Investigating Strategies for Church Members’ Retention: The Case of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the North-West Rwanda Field

Mutuyimana Nkundakozera
President North-West Rwanda, Field
School of Theology Seminary, Adventist University of Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.
Email: mutuyimanan@aua.ac.ke

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6579-5846

Abstract: The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is one of the Christian churches globally founded on making discipleship for Jesus Christ. This makes it experience the numerical growth of new church members. This is attributed to its numerous discipleship programs that lead to the conversion of new church members. Despite that, however, strategies to retain new members are ineffective as some backslide and drop attending church services or cease to participate in various church discipleship programs. This paper uses the descriptive literature review methodology to investigate the various effective biblical and Spirit of Prophecy strategies that can be used to retain newly converted SDA church members. First, the paper analyses the Old Testament retention strategies, the New Testament retention strategies used by Jesus Christ and Apostle Paul, the retention strategies according to the Spirit of Prophecy by Ellen G. White; as well as other retention strategies revealed in other literature. A conclusion is then drawn indicating the found strategies that work. The study informs the SDA church about the best strategies for retaining newly converted members for church members’ numerical and spiritual growth.