For decades, Samuel L. Green served the Seventh-day Adventist Church as an educator, literature evangelist, pastor, and administrator. The Southwestern Union Conference mourns his passing and remembers his steady leadership, commitment to the Church’s mission, and lasting influence across the Southwest.
Long before Green became a church leader, an unlikely messenger helped shape his path. During his youth, a man known as the town drunk stopped him one day.
“Sam, you have a good head,” the man told him. “Don’t let alcohol mess up your life as it messed mine up.”
Green’s journey into the Adventist Church began in 1972, when he attended three meetings in an evangelistic series conducted by Kenneth Cox. Although Green did not attend the remainder of the series, he continued studying Cox’s sermons and was later baptized by Dan Neergard.
A native of Stroud, Okla., Green earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Oklahoma State University. After completing his degree, however, he felt drawn toward ministry. He enrolled at Southwestern Union College, now Southwestern Adventist University, and earned a bachelor’s degree in theology. He later attended the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University for one year.
While attending Southwestern, Green lived in a small off-campus house and worked two jobs, but his needs often exceeded the money he had available. One day, he returned home between work shifts to prepare his last TV dinner—his only remaining food. To his dismay, he discovered that it contained lard. After wrestling over what to do, Green threw the meal away rather than compromise his convictions. When he returned home that night, he found two homemade pizzas on his doorstep. A classmate’s wife had made too much dough and, unaware of Green’s circumstances, had decided to give him the extras. The unexpected provision strengthened Green’s trust in God’s faithfulness.
After graduation, Green accepted a teaching position at the Berean Seventh-day Adventist School in Baton Rouge, La. His connection to the area also became personal through his wife, Mary Alice, a Baton Rouge native and fellow Southwestern Union College graduate.
Green eventually decided to leave teaching and enter literature ministry in an area with little Adventist presence. His success as a literature evangelist led to a call to pastor the Albuquerque and Roswell churches in New Mexico.
Over the next several years, Green continued serving the Southwest Region Conference as a pastor, stewardship director, conference secretary, and treasurer. His final position before joining the Southwestern Union was pastor of Dallas Fellowship Seventh-day Adventist Church.
In 1990, Green had the joy of seeing his mother, Gladys Gordon, embrace the Adventist faith after she attended the General Conference Session in Indianapolis, Ind. She was so impressed by the messages and the Christian demeanor of those in attendance that she joined Oklahoma City Tenth Street Seventh-day Adventist Church, where she faithfully served until her passing in 1994. Green described her baptism as the high point of his ministry.
After 18 years of service in the Southwest Region Conference, Green was elected executive secretary of the Southwestern Union in 1993, succeeding Clayton Pritchett, who had retired.
As secretary, Green helped guide the union’s administrative work and compiled annual reports tracking membership, tithe and offerings, publishing, and other measures of growth across its five-state territory.
His administrative experience also benefited conferences throughout the North American Division. Green chaired the Conference Secretaries Handbook Ad Hoc Committee and served as general editor of A Handbook for the Local Conference Secretariat, a handbook that provided practical guidance for conference secretaries on strategic planning, policy, membership records, statistics, records preservation, committee business, and constituency sessions.
In 2011, Green was elected president of the Southwest Region Conference.
“As a conference president, Elder Green was a kindhearted man who strongly supported the pastors by giving them what they needed to be successful in their assignment,” Says Stephen Brooks, Southwestern Union executive secretary.
When he returned to Berean shortly afterward, he spoke about the Christian education that had helped shape his life.
“The most precious thing God has given us is our children,” Green told the congregation, urging members to make Adventist education a priority.
In 2016, Green returned to the Southwestern Union, serving in Stewardship and Public Affairs and Religious Liberty.
Green is survived by his wife, Mary Alice, and their sons, Shelton and Cameron. The Southwestern Union family joins them in mourning while simultaneously holding on to the hope that shaped Green’s life and ministry: the promise of Christ’s return and the resurrection.