Stopping Those Damn Magazines

12

If you’ve left the SDA church and moved a few times, you’ll notice that the constant stream of Adventist magazines keep following you. This is because you never dropped your membership. They followed me through three address changes over almost two years, this even included “The Quiet Hour” addressed to “Pastor Dustin Williams.”

It’s pretty simple to do. Think back to what congregation holds your membership, this would be the church you were baptized in or the one where you most recently transfered your membership to. Which conference or union sends you their publications could help in narrowing it down. If you can find an email address for the pastor, secretary, or clerk you can do it via email, otherwise it’ll cost you a postage stamp. You can say something as simple as the letter I sent:

Dustin Williams
to    [email protected]
date    Sat, May 23, 2009 at 1:31 PM
subject    Removal of Membership
mailed-by    gmail.com
   
I would like to hereby resign my membership with the Seventh-day
Adventist Church and formally request that church publications stop
being sent to me.

Sincerely,

Dustin Williams

The message will be forwarded to the church clerk, they’ll stop the publications, then at the next business meeting they will vote to honor your request. After that you should get a letter in the mail from the pastor telling you that you are no longer a Seventh-day Adventist. I still have the letter, honestly I’m tempted to frame it.

If they resist, then you can always list off your grievous sins, which according to the church manual they are required to remove your membership for. Among the most popular are apostasy, sabbath breaking, drinking, smoking, promiscuity, etc. If you haven’t gotten past the apostasy, then you’re missing out. However, there’s no point in giving an old woman a heart attack, so you should just leave it to the fact that you have apostatized.

If the membership you need to drop is LDS, I’ve heard you need to talk to the local bishop. Catholics have stopped honoring requests for defection, so you would probably have to burn an effigy of the pope made out of “host” and post a video on YouTube, this might get their attention and prompt an excommunication. Other denominations vary as to whether membership is local or centralized and who would need to process the request. If you have any doubt, I’m sure the local administrative office (diocese/conference/etc) could probably route your letter to the correct place.

The worst you would have to face would be a short meeting with a pastor, elder, or deacon. If this is the case, make sure you maintain control of the conversation and be firm. If you show weakness, they will pounce. Fortunately most denominations wont put you through this.

If you haven’t done this yet, please do. The longer you’re on the books, the longer they can count your for statistics and lobbying. Don’t give them the benefit of being able to use you to inflate their numbers.

Good luck!

12 Comments


  1. As the publisher of a Seventh-day Adventist magazine, I would like to clarify a couple things. First, You don't have to drop your membership to stop receiving magazines sent by the church. You can contact the congregation that holds your membership and ask them to stop sending the church magazines. They will un-check the boxes next to "Send Adventist Review, and Send (union paper).
    Second, there are dozens of Adventist parachurch organizations that mail things to Adventists. Neither the local congregation or any other part of the church can stop mailings from those organizations, or even know that you receive them. To stop mailings from The Quiet Hour, Amazing Facts, 3ABN and every magazine other than your union magazine and Adventist World you will have to contact those organizations directly.


  2. Gerry,
    I am aware of the distinction between mailing list and membership. However, somebody who can't ask the clerk of the congregation that holds their membership is not likely to be an active member and if their reading my blog there's a good chance that they aren't believers any more, if that is the case, then they shouldn't be on the books inflating the church statistics.

    Do you know why it is that the Quiet Hour stopped sending me their magazine at the same time I quit my membership?


  3. I've tried calling the magazines directly to ask them to take me off of their mailing list. They agreed, but they haven't stopped sending them to me. Go figure. I'm going to try your method, Dustin. Thanks for the information too; I thought I was the only one who was being plagued with SDA magazines and literature.


  4. Once I sent the above letter the magazines stopped within a month or two.


  5. We aren't off the books, but get no magazines at all. They stopped when we stopped tithing (and we stopped tithing, because we didn't like to see it wasted on new, unneeded parking lots, multimillion dollar building expansions- also unneeded- and not to local ministry, especially directed toward the poor- lot of prosperity gospel thought going on in some SDA circles). Anyway, no money- no magazine! At least for us.


  6. So you're church decided to penalize you for not tithing by stopping the magazines. It's too bad that all congregations don't do that 😉


  7. well my magazines (church budget, member handbook, etc.) doesn't come to me but my parent's house, and my mom would be very unhappy with receiving that "leaving the church" letter you mention.

    Furthermore, my grandfather, who baptized me, is on the church business committee and I fear would consider a request to be a personal insult.

    I guess I'll stay on the list for awhile yet…

    I wish they could just take me off, no voting about it or sending letters to my parents. I understand why voting is necessary for involuntary membership dropping, if someone was "sinful" enough to be kicked out, but for a personal request from the individual? WHY does it need to be spread around by a vote?


  8. You could try asking the pastor if there was anyway your membership could be dropped in a confidential manner. Otherwise you'll just have to wait until you're ready to be out to your family as an atheist. If your grandfather does try to take it personally, point out how much you love and respect him and that your beliefs are not a reflection on him.


  9. @Dustin Williams,

    My concern with that is I don't fully trust the pastor I would contact to actually honor my request for confidentiality, and not instead decide to directly talk to my grandfather about it.

    And as for my mother, she *does* know I'm an atheist, but she likes to pretend she doesn't know, and pretend it's just a phase, and our relationship, honestly, is kind of on life support at the moment. I don't think she'd appreciate a letter from the church finalizing my leaving, and I could lose her completely.

    Which I don't want to do because I want to maintain a relationship with my minor siblings, and already she has restricted some of my ability to contact them or invite them to my house.


  10. While I hate to weave webs of lies, in your case it might be a good idea. Is there another church near where you live where you could transfer your membership?


  11. We aren't off the books, but get no magazines at all. They stopped when we stopped tithing (and we stopped tithing, because we didn't like to see it wasted on new, unneeded parking lots, multimillion dollar building expansions- also unneeded- and not to local ministry, especially directed toward the poor- lot of prosperity gospel thought going on in some SDA circles). Anyway, no money- no magazine! At least for us.


  12. I've tried calling the magazines directly to ask them to take me off of their mailing list. They agreed, but they haven't stopped sending them to me. Go figure. I'm going to try your method, Dustin. Thanks for the information too; I thought I was the only one who was being plagued with SDA magazines and literature.

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