South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists
| Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific | |
| Governing body: | General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists |
|---|---|
| Countries: | Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the islands of the South Pacific |
| Organisational style: | Representative |
| Headquarters: | Wahroonga, Australia |
| President: | Glenn C. Townend |
| Membership: | Approx 450,000 (in 2015) |
| Church groups: | Over 5,900 (in 2015) |
| Employed workers: | 1,072 ministers; 12,734 total active employees (in 2015) |
| Schools, colleges and universities: | 399 schools, colleges and universities; 2,560 teachers and 72,076 students (in 2015) |
| Website: | www.spd.adventist.org |
The South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists is a sub-entity of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which oversees the Church's work in the South Pacific nations of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the islands of the South Pacific. Its headquarters is in Wahroonga, Australia.
It is made up of four regional offices. They are the Australian Union Conference (headquarters in Melbourne), New Zealand Pacific Union Conference (headquarters in Auckland), Papua New Guinea Union Mission (headquarters in Lae) and Trans-Pacific Union Mission (headquarters in Suva, Fiji).
On May 10, 1885, 11 Americans set sail on the Australia from San Francisco with hopes to “open up a mission in Australia”.
The following people became the pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific:
They arrived in Sydney on June 6, 1885. While Haskell and Israel stayed in Sydney, the others went on a three-day ride in a small coastal steamer to Melbourne, the city selected to be the base for the Church’s Australian activities.
The first Seventh-day Adventist church in Australia was the Melbourne Seventh-day Adventist Church, which formed on January 10, 1886, with 29 members.
Pastor Stephen Haskell, one of the pioneer missionaries to Australia, was also keen to spread the message throughout New Zealand, which he had visited briefly on his initial voyage to Australia. He returned to Auckland four months later to begin marketing the soon-to-be-released religious paper, The Bible Echo and Signs of the Times, now the Signs of the Times (Australian version).
Reports of Haskell's early success in New Zealand caused the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in America to delegate A. G. Daniells, an evangelist and former school teacher, along with his wife to travel to New Zealand to develop the work further in that country.
Daniells had astounding success through his dynamic preaching and on October 15, 1887, he opened the first Seventh-day Adventist church in New Zealand at Ponsonby. Daniells would eventually go on to become the world president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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Wikipedia