Self-esteem, altruism and involvement in public and personal evangelism of Seventh-Day Adventist members in Iloilo

Abstract

The Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church is a religious organization which strongly believes on the Mandate of the Bible in Matthew 28:19-20, the Great Commission, “Go ye preach the gospel and make disciples”. In general, the SDA world church leaders emphasize that every member is a missionary and church members are expected to do evangelism. However, a survey shows that there were only 20% of the members who were involved in evangelism. The purpose of this study, is to determine whether the church members’ characteristics, their level of altruism and self-esteem are significantly related to their extent of involvement in personal and public evangelism.

The population of the study were 139 SDA members and church officers in three church locations in Iloilo Province, namely; City, Poblacion and Upland areas. Survey questionnaires were distributed to adult church members who were present during the church service one Saturday in the three locations. The study utilized the non-probability convenient sampling, thus, the findings of this study can be generalized only to the population of the three churches covered by the study and not to all SDA members in the Province of Iloilo.

The findings showed that the higher the level of self-esteem and altruism of the SDA respondents, the more they were involved in personal and public evangelism. Their personal characteristics did not matter in their decision to be involved in evangelism. A seminar-workshop is recommended for the enhancement of the level of self-esteem and altruism of the members. For prospective researchers, this study may be replicated among a greater number of SDA churches and district territories to represent a wider church population, and using a probability sampling technique.