Ron Lawson Announces Admiral Ncube as Asheville Forum June 29 Presenter
Ronald Lawson has spent the last half of his life as a sociologist researching the dynamics of the global Seventh-day Adventist Church. Now he has enlisted a team to help him complete books that will make his findings available. Lawson has interviewed 4,500 Adventists in 60 countries in all the divisions of the Adventist world church, which makes his the largest sociological study of a religious group to date, he says. He notes that the number of interviews he conducted exceeds the number in any sociological study to his knowledge by a wide margin.
Over his prodigious career as an academic, Lawson also helped found Seventh-day Adventist Kinship International and the Queensland University Seventh-day Adventist Society, and has been a very active part of the Association of Adventist Forums. He served as New York Adventist Forum president for 41 years, helping to establish Forum chapters in Sydney, San Diego, Toronto, and Orlando. In 2016, he founded the Asheville Adventist Forum, for which he continues to host monthly meetings via Zoom while working on his writing projects.
“Along the way I have been blessed to find friends in many parts of the world church,” Lawson says, “who help me keep up to date on happenings concerning our Church in their parts of the world while I am anchored by the need to write.”
Lawson will introduce one such friend at the Asheville Adventist Forum’s June 29 meeting: Admiral Ncube, whom Lawson describes as “someone whose writings always surprise and energize me with his insights.”
Admiral Ncube was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Botswana, where he is a development worker for the United Nations in program management, partnerships, and external relations. Before this, Ncube lived and worked in Asia, the Middle East and other parts of Africa. This broad experience has provided an in-depth understanding of Adventism in the global south. He enjoys music and writing, and serves as a regular contributor to Adventist Today and Spectrum on church culture, theology, governance, and more.
Ncube is married to Margret and has three sons—Kai, Myles and Christian.
Ncube’s presentation to the Asheville Forum will be “Emerging Questions on the Americanization of Adventist Eschatology.” The presentation will explore the historical development of the traditional Adventist understanding of Revelation 13 and how it reflects an Americanized approach to eschatology. He will raise questions on emerging issues and challenge Adventists to begin a rereading of Revelation 13 in ways that address 21st century issues in the global south.
“I can confirm that this is a major issue among Adventists” throughout the world church, Lawson says. “Adventist teachings are so anchored in the American experience that in many ways they seem to be of little relevance to events in other parts of the world.”
The Asheville Adventist Forum meets Saturday, June 29, at 3:00 PM, Eastern. To join the Zoom meeting use the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89101652323.
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