An Interview with Jack Provonsha

Ervin Taylor: What convinced you that your book, A Remnant in Crisis, was needed?

Jack Provonsha: My sense of the crisis, my identification with my church. This is my church—in trouble. Something needed to be done, something needed to be said, and I was willing to give it a try. Since I was in some position of theological responsibility in the church, I felt called to do what I could.

No other organized Christian body has been able to renew itself without a major organizational split. Why do you think the Adventist church will be able to renew itself in the manner you describe in your book?

Although the probabilities are very much against renewal, I am optimistic. As soon as you introduce free will into a church's situation, you have allowed the possibility. The Roman Catholic Church has revitalized itself on several occasions.

We are not stuck with an inexorable process to which everyone has to succumb. I think there is in Adventist theology the possibility of revitalization. Revitalization usually wells up from beneath rather than being something superimposed. There must exist a mechanism by which that which rises up from underneath provides the possibility of change, that provides a potential for revitalization.

In the Catholic church, it was the freedom of Vatican II—freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of behavior, even freedom of worship—that provided this kind of welling up.

How would you go about protecting the positive social outreach of the church, while trying to deal with the pressing theological problems?

First of all, we need to recognize what the positive elements are. Sometimes these are not as positive as we think. For example, what has happened to much of the Adventist health work? Unfortunately, it has become largely entrepreneurial rather than manifesting its initial intentions—service orientation and missionary outreach. Now we are a big business. We need to accentuate those things that are in fact true to our message and find ways of playing down those that are destructive to our sense of purpose.

You believe crises are confronting the first-world Adventist church. Do you think this perception is widely shared among other well-informed, thoughtful members of the church?

From the responses I have had, I think this is the case. I know some people are not going to be very happy with the book, and some sparks may fly when the Adventist Theological Society gets hold of it, but apparently it has benefited a number of people who have talked to me, and this indicates it was worth doing.

Would it be therapeutic for the Adventist church to admit that some of its traditional doctrines are totally flawed and that we need to completely rethink them? 

I don't accept the “totally flawed” characterization. Sometimes our perceptions have been limited. But “totally flawed,” in the sense of being totally inaccurate, is too strong a statement. Certainly, it would be therapeutic for us to re-examine and try to discover, if we can, the essence of things that were obscure. We need to rethink, but to “totally rethink” is too strong an expression. Most of the time, our inadequacies are partial. True, we have to take a second look. Growth and openness to new light is an essential aspect of Adventism. We might need to recapture our early sense of discovery and try to develop formulas that are more consonant with the world views that are now a part of our contemporary community.