BY FATHER ZOSIMA
FEDERAL WAY, WA—Running on a platform of “Uh, hi, I’m Michael White III, and I was thinking about going into ministry, you know,” Michael White III won the Puget Sound Conference of Seventh-day Adventist’s sponsorship to the Seminary by unanimous vote Monday.
White is the son of Michael White II, the senior pastor of the Greater Seattle Seventh-day Adventist Church, the largest church in the Puget Sound Conference. He is the grandson of Michael White I, the Conference’s former president from 1979-1985.
Upon graduation from Southwestern Adventist University in 2007, where he majored in Religious Education and sustained a 2.0 GPA, White III obtained a job as a salesperson at Abercrombie and Fitch in the Southcenter Mall. There, he pursued interests in competitive sports, women, and drinking, until receiving a sign that he had a greater calling elsewhere.
In his stump speech, White III detailed how he was loving life until the threat of termination at his position at Abercrombie, and eviction from his apartment, and personal bankruptcy forced him to play the one card he knew he had left. He developed his now famous platform slogan, called the Puget Sound Conference, and the rest is history.
The Conference’s Executive Committee expressed an instant connection with White’s background and platform from the get-go.
“Until Michael White II’s son dropped into the game, this year’s crop of sponsorship candidates was rather plain,” said Dan Simpson, Vice President of the Puget Sound Conference. “We had what’s-his-name from U-Dub, and what’s-her-name from Seattle University, and I think that one guy from Walla Walla, but that was it. Then the grandson of the former conference president calls, and things just brightened up. I really felt good about him. He’s one of us. One of the family. He’s just like me. I get him. He’s a prodigal coming home. You could see everyone on the committee just latching onto his name once it was introduced.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if he were to take over his father’s church one day?” Simpson added.
White announced his candidacy late in the cycle, just before a voting session of the Executive Committee. Prior to his arrival, the leading candidate for sponsorship had been Brian Nishiyama, a Japanese-American biology graduate from the University of Washington who had been ministering part-time in the West Cascade SDA Church, where he coordinated successful outreach programs to unchurched students of public universities and other non-Adventist members of the community.
Michael White III, however, proved to have a set of qualifications capable of vaulting him to the top of the race. Eleanor Beardsley, the Puget Sound Conference’s Secretary, was on duty Monday morning when White called to inform the conference that he was thinking about going into ministry.
“I told him I’d see what I could do, then raced down the hall to the conference room. The committee was just about to vote that Nishiyama guy through, but they put everything on hold and lit up when I bawled the news about who was on the line. Then they took an instant vote. Five minutes later I was back on the phone, telling Michael that we’d send him to Seminary and place him in a good church when he finished.”
Beardsley also placed a short call to Nishiyama, informing him that, because the Conference lacked Korean churches to place him in, they would be unable to sponsor him to Seminary. Nishiyama, after clarifying his ethnicity and stating his ability to work in both ethnic and non-ethnic churches, conceded gracefully, but expressed determination to continue in his calling.
“Would have been nice if they helped me, but I guess I’ll go to Andrews and just try my best on my own.”
The other rejected candidates expressed similar plans. White, reached by phone as he celebrated his sponsorship, released the following comment: “Hey, my dad said you’d cover all my moving expenses, right?”
White further added that he guessed he just had a stronger calling than that of the other candidates.
