Members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Executive Committee witnessed on April 6, 2009, the launch of a French edition of the church's international journal for pastors and selected an associate editor to oversee the forthcoming magazine.
The French edition of Ministry is expected to correct the conspicuous absence of that language in a publication already regionally available in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian.
Because French is spoken in seven of the church's 13 world regions, no one regional church off! ice could justify fronting the full cost of publishing and distributing a language edition, said Ministry editor Nikolaus Satelmajer.
In the church's three African regions -- where French is perhaps most widely spoken -- financing such a magazine posed the most financial challenges, Satelmajer said. And in the church's South Pacific region, only 40 pastors speak French, far too few to make a publication cost effective.
"We have pastors around the world with so few resources, so we wanted to put something of quality in their hands," Satelmajer said.
The French edition of Ministry will be distributed to an estimated 3,300 Adventist pastors, with a potentially far wider audience -- the magazine is often sent to ministers of other religions on a gift subscription basis.
World church president Jan Paulsen called the new edition an "instrument" through which to connect with "French-speaking ministers who may not be members of the [Adventist Church]."
Even with funding from church headquarters, budgeting for the project and distribution of the magazine remain challenging, Satelmajer said. An extension office in Paris, France will design the magazine and the church's Pacific Press Publishing Association in Nampa, Idaho, will print the edition.
Newly appointed associate editor for the French edition, Bernard Sauvagnat, will oversee the Paris office. Currently secretary of the Ministerial Association in the church's Franco-Belgian region, Sauvagnat is a longtime reader of Ministry. "It has been very enriching for my ministry, and I hope that French-speaking pastors will be blessed by it now," he said.
Sauvagnat brings decades of experience as a journalist, writer, editor, professor and pastor to the post. He previously edited the French editions of both Signs of the Times and Adventist! Review.
"We're confident he'll be a real asset in the production of this journal," Satelmajer told members of the Executive Committee after they nominated Sauvagnat.
