We are pleased to announce that in January, 2020 our new International Missions Asia/Pacific Area Director (APAD) began transitioning into the role as a bridge between the churches of ACGC and the Advent Christian ministries of the Asia/Pacific region. As explained below, we must withhold APAD’s name due to security reasons.

APAD is a graduate of Berkshire Christian College and a lifelong Advent Christian. His career after college began in the social services field but soon transitioned into woodworking. In 1995, after eight years of woodworking, APAD began a custom woodworking business.

In 1996, APAD sensed God’s call into pastoral ministry and in 2000 became a bi-vocational pastor of an Advent Christian church in the Midwest. He served this church for five years while still operating the woodworking business located 70 miles away. In 2005, APAD closed his woodworking business and moved with his wife and their two sons to pastor an Advent Christian church in the South.

This congregation has a history of serving the Asian community in the city, and in 2005 they birthed an independent Asian congregation. While APAD has served as the pastor of this congregation, the church has transitioned to the point that it is now approximately two-thirds Asian. Many of these Asians are researchers at the local medical college and are in the U.S. on a temporary basis, some for as little as six months to a year.

The majority of these researchers come from a country that is closed to the gospel and to missionaries. In order to continue ministering to and discipling them while in the U.S. and once they return home, APAD and his wife have taken certain steps:

• Minimizing his pastoral ministry presence on social media.
• Emphasizing his woodworking business as his career on social media.
• Communicating and traveling to this Asian country to meet with former attenders of the church.
• Asking that ACGC not publicize his name or image in connection with his role as our Asia/Pacific Area Director.

While we at ACGC are not publicizing his name or image, he is not a secret. In fact, APAD is scheduled to attend the 2020 Triennial Convention and share with us. You may know our new area director, but we ask that you help him preserve his ability to continue to minister the gospel in Asia. Please avoid publishing any material, especially electronically, that uses his or his wife’s name or image in connection with the role of APAD.

Thank you for keeping APAD’s name and ministry secured. He looks forward to ministering with our Asia/Pacific ministries and sharing with our AC churches in his new role.