Even though I've never met him, I'm sure Jere Patzer must be very talented and gifted and have powerful people skills and political instincts. One cannot survive as a conference and union president for long without them. However, such characteristics do not qualify Patzer to be a spiritual visionary. He presents himself in this book primarily as a visionary, drawing on his training (DMin. and MBA) and years of administrative experience to provide a vision of what true spiritual leadership should be in the future of Adventism. In fact, his subtitle is "A Vision for Spiritual Leadership in the 21st Century." In this regard I found the book disappointing.

A true spiritual visionary would not see and experience the prophetic Spirit as a thing of the past. Patzer quotes Ellen G. White and argues that other spiritual leaders should publicly quote her as well (p. 17). I have always been blessed by Mrs. White's writings, but Patzer seems to think the prophetic Spirit died in 1915. Jesus told the Pharisees of his day that they elevated and glorified the prophets of the past while they were blind and hostile to the prophetic Spirit in the present (Matthew 23:29, 30). Why do so many modern-day Pharisees love, protect and promote a prophet from our past while they have little or no tolerance for the prophetic Spirit in the present?

Dead prophets can be made to say whatever the religious establishment wants them to say. Patzer believes that Ellen White needs to be quoted more in public by Adventist leaders today, so long as he can pick and choose the quotes. For an example of what he wouldn't quote, what does she say about conference and union presidents who have served for many years in the same position or capacity? She doesn't condone the practice. In fact, she was a major advocate of spiritual term limits; she said they should rotate back into field and become pastors again. Here is just one of her many quotes on the subject:

"Should the same man continue as president of a conference year after year, his defects would be reproduced in the churches under his labors. But one laborer may be strong where his brother is weak, and so by exchanging fields of labor, one may, to some extent, supply the deficiencies of another. If all were fully consecrated to God, these marked imperfections of character would not exist; but since the laborers do not meet the divine standard, since they weave self into all their work, the best thing, both for themselves and for the churches, is to make frequent changes" (Gospel Workers, p. 421).

Patzer also doesn't mention how important it is for a spiritual leader to be anointed and baptized by the Holy Spirit, as called for by Ellen White. In her view, real spiritual leadership required such spiritual baptism, first for church leaders and then for their members. Here are a few of her statements on this important topic:

"Daily [Christ] received a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit." (Christ's Object Lessons, p. 139). "God's faithful messengers are to wrestle with God in earnest prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit" (Testimonies to Ministers, p. 459). "We must be daily controlled by the Spirit of God" (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 102). "The Holy Spirit has often come to our schools and has not been recognized. . . . Every teacher should know and welcome the heavenly Guest" (Counsels to Teachers, p. 68). "It is the efficiency of the Holy Spirit that makes the ministry of the Word effective" (Gospel Workers, p. 155)

Another area that deeply disturbs me in this book is Patzer's presumption that we as Adventists are, or are rapidly becoming, the only "remnant" denomination of God. He says, "God didn't just arbitrarily label us the 'remnant.' We have become the remnant by the fact that virtually all other evangelical denominations have either embraced or are in the process of embracing ...modernism, postmodernism, and neoorthodoxy. At the risk of sounding arrogant, the Seventh-day Adventist Church may soon be positioned as the only one left to guard the precious truths of the Scriptures" (p. 23).

This goes way beyond arrogance! It is blind, presumptive arrogance, based on unfortunate ignorance. It is ignorant to assume that the remnant people of God identified in Scripture can be equated in any way with institutional churches or denominations. When Revelation 13 is fulfilled, every institutional church or denomination will be forced to worship the beast or cease to exist. This is why God is working within all organized religions today to prepare a Spirit-filled group of individuals to whom he can say, "Come out of her (Babylon-compromised religions), my people" (Revelation 18:4).

It is also ignorant to assume that Adventists have been less compromised or influenced by postmodern thought than all the other evangelical churches. (It is a stretch to call the Adventist denomination evangelical, today.) I can name numerous churches that have been less contaminated by postmodernism than Adventism. Calvary Chapel (Harvest), the Vineyard, Southern Baptists, and charismatic churches are just the beginning of the list. In fact, the power struggle in the leadership of North American Adventism today is largely between old-guard administrators (like Patzer) who defend a sectarian self-glorifying denominationalism, and a new subtle, shrewd group of leaders who have strong postmodern leanings and are more identified with liberal Protestantism than evangelicalism. Evangelical Adventists have largely been marginalized from leadership positions in the church, because they are more concerned with building the kingdom of God than striving for political power.

Some outside observers of the Adventist church are aware of this trend toward postmodernism and have commented on it. In his revised and updated Kingdom of the Cults (1997) Walter Martin included a special appendix on Adventism in which he identified this fast-growing segment of our church in these words: "There is a third growing faction within Seventh-day Adventism that is much more theologically liberal than either the traditionalists or the evangelicals, and the future may even bring three [major] Adventist groups, one aligning itself roughly with mainstream, theologically liberal Protestantism, one with sectarian or cultic groups, and one with mainstream evangelicalism" (p. 519).

Patzer also warns against spiritual leaders who advocate the trend toward

"postdenominationalism" (p. 24). I could see his point, if he were protesting the pluralistic universalism found in postmodernism. But Patzer attacks people like Max Lucado and Peter Wagner, who are Bible-believing leaders and who simply follow Christ's teaching that the kingdom of God transcends all man-made religions. God is not concerned with denominational labels, but only whether we "worship him in Spirit and in truth." Patzer's arrogant claims for Adventism's special remnant status belie his observation that a leader's first lesson must be that "pride is the root of almost all our problems" (p. 36).

Finally, throughout the book Patzer quotes from a host of business gurus and secular leaders such as Peter Drucker, Bill Gates, Tom Peters, Philip Crosby, Bill Clinton, etc. to supplement the statements he draws from Ellen White. His book seems to be an odd blend of nineteenth-century prophecy and twenty-first-century business theory, but it is certainly not a visionary volume on spiritual leadership. It does not compare with John Maxwell's Partners in Prayer or Developing the Leader Within You, or Living the Spirit-Filled Life by Jack Hayford.

God calls us all to be spiritual leaders, and if we let him, he will appoint us and anoint us through his Holy Spirit.