This March, Seventh-day Adventist Church leadership had the difficult challenge of deciding what to do about their 60,000+ person event, scheduled to be in June 2020. Held every five years, the General Conference Session is attended by people from over 200 countries. Preparations for the event began almost a decade ago, and changes to an event of this magnitude are complex and involved. We interviewed Sheri Clemmer, a key meeting planner for this event to find out how they were able to move this event to next year.

Tell us about your event; a brief history, who attends, and the event's importance for your churches and denomination.

Seventh-day Adventist leaders met in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1863 “for the purpose of organizing a General Conference,” the minutes from that meeting say. The meeting began on the evening of May 20, during which delegates chose a chairman and a secretary. During the Session, delegates drafted a constitution and bylaws. They also established Conference leadership.

Pictures from early Sessions show delegates lined along the entrance to a small church. Back then, the movement’s leaders came to Session mostly by train or by horse and buggy. Today, one-third of the movement’s membership now resides in Africa, with another third residing in Central America and South America. Brazil now has more Adventists than any other country—1.3 million. Participants come from over 200 countries to attend this quinquennial event.

Since 1970, Session has been held every five years, as is mandated by the Adventist Church Constitution. The first Session held west of the Mississippi River was in November of 1887 in Oakland, California. Session has been held outside the U.S. three times: in Austria in 1975, the Netherlands in 1995 and in Canada in 2000. In 2021, Indianapolis will host the 61st Session.

Recent General Conference Sessions have been held in baseball and football stadiums in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Few other venues in the world offer the necessary amenities for such an event: seating for 70,000-plus attendees, venue support staff who speak English (the official business language of the church), reliable and cost-effective transportation, and food safety for a large group.

What are some of the big challenges in planning this event?

Our biggest challenge, as you can imagine, is finding a venue that can meet our basic needs which are:

A stadium that can seat 60-70,000 people adjacent to or connected to a Convention Center with a minimum of 200,000 but preferred 400,000 square feet of exhibit space, plus food service space AND 60+ meeting rooms.
5,000 sleeping rooms within walking distance.
An International Airport nearby.

Many cities have a stadium and convention center but they aren’t adjacent or connected—they are six blocks or three miles apart. That will not work for our event because it would require us to provide shuttle service—a budget and time buster for the number of people we must move. Our ten-day schedule is PACKED. Adding a commute to either venue would simply not work.

Another big financial hurdle we’ve faced in the past is with cities that required us to pay for union labor to shadow our staff which doubles our expenditure in some areas. We will be meeting in St. Louis in 2025—another union city. To prepare for the event in St. Louis in 2025 we consulted with other large groups who’ve met there to glean insights for how they managed union costs. This is helping us to know how to create a great working relationship with the labor union workers in the city ahead of the event.

What was your process to decide to reschedule the event to next year? What other options did you consider?

The Session Management team met daily for two weeks in early March 2020, with the General Conference Administration, and our Health Ministries Director, Dr. Peter Landless. Dr. Landless’ guidance was instrumental in helping us to understand and know as much as possible what to expect with the pandemic. We came to the conclusion that we must postpone our June/July 2020 GC Session.

We worked fast to develop to a plan for moving the event to 2021. This included streamlining the event; reducing it from 10 to 6 days, eliminating the exhibition hall, women’s meetings, meal hour concerts, and seminars. It was our hope and goal to be able to keep the 2021 event in Indianapolis. Our Administration felt it was best to take these extreme actions to be able to find new dates in a city with a very full event calendar for 2021.

Before taking our plan to Executive Committee for approval on March 19, 2020, we needed to secure dates with the venues and hotels. Right away we started working with the Visit Indy team. Initially, the only dates that they found to be available were over Thanksgiving or Christmas in 2021. That simply would not work for this event.

We were discouraged and unsure as to whether or not we would be able to meet in Indianapolis in 2021. I prepared a RFP with new dates and created a small list of cities to approach. These included in no specific order Atlanta, Charlotte, Louisville, Orlando, Tampa, Nashville, and San Antonio. But moving the event to a new city meant starting over on many elements of the planning–something we hoped to avoid.

We asked the Visit Indy team to search again for openings earlier in the year. It is almost as though God’s hand was covering May 17-27 in the Indianapolis sales calendar until that moment! I firmly believe that God always goes ahead of us and prepares the way. It just so happened that upon a second look, these dates AND 3,225 downtown hotels were available to us!

On March 29, 2020, our Executive Committee voted the decision to postpone AND reduce the footprint of the 61st General Conference Session. This was done via videoconferencing and was attended by people from around the globe. As soon as the vote was confirmed, our Communications Department released a statement regarding the postponement and changes to the 2021 event. This was released through all of our communication channels, including our web site, Division communications, and through media outlets.

The response from attendees has been favorable considering the concerns we are facing globally. Exhibitors have been very understanding as well as people who love the exhibits. Musicians, who are selected from all of our 13 world divisions and pay their own expenses to come, are disappointed. Only 25% of the approved musicians can be included in the new reduced programming.

What are your biggest challenges in rescheduling?

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of contractual work for an event of this size. Thankfully, we have our own legal department who was by our side during the process of undoing the 2020 contracts with venues, hotels, decorators, and vendors. Two of our hotels indicated that they would not accept our Force Majeure claim and invoiced us for the full penalty amount. Thankfully, we have been able to work through this and come out penalty free on every count. We have had to pay our decorator and production company for services rendered that were specific to the 2020 event. Portions of payments made for some services, however, have been applied to the new 2021 event, including rental of the Indiana Convention Center.

Working through these details has taken weeks of diligent attention to detail, countless phone calls and zoom meetings. Finally, we are now on the other side of undoing 2020 contracts and are starting to work on contracts for 2021.

Losing our exhibits and some of the auxiliary events is a challenge. Our attendees have grown to love these features of the event. The Exhibit Halls are the ONLY revenue making aspect of a Session. We have returned 1.6 million dollars in Exhibitor Application fees, making a significant impact on the Session budget. We have also refunded payments for meal tickets purchased by general attendees. The reduction in the number of days, sessions and activities will help to offset the loss of the exhibit revenue. Thankfully, we budget annually for GC Session even though the event occurs every five years. It remains to be seen as to whether or not exhibits will return in 2025—Session Management is hopeful that they will.

What have you learned from this experience? What opportunities has it presented?

Going through this experience has made Session Management even more aware of the necessity and importance of having a great legal representative on your side. Regardless of the size of your event, I STRONGLY encourage you to make sure that you have all contracts approved by legal counsel prior to signing. Thankfully, this is our policy, and it paid off as we have come away with zero penalties from two venue contracts and well over 60,000 room nights that were contracted for 2020.

From this experience, our administration has come to the conclusion that we CAN do this event in fewer than 10 days, and even in a smaller venue. This will open up a host of other cities that could be considered for future General Conference Sessions.

It is hoped that future sessions can still include the big camp-meeting feel, seeing people we have not seen in five years, enjoying exhibits, enjoying concerts and seminars during meal hours, but for a shorter period of time. Morning and evening devotionals are a continuing part of our program and we will always include one Sabbath together for a full day of worship.

What insight and advice do you provide for event planners who are rescheduling or rethinking an event?

If you are considering a postponement, begin research and communication right now. Many groups are moving dates. We were blessed to be able to find workable dates in the same city. Had we waited to make this decision, the dates would’ve been taken by another group.

Early communication with attendees is also important—especially international attendees, who must manage details further out, including obtaining visas and airline tickets.

Expect to pay more in the new year. We are finding that hotel rates have increased approximately 20-30% over our 2020 rates. Of course, our 2020 rates were negotiated and contracted almost 10 years prior to our event date. This is not a pleasant finding. Perhaps a city with more availability for 2021 would have yielded more preferred rates.

Our caterer is not yet able to provide inclusive meal pricing for 2021 due to fallout from the pandemic. This makes it difficult to budget.

Bring an open mind and flexibility while working through event postponement. Your new event will likely look and feel different than the previous meetings. In our case, we lost exhibits, women’s meetings, and concerts (we do still have musicians coming from around the globe but fewer of them). You can still create a meaningful event that will be well-attended and considered a success.

What encouragement do you offer?

Many prayers have ascended for our event… more so since early March! Being a religious event planner means that ALL of my events are God’s events. I know that God’s hand is on our GC Session and other events that I have the privilege of working on. As I stated earlier, I know that God is going ahead of us and preparing the way for our May 2021 GC Session. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.

MOVING FORWARD: How the Seventh-day Adventists Rescheduled a 60,000 Person Event