Debbie Michel
July 11, 2025Audrey Andersson, a general vice president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church since her election in 2022, has had a front-row seat to this process.
Andersson gave us a primer on who sits in the four seats under the glare of klieg lights, explaining their roles from left to right, as seen by the audience. In the first chair, “assuming that everything is as normal, it will be Elder Todd McFarland, who is deputy legal counsel for the General Conference. He is our most experienced parliamentarian and he really does help keep us on the straight and narrow. So his job is to give advice to the chairs and make sure that we follow right good processes. If we've got a question on rules of order, he's the man.”
Next to the parliamentarian sits the person chairing the meeting, a role usually rotating between one of the seven vice presidents. Except for the first meeting, General Conference President Ted Wilson also plays a role in chairing the meetings.
In the third seat, next the chair, is the secretary of the meeting who is there to help keep track of things and to answer questions.
The fourth chair belongs to the recording secretary. “They work with people down in the very front [row of audience seats], such as court reporters, and people recording the meeting,” said Andersson.
A key feature of the process is fairness. Delegates who wish to speak must queue up electronically. “On the floor there are scanning booths and you just go, you scan your badge and then it places you in a queue and it is in the order that you scan in that you actually come up on the list. So no one can say, oh, I like the look of that person. No, it is literally the order that you scan. It comes up so it's all automated.”
When it comes to judging a successful session, Andersson’s standard is about process and spirit. “As a chair, I want everyone to feel that they have had the opportunity to participate and to speak that even if we don't disagree with each other, that discussion has been respectful and that we haven't got through our agenda points. Then I feel, okay, I've done my job. But in all meetings, there come little unexpected blips and we try to deal with those with grace as well.”
Grace, she emphasizes, is essential. “It is. We're a family. We see things differently in our own families. We need grace with each other in our church family. We need grace, we need to listen, we need to understand.”
At the end of the day, Andersson hopes members watching from the floor or from afar will remember one thing: “Everyone at this table is trying to do their best. And I know it's very easy to sit out there and think, ‘Oh, why did they do that? Or I would've done that differently.’ But we really all are trying to make sure that we do the business of the Lord in the best way possible, in an orderly way, so that he has lifted up. And at the end of the day, we can say it has been good to be here and we have done the Lord's business.”
Debbie Michel is editor of the Lake Union Herald.
