increased visibility of social media, Wells pointed out, along with making it easier to find other ATS presentations and articles. Some audiences, who are looking for theological resources, remain unaware of the materials that ATS produces. “They don’t even know that they exist,” she said.

The details of ATS social media outlets will be announced as soon as the part-time position is filled and accounts are set up.

Books of scholarship on topics as diverse as sexuality, Creation, the Sabbath, and the sanctuary are in development, with numerous ATS scholars contributing.

In a volume on sexuality, the second of a series on biblical evaluation of human relationships, more than twenty Seventh-day Adventist scholars examine such topics as sexual immorality, polygamy, cohabitation, and prostitution. Richard Davidson tackles reproductive rights and abortion issues, while Stephen Bauer looks into queer theology. Two chapters consider the issues of transgenderism.

A two-volume set on the topic of the Sabbath in the Bible, a set that editors Daniel Bediako and Ekkehardt Mueller say is greatly needed and long overdue, will explore the Sabbath in the Old Testament and the New Testament respectively. The intertestamental period is included in the Old Testament volume. 

The focus of chapters in the OT volume ranges from Mathilde Frey’s broad survey of the Sabbath in the Pentateuch to Roy Gane’s examination of the Sabbath ritual in Leviticus 24:5-9 and many similar topics. The NT volume includes chapters on entire NT books and also on specific types of passages, such as the Sabbath in Colossians 2:16 (Wilson Paroschi) and the First Day texts (Clinton Wahlen).

Each of the volumes also has a thematic section in the latter part of the book. Elias de Souza’s “The Sabbath of the Old Testament: Day of Rest or Day of Worship?” and Jo Ann Davidson’s “Sabbath and Ecology” are typical of the themed chapters.

The second volume in a series on Creation in the Bible deals with the Genesis Creation account and its reverberations in the New Testament. Edited by Tom Shepherd, the book includes chapters on Creation in most of the NT books along with a couple of broader treatments. Most of the contributors are ATS scholars. Among the introductory chapters is “Ktisis and Concepts of Creation in the Greco-Roman World” by Randall Younker.

As with the first volume on Creation in the Old Testament, the NT book will be published by Andrews University press, and a general-audience version is slated for publication through Pacific Press.

A textbook on the topic of the sanctuary by Richard Davidson is underway, as is a text on Daniel by Gerhard Pfandl and a new Christian Beliefs textbook from John Peckham. No release dates have been set. Eight textbooks are in the planning stage, several of which will be authored by ATS scholars.

ATS Chapters in the News

One ATS chapter in the North American Division recently gained new leadership. ATS president John Reeve and Jiri Moskala organized a new chapter at Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, Texas, with four officers, and Michael Campbell as chapter director. At Southern Adventist University, the ATS chapter headed by Michael Hasel held three events in the past school year. On November 10, 2018, Edwin Reynolds presented a lecture entitled “The Role of Spiritualism in Last-day Events.” The chapter’s annual symposium on February 8-9, 2019, had a theme of “1844 and the Sanctuary: Adventism’s Message for the Last Days,” with Richard Davidson, Gerard Damsteegt, and Michael Hasel as speakers. Wilson Paroschi presented “Jesus’ Eschatological Legacy: The Tension between the Nearness of the Second Coming and the Mission of the Church” at a chapter meeting on March 23.

Faith and Science Conferences in Philippines and Spain

On the heels of the Faith and Science conference at Gahogo school in Rwanda in December 2018, attended by about 800 pastors and educators, a conference for the Southern Asia-Pacific Division (SSD) is underway at Naga View Adventist College in Naga City, the Philippines, from May 23 through June 2, 2019. Education directors along with some pastors and teachers came from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Thailand, as well as the Philippines. Funds provided for the conference allowed for renovation of the school’s auditorium, cafeteria, and bathrooms in the dormitory, along with road repair on campus.

A Faith and Science conference for the Inter-European Division (EUD) will take place June 30 to July 8, 2019, at the Hotel Pena Montanesa in Aínsa, Huesca, Spain, with about 150 attendees expected.

JATS Managing Editor Takes New Job

Michael Younker, managing editor of the Journal of the Adventist Theological Society (JATS), recently took a position as historical research specialist at the Office of Archives, Statistics and Research at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Younker will continue as managing editor of the journal for the foreseeable future.