Ryan Day Reflects on Leaving Adventism After Years in 3ABN Ministry

“God Brought Them Here.” That was the headline when Ryan and Stephanie Day joined 3ABN in 2018, a moment Day remembers with conviction and wonder. Weeks after announcing his departure from Adventism, Day reflected on his journey in an interview with Spectrum Magazine. He acknowledged that some people may question whether God would send someone to 3ABN knowing he would leave, saying, “sometimes God works in rather mysterious ways.”

Before joining 3ABN, the couple spent years with Doug Batchelor’s Amazing Facts ministry. Day said that in their 3ABN roles, which he described as divinely orchestrated, they “soaked in Adventism in a concentrated form” through revivals, concerts and ministry. He said they saw a church passionate about mission but also observed conflicts and inconsistencies in theology and in how Adventism should be lived and understood. “3ABN allowed me to see Adventism on a much broader spectrum,” he said.

Day said that his questions grew over time. He recalled that, through faith, he had once been able to dismiss points of inconsistency, and that he had considered such doubts to come from the devil. He said his doubts deepened over Adventism’s prophetic conclusions, particularly those concerning the judgment and certain parts of the gospel, which he felt imposed biases on biblical texts. He also said he saw Ellen White quoted so often in sermons, Bible studies and online forums that, in many cases, she seemed to carry more authority than Scripture. “What is being said is not necessarily the adopted practice among much of the church,” he said (Ephesians 4:15). He added that further study of White’s writings and the Bible produced only more questions.

Day’s early life was in rural Arkansas, where his family attended the Oneness Apostolic Pentecostal Church. In that tradition, he said, members expected the Holy Spirit to appear at services in the gift of tongues. He never experienced this gift himself, which led him to question the teaching. As a boy, Adventist relatives gave his father, Randy Day, VHS tapes of sermons by Mark Finley, and Randy later watched Kenneth Cox and Doug Batchelor’s Millennium of Prophecy series. Randy eventually took the family to a small Adventist congregation about an hour away, where Day recalled his father clapping after a special segment and saying “Amen!” while others looked disapprovingly in his direction.

Day said the reserved worship style, the reliance on White and certain doctrines, including the Trinity without attention to the Third Person, left the family feeling they did not belong. His father, he recalled, said the Adventists had “a lot of doctrinal truths correct” but “wouldn’t know the Holy Spirit if he came and sat in their lap.” Randy later preached about the Sabbath and other distinctive Adventist doctrines while voicing concerns about Pentecostal teaching on tongues. That caused a rift with his congregation, and after a period of not attending church, he asked his adult son to help him start a Sabbath-keeping, non-denominational family church that would include some central Adventist doctrines.

Later, Ryan and Stephanie attended the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Pocahontas, Arkansas. Day said his questions about Adventism were adequately answered there, and the couple became members. In an interview about five years earlier, Day had described Oneness Pentecostalism as cultic. Asked how his view of Adventism compared, he said he had been reflecting on elements in his own background that drew him to Adventism, including its standards, lifestyle and expectation of living “Godly” and being “peculiar.” He said members of both traditions often insist that the practices they criticize are not “my” version of the faith. Adventists, he noted, stress the spirit of prophecy, investigative judgment and Sabbath observance, and say members should not wear jewelry, should dress modestly, and should keep strict dietary and behavioral requirements.

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