This morning I read in my newspaper that Dr. Anne van der Meiden died yesterday, on the day before his 92nd birthday. He suffered a brain infarct in 2018 and did not recover from it. Van der Meiden was a theologian as well as a communications scholar. He wrote a series of books in both areas of his expertise, but he gained particular fame for his translation of the Bible into the local language in Twente, a region in the Eastern part of the Netherlands: Bibel in de Twentse Sproake (2019).
Herman Finkers—an entertainer whom I greatly admire–said today in a regional television broadcast that van der Meiden, whether lecturing or preaching, exuded a fatherly, wise authority. Van der Meiden had close connections with the royal family. He officiated at the wedding of Prince Floris and Aimée Söhngen in 2005. “He didn’t care whom he talked to,” says Finkers, “the queen or the postman: he talked to them in the same way.”

In the period when van der Meiden was professor of communication science at the University of Utrecht, I once had a particularly interesting conversation with him. I was looking for a suitable topic for a possible PhD dissertation and was thinking of something at the intersection of church and communication. When I called him, he was happy to make an appointment. Van der Meiden himself had written his doctoral dissertation about the role of ethics in the proclamation of the gospel. In the process, he had, in passing, delivered quite a bit of criticism on the way the Watchtower Society recruited its members (at least in the past). Our conversation quickly took a turn toward Seventh-day Adventism. I asked, How might we succeed in convincing a larger number of people of the value of Adventism? Van der Meiden’s answer was twofold. As I repeat what he said, I must, of course, underscore that this conversation took place more than 40 years ago.

The first thing van der Meiden emphasized regarding the relative success of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they are very clear: Whoever has come into contact with the truth, as they proclaim it, and does not respond positively to it, is eternally lost. Period. “You Adventists,” said van der Meiden, “no longer dare to say that. And so, if people will be saved anyway without necessarily joining your church, then becoming an Adventist becomes much less urgent.” It didn’t seem desirable to me then (and it still seems undesirable to me) to adjust our strategy on that point. After all, we are not in charge of who is or is not going to be saved.

But van der Meiden also emphasized another point. He knew that in the past Adventist evangelistic meetings usually began with lectures about the condition of man in death. In his opinion, that was a fatal mistake, because it led to these meetings being attended mostly by older people, who in many cases had suffered the loss of a loved one. But often these people were so tied to their own tradition that they did not have the inner strength to make the transition to another faith community. According to van der Meiden, we as Adventists should design a recruiting strategy that targets young people-and more specifically: young business people. Often, they have a spiritual need that remains unmet in their materialistic context. Moreover, they are used to making decisions, and if they see that a certain choice will benefit them, they will be more inclined to join a (different) faith community than older people.

Since the conversation with Anne van der Meiden took place, a lot has changed in Dutch society and in church life. No, telling people that they will be lost forever if they do not become Adventists in a hurry is not an option. But is the second point he mentioned perhaps still worth considering?