Recently my daughter researched the history of the Adventist church for her public high school project. She saw the project as an excellent opportunity to share Adventist heritage with her class. I immediately suggested several books on Adventist history that we had in our home library. As a parent and teacher, I make every effort to share reliable and trustworthy information with my children and students, because trusted information significantly shapes people’s habits, worldview, and choices. How could I have forgotten that my daughter’s generation consults “Dr. Google” first? My daughter was appalled by false and defamatory online information about the Adventist church. Disheartened, she asked me to recommend authentic online resources on Adventist history. That day, I wished for a comprehensive and captivating publication like the new online Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. I wonder how many parents, teachers, and Adventists of all ages face the same challenge.
The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists (ESDA) is an official publication and record of the history of the Seventh-day Adventist work. This global church project will produce an estimated 10,000 articles on Adventist history, crucial events and themes, organizations, entities, institutions, and people with accompanying photographs, media, and original documents. The new encyclopedia will reflect the incredible growth in the church in the last more than fifty years since the publication of the first edition of the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia.
ESDA Online, the church’s first online reference work, will have its official debut at the 2020 General Conference session. ESDA Online will be a free website, ensuring global dissemination of content. The print version of the Encyclopedia will be produced after the first online edition.
The editors invite researches, teachers, students, and members with expertise on a given subject, not only history and theology scholars, to contribute articles on topics not yet covered by our invitation-only editorial process. ESDA makes special appeal to international writers to collect historical data from their world regions. Think of the past missionaries, evangelists, educators, medical workers, preachers, and church leaders who contributed to the growth of the Adventist church in your territory. Good places to begin research are the church archives, obituaries, yearbooks, newsletters, church publications, private collections of missionary letters and diaries, audio and video materials, and interviews to collect historical data from oral traditions.
Each article in the Encyclopedia will qualify as a scholarly publication, with its author receiving full recognition. Please check www.adventistarchives.org/author-materials for detailed information for authors and www.adventistarchives.org/assistant-editors for the ways of contacting the responsible division editors and learning about the available topics. Visit also www.esda-europe.org/, www.esdana.org/, and esda-nsd.weebly.com/.
We are open to considering new research and unplanned articles. Consider what you can write on and email [email protected] with your suggestions. Follow us on Twitter @EncyclopediaSDA. Together we can make the ESDA a blessing to the world and praise God for the wonderful guidance of His people!
Author
Dragoslava Santrac
Managing Editor for the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Dr. Santrac holds a PhD in Old Testament (North-West University RSA/Greenwich School of Theology, UK) and an MA in Biblical Languages and Old Testament (Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI). She has taught biblical studies for the past 15 years at Belgrade Theological Seminary (Serbia), The University of the Southern Caribbean (Trinidad), and currently serves as adjunct professor of religion at Washington Adventist University (Takoma Park, MD), USA. She has also served as an editor for the South-East European Union and the Biblical Research Institute (BRI). Dr. Santrac has authored several books and articles on Old Testament Theology, the book of Psalms, and biblical studies.
2 comments