My grandson was born at 1:20 a.m. on Friday, July 17. It is the first for my wife and I. I hope you forgive me for this personal moment, but this event cannot help but bring thinking to mind about my most strongly held faith and values. His name is Ezekiel, although mother and grandmother call him "Zeke" for now.

I am a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist. My great-grandmother joined the Adventist movement before the 1888 General Conference Session. She raised her two daughters--my grandmother and great aunt--as Adventists despite the fact that they lived in rural, northwest Missouri and were too far from the nearest congregation to attend even once in her lifetime. My grandmother lived most of her life as the only Adventist in her small town, eventually raising her son in the faith. She faithfully kept the Sabbath and just as faithfully participated in the community church on Sunday mornings, serving for a long time as Sunday School superintendent or teaching the lesson.

My father went off to boarding academy on the eve of World War II, after two years in the local high school. It was his first experience living in an Adventist community and he still remembers behavior--on the part of both leaders and teens--that was both faithfully consistent and woefully inconsistent with Christian values.  After graduation, he found himself in a small, Midwest city working one factory job after another and attending a vibrant, medium-sized Adventist congregation with a number of young adults. He met my mother there and they were soon working for the denomination as church school teachers.

I grew up in the suburban sprawl of southern California where I thought a congregation of 500 was a "small" church. I experienced Pathfinders and Christian education at a time when the Baby Boom was growing both institutions at a vast rate and many younger, well-educated, broad-minded teachers and youth leaders were involved. My parents were quite conservative Adventists and those are my spiritual roots, but among my teachers the most creative and compassionate were somewhat more liberal and grew to have profound respect for what they taught me about social ethics, theology, history and the social sciences.

I was nurtured in a phase of the Adventist movement in the 1950s and 1960s when it was more expansive, Evangelical and progressive. I had little awareness of the more Fundamentalist, reactionary and sectarian side of the movement until much later. In the late 1960s when I proposed a volunteer urban service program (ACT-Adventist Collegiate Taskforce), the union conference youth director championed it and within a couple of years I found myself flown to the nation's capital, hosted by the editor of The Youth's Instructor and asked to present my proposal to the General Conference executive committee where it was voted at Annual Council.

When I entered the ministry in 1970, I was called to the Voice of Prophecy to help launch a bold, new youth ministry initiative, among other things. I still fondly recall H. M. S. Richards Sr.--the founder--sitting in management meetings reading Time magazine, seemingly not listening, but then demonstrating a clear understanding of all the details when he occasionally made a speech. Denominational leaders allowed me to take an 18-month leave of absence, before I was ordained, to be trained as a community organizer and complete graduate work in community mental health while an administrative intern with the Federal "war on poverty." Then they called me to the East to direct urban ministry programs in Washington, Boston and Pittsburgh before I finally went into a "regular district" appointment.

Of course, I want Ezekiel to grow up in the Adventist faith. My love for him will never be conditioned on that, but it is what I hope for him. His parents are faithful members of New Hope Church, the contemporary Adventist congregation in the suburbs of Baltimore. They volunteer in the core group of Share Our Strength, the humanitarian ministry sponsored by the church. Our other daughter is married to an Adventist pastor who also directs an innovative community ministry in a suburb of Cincinnati and she is completing the MSW degree at the University of Cincinnati.

What kind of Adventist Church will Ezekiel come into as a young adult two decades from now? Of course it will be culturally and ethnically diverse and he will accept that from day one as "normal." His life is the definition of multicultural and that will be real strength for him that I did not have. And it will be high tech beyond anything I could have imagined, although a college friend recently reminded me that I had told her years ago that computers would eventually replace books. Ezekiel's picture was posted on his parents' Facebook page before he was even born!

What else will the Adventist movement be in two decades? I pray that it will be less consumed with internal conflicts and more focused on Christ's mission in the world--more involved in the ministry that Christ calls for in Matthew 25 among those who are really waiting for His return. I hope that it will have as strong a youth ministry as it had when I was a teenager and college student-a ministry that focuses on "missionary volunteers," activism rather than entertainment. I hope that he finds the Adventist fellowship as empowering as I found it; ready to engage his gifts, his vision and his leadership ability. (If you knew his parents it would be hard to believe that he will not grow up with leadership ability.) I want an Adventist movement that will nurture him and encourage him to become a compassionate, grace-oriented Jesus follower creatively involved in the important issues of his generation.

Is that too much to ask of my Church? It has disappointment me on occasion, but it has not failed me yet. I believe that it is still the strong backbone and progressive point of Christ's remnant movement in the world. I believe that He is still in charge. I believe that He wants the same thing for Ezekiel that I do. I pray that "poppy" can be something useful to Ezekiel by way of spiritual and intellectual nurture. Please pray for me and my family!

Afterword

Why did I not write, "I want Ezekiel to see Jesus come back"? I am sure someone will be thinking that right now, even if they don't post it. I do want Ezekiel to see Jesus return. I would be overjoyed for him to grow up in the realized Kingdom. I don't care where we are at in all the various, complicated prophecy charts I have seen over the years. Too many people have suffered horribly and lost their lives in war, civil violence, hunger, disease and stupidity due to poverty, injustice and inhumanity. I do not wish that on another soul. I would be happy for Jesus to return before this gets posted on line. Yet I am acutely aware that was the deepest hope of my great-grandmother as well nearly 120 years ago. And Christ tells us in Matthew 24 that no one knows when it will happen. He expects us to live our lives every day as if today were the day, but as stewards that may have to yet manage things here on His behalf for a long time. Ezekiel is a sixth generation Adventist. How do I pass on to him in meaningful, personal fashion the belief that Jesus will come soon? His mother was about 8 when she first asked me, "Daddy, when we say Jesus is coming back soon, how soon is soon?"