Subject: April Newsletter: Meet the woman who plans GC Session

Also, are you looking for hope? Overcoming fear? We've got tips.
 

April 2021 | Issue 37

 

Sheri Clemmer

Sheri Clemmer has become adept at adapting to change.


As the meeting planner for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she has organized the General Conference sessions since 2005. But, in January 2020, Clemmer watched as the event she had been planning for nine years —  the GC session scheduled for June 2020 — was postponed with one executive committee vote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Here we are just months away from the biggest event we do every five years and suddenly we have to start over,” Clemmer said of the session planned for Indianapolis, Ind.

 

She would need to renegotiate contracts for the 5,000 hotel rooms that would serve the church’s more than 2,700 delegates and their families. Nonprofits and businesses would no longer be invited. Exhibit halls would now be used along with other meeting rooms to accommodate social distancing. Menus needed to be adjusted and more rooms acquired for dining hall seating. Speakers, musicians and more would be cancelled. Programs, ready to be translated in five languages, would need to be retooled. 


In her 18 years of experience, Clemmer has never had to plan and replan a session over and over and over again.  As October 2020 approached, Clemmer realized the May 2021 session might also be in jeopardy. In January, the General Conference executive committee voted again to postpone the GC Session until June 2022. This time Clemmer ran into a new problem. Indianapolis’s convention center and stadium had no dates available that would accommodate the General Conference’s schedule, Clemmer said. 

Sheri Clemmer, meeting organizer for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, offers advice and several tips that help her adapt and cope with change.

 

 Advice:

“There is a saying that nothing is guaranteed but death and taxes. You have to keep that in mind for sure.”

 

Tips:

 1. Be flexible.

 2. Have a Plan B.

 3. Pray.

 4. Have a “stress buster” outlet — something you enjoy doing that soothes your mind.

“God knows the plans. He knows the dates.”

According to the General Conference constitution and bylaws, a session must be held by June 30, 2022, in person, Clemmer said. At least 903 of the 2,713 delegates from around the world must attend. 

 

 “Thankfully, the Lord always goes before us. When we had first started thinking about this is not working, we called St. Louis,” Clemmer said of the planned GC Session site for 2025. “They gave us the dates of June 6-11, 2022. We didn’t tell anybody, just session management knew about it.”

 

These were the exact dates Clemmer had been trying to reserve in Indianapolis. Moving the session to St. Louis, Mo., meant Clemmer had to start her planning over again. New hotel rooms needed to be booked, while hotels in Indianapolis were cancelled. New meeting spaces and dining hall seating needed to be organized as well as new menus planned. Her team needed to accomplish in 16 months what usually takes place beginning nine years in advance, with most of the work happening in the five years between sessions. 

 

Clemmer has held on to Jeremiah 29:11 in the midst of all of this. 

 

“That probably fits with me being a meeting planner,” she says. “God knows the plans. He knows the dates. He knows who is supposed to come.

 

“We have said over and over this is not my event, this is God’s event.”

 

Clemmer, who planned to retire after the 2020 session, will continue to work on the upcoming GC session. However, she will be working part-time starting July 1. Silvia Sicalo, who has been working alongside her, will be the GC’s new meeting planner.


— Michele Joseph, managing editor, Adventist Women Leaders newsletter

"Leadership is a process of influence that is based on one's character. Servant leadership focuses on emotional healing, altruism, wisdom, support, and stewardship."

— Robyn Wilkerson in her book Shattering the Stained Glass Ceiling

You can find quotes like this and so much more on AWL's Facebook page.

Will You Embrace God's Promises Instead of Fear?

Fear has many faces, Bonita Shields, North American Division vice president for Ministries and chair of the AWL committee, told the 31 women attending the Let's Talk About Fear virtual event on March 18.


Women from Australia and Kenya, as well as across the United States joined the meeting to encourage each other and grow together. They allowed themselves to be vulnerable and shared touching stories about how fear has impacted their lives.


Fear isn't just cowering in corners or wringing one's hands, Shields said. It is fear of rejection, other's opinions, failure, success, change, death and more.


"It is estimated that there are more than 4,000 types of fear," she said. "Fear is actually healthy — when it alerts us to danger. However, it becomes unhealthy when it creates anxiety, which is described as 'the presence of fear in the absence of actual danger'."


Fear should not control our lives. Shields asked: "How can we LIVE and LEAD to

fulfill faith in our lives rather than fear? To allow God, our expert in fear, to replace fear with faith?"


Here are Bonita's tips to overcome fear:


Analyze Self-talk — Discover, analyze, argue against and replace fears1, focusing on the advice given in Philippians 4:8.


Embrace God's Promises — Believe He really means His promises are for you.


Develop Courage — Be who God called you to be without trying to please others or disconnecting with your identity in Christ.


Shields says as you analyze your fears and embrace God's promises, you'll learn to develop courage. That courage allows you to speak up when you feel you have something to say. It emboldens you, allowing you to take on a role even if it seems huge because you aren't sure whether you'll be able to do it all.


The key is: "Remember: God is big enough," she said.

1 Advice gathered from Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapian.

Debbie Maloba (bottom), Women and Children's Ministries director for the East-Central Africa Division, joined the Let's Talk about Fear virtual event from Kenya. She wanted the women around the world to know that women in Africa are praying and standing in support of the Adventist Women Leaders community.

Click here to read our 2019 story about Debbie Maloba and her ministry in the largest division in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

— Michele Joseph, managing editor, Adventist Women Leaders newsletter

"Don't Let the Crystal Balls Drop"

How is it possible to be anxious for nothing?

 

Lillian Torres, assistant evangelism director for the Pennsylvania Conference, asked that question to the more than 20 women attending Adventist Women Leaders Friday Night Fellowship on March 26. The women, joining the virtual event from Los Angeles and Oklahoma to the Virgin Islands and St. Croix, admitted it is difficult.

 

Torres has asked herself the same question through disappointments, struggles and loss. Even the stress of an endless to-do list is enough to cause anxiety. 

 

And yet, in her 27 years of full-time ministry, she’s learned to cling to Philippians 4:6-7, with its admonition to “be anxious for nothing.”

 

Here’s how: “Everything I do … is filtered through these three truths,” Torres said.

 

1. God loves me. I am a daughter of God and in Him I find value, worth and purpose.

 

2. I have been saved by grace. Because Jesus gave his life for me, I live with this assurance. It has nothing to do with my accomplishments.

 

3. Grace is stronger than any struggle you can go through. The truth is that where sin abounds grace abounds much more (Romans 5:20). It doesn’t matter how many times I fail, how many times I fall.

 

Torres said the best advice she ever received reminded her that in life and ministry there will always be a multitude of things to juggle at the same time. However, some things are crystal balls and others are rubber balls. The crystal balls are priorities like spending time at the foot of the cross and affirming your faith. Don't let the crystal balls drop. The rubber balls will be OK if they fall. They will bounce back. 

 

— Michele Joseph, managing editor, Adventist Women Leaders newsletter

Meditations

"The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just. The law of their God is in their hearts; their feet do not slip." 


— Psalm 37:30-31, NIV

AWL's Prayer Circle

Lee Lee Dart

Pastor

Adventure Seventh-day Adventist Church

Greeley, CO

Liesl Vistaunet

Communications Director & Marketing Coordinator

Portland Adventist Academy

Portland, OR

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AWL Committee: Bonita J. Shields, chair; Celeste Ryan Blyden, secretary/director; Natalie Boonstra, Brenda Dickerson, Carolyn R. Forrest, Tamyra Horst, Ann Roda and Michele Joseph, communication manager

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