SEC Area 4 Pathfinders are part of a worldwide organization of young people sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, though young people of any religious persuasion, or none at all, are welcome and encouraged to join the organization. 

SEC Area 4 Pathfinders are part of a worldwide organization of young people sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, though young people of any religious persuasion, or none at all, are welcome and encouraged to join the organization. 

We offer a wide range of activities including, but not limited to:
  • Camping & camping/survival skills
  • Grade appropriate leadership training
  • Activities promoting community pride & involvement through outreach activities such as helping in downtown soup kitchens, collecting food for the disadvantaged, cleaning & maintaining city and county parks, visiting and encouraging the elderly, and MANY more
  • Interactive training in a variety of recreational, artistic, nature, conservation, vocational, and outreach areas, with awards (honors) given for successful completion of the interactive training modules
  • Personal care and encouragement by a caring staff member! While many school classrooms have 10-30 students per teacher, Pathfinders offers AT LEAST 1 staff member to every 5 Pathfinder ratio!
Joining our Local Pathfinders Club
Pathfinders is for those who are in the year 6 upwards (10-11 years old). Years 6 and 7 are often referred to as "Junior" pathfinders, and years 8 and 9 graders are often referred to as "Teen" Pathfinders.
The Teen Leadership Training (TLT) program works closely with the Pathfinder program and is for high school students aged 14-18 years old.

History
Who started Pathfinders?  The short answer is that no one person did, but rather that a diverse group of youth-focused, God-loving, ministry-minded individuals in various locations created "Pathfinder-like" clubs in various locations that eventually grew into the ministry we now know as Pathfinders.
The first Pathfinder Club of record was in California and was directed by John McKim and Willa Steen.  This club began in the late 1920s and ran through the 1930s. In 1944 McKim died and the Steens had moved. In 1930 Lester and Ione Martin with co-directors Theron & Ethel Johnston began a club in Santa Ana, California.
Both of these first clubs were in the Southeastern California Conference and encouraged by Youth Director Elder Guy Mann and his associate Laurance A. Skinner.  For several years there were no clubs of record.
In 1946 John H. Hancock, then the youth director for Southeastern California Conference got a club going in Riverside, California.  John designed the Pathfinder triangle emblem and got a ministerial student, Francis Hunt to direct the club. Both John and his wife Helen Hancock taught honors.
By 1947-48 Southern California Conference began having Pathfinder clubs - the first at Glendale, with Lawrence Paulson as director.  About that same time, the Central California Conference, under the direction of Youth Director Henry T. Bergh, began their Pathfinder program -- starting 23 clubs that first year.
Beginning with the God-directed program, called Pathfinder Clubs, in California, the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist church adopted the program.  It thus, in 1950, became an official worldwide organization of the Adventist church and grew rapidly.
Pathfinders is now a global ministry affecting thousands (if not millions) of young people worldwide.

Read more in The Pathfinder Story, available as a book at AdventSource.
-Article Contributed by Dixie Plata, Pathfinder historian.