If you recently joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church, you may have noticed you have joined a global family. We say family because there is an unusual connection between your new friends that sit in the pew next to you and the people they seem to know in countries you have never even heard of.

Before becoming a pastor, I used to be in television and advertising. Roger, my video engineer, was from a small town in southwest Ohio and was just learning about Seventh-day Adventists. One of our producers, Don Duncan, was a very friendly and gifted man who was also a noted musician. The three of us often traveled together on productions, and Roger was amazed at how many people Don knew. One time we were sitting in a restaurant hundreds of miles from any place familiar. The waiter came up to Don and said, “Are you Don Duncan?” Come to find out, Don had taught him trombone at Loma Linda University some years before. Experiences like that were repeated hundreds of times, convincing Roger that every Adventist knew every other Adventist in the world.

John Guare popularized the phrase “six degrees of separation” in his 1990 play by the same title. The concept was first introduced in 1929 by Frigyes Karinthy and suggested that technological advances in travel and communication would create social networks that would in effect “shrink” our world. Stanley Milgram of Harvard University began a series of social experiments that validated the notion that people in America were all connected by an average of six friendships. In other words, you are only six steps away from any person in America.

Now, if you’re a Seventh-day Adventist, you’re probably fewer steps away. No studies have been done on the social networks of Seventh-day Adventists, but it stands to reason that the Adventist educational network has made the Adventist world much smaller.

My work in youth and prayer ministry has taken me to dozens of countries on nearly every continent. I have yet to go to a place where I didn’t meet someone who knew a close friend of mine. Most had a common link—an Adventist campus.

The Seventh-day Adventist church operates the second largest parochial educational system in the world with 1.1 million students in 5,600 schools, representing nearly 145 countries. From its very beginnings in the mid 1800s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has placed an importance on Bible-based primary education. In the 1870s, a denominationally-based education system was formed. It was founded on the principal of balanced development that includes mental, physical, social, and spiritual health. Adventist education has always been characterized as redemptive in nature with the purpose of restoring human beings to the image of God, their Creator. Service to God and humanity has been the goal for training in the various disciplines. It is no wonder that people who prepare for life service in Adventist schools have shared goals and often work together and support one another wherever they are in the world.

So, if you are new to the Adventist Church, make the connection through Adventist Education.

Gary Burns is the Lake Union Conference communication director.