SPRINGVILLE — In addition to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Assemblies of God, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is among the world's fastest-growing. And the leader of its North American congregation believes the reason is simple: People are seeking Jesus.
"My sense is there is no happiness apart from Jesus," Elder Don Schneider told the Deseret Morning News on Saturday after speaking to church members at a camp meeting in Hobble Creek Canyon.
About 2,000 SDA church members from the 7,800-member Utah-Nevada Conference, which includes eastern California, attended the camp meeting for seminars, workshops and worship last week. Camp meetings are a tradition in the church.
Elder Schneider spoke at Sabbath services Saturday among more than 1,000 happy, multi-ethnic worshippers who sang about the theme of going "forward in faith."
The 64-year-old ordained minister leads a flock of about 1 million in the United States, Canada and Bermuda. Worldwide, the church based in Silver Spring, Md., counts about 20 million and is growing fastest in developing countries.
"Our growth is limited in some parts of the world by how fast we can provide infrastructure," said Elder Schneider, who broadcasts a program called "Really Living" that can be watched at www.hopetv.org.
In the United States, baptisms increase by 4 or 5 percent a year, mostly in urban areas and frequently among immigrants from Asia and Central and South America, said Senior Pastor Kermit Netteburg, a former church statistician who now leads a congregation in Washington, D.C.
Locally, however, growth is higher — 12 percent in the Utah-Nevada Conference in 2006, said conference president Elder Bradford Newton.
In 1990, the conference counted about 4,000 members. Now, membership has nearly doubled.
"In my preaching, I'm not into discussing those issues," Elder Schneider said. "I'm not into discussing the mechanics of our operations."
Instead, he wants to inspire people about Jesus, as he did Saturday morning.
Elder Schneider — elected to his position in 2000 — recalled times he met President Clinton and President Bush with some humor. He described them as being friendly yet formal because he didn't intimately know the presidents and they didn't intimately know him.
On the other hand, Elder Schneider said, his relationship with his wife Marti is different because they talk constantly and have known each other for 42 years.
"Do I know the president?" he said. "Nah. Do I know Marti? Yes. And Jesus says in Jeremiah the kind of relationship I want with you is like being married to you."
In Schneider's own relationship with Jesus, he speaks to him frequently and offers each day to him in thanksgiving.
"There is nothing you can do to separate yourself from him," he said. "He will forgive you no matter what."
After 40 years of camp meetings at the Charles and Doris Smith ranch, this meeting was the last. The place is being sold. SDA officials have booked speakers for years in advance and will continue to hold camp meetings in Utah, but they have yet to find a new location.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com