What Role Do Union Conferences Play — Essential Coordination Layer or Redundant Bureaucracy?

Executive summary

Union conferences occupy the third tier of Adventism's four-level organizational structure (local church → local conference → union conference → General Conference/divisions), serving as regional coordinating bodies that oversee multiple local conferences. Established during the landmark 1901 reorganization, unions were designed to distribute administrative responsibility and prevent the centralized power concentration that had plagued the denomination's early governance. Proponents argue unions...