Adventist Single Adult Ministries for the Pacific Union Conf

Organization

Adventist Single Adult Ministries has been organized by the North American Division (NAD) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. ASAM may have local, church-sponsored, area groups, or conference-sponsored ministries under its umbrella. The NAD ASAM creates guidelines and policies, advises the ASAM process in North America, develops proposals for resources, and conducts annual seminar for leadership training.

Adventist Single Adult Ministries (ASAM) is under the Family Ministries Department of the North American Division (NAD). The ASAM Committee meets annually to determine policy and to discuss resources to be made available to ASAM's in North America. The Committee met again in October or 2005 at General Conference, Silver Spring, MD. Representatives from almost every Union Conference attended. The meeting was chaired by Debra Brill, Vice President of the North American Division, and co-chaired by Willie Oliver, Director of Family Ministries, and Dick Stenbakken, newly appointed NAD ASAM coordinator.

Elder Velino Salazar, Vice President of the Southern California Conference, and Lorraine Thomas, Coordinator/Director of PUC ASAM, also were present. Barbara Babcock Chizmas of the Southeastern California Conference attended as the Representative-at-Large for the entire North American Division.

An important decision was made to hold the next Annual ASAM Leadership Training Conference in Orlando, Florida, in March 2006. This follows the widely attended annual interdenominational Single Adult Ministries (SAM) Convention. It was also decided at this meeting to hold the first ever National Adventist Single Adult Ministries convention at the Buena Vista Palace hotel at Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida in July, 2007.

Since that time, meetings of the NAD ASAM Committee have met annually, usually at the end of October each year. Decisions are made at that meeting regarding the biennial ASAM National Conventions as well as the biennial ASAM Leadership Training Conferences. A Leadership Training Conference was held in 2008 at the Florida Conference Office in Orlando, Florida.

At the last Committee meeting, it was decided to hold the 2009 National ASAM Convention in Newport Beach, California, at the Newport Beach Resort Hotel and Spa. The dates are July 2-4, 2009. Information about this event will be found elsewhere on this website.

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