Eric Flickinger

ASI 2018: Business Unusual

Unusual Witness

Michelle Doucoumes

Douglas Na'a

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

Welcome, glad that you are here this morning.

For those of you who may not know which seminar you're in, you just chose the most appropriate room and closest 1, you are about to learn how to build a sticky church.

We are looking here at Unusual witness, the track that teaches us by the grace of God how we can be more effective in witnessing to others.

So how to build a sticky church is what we're going to be looking at this morning.

I'm the associate speaker for It Is Written.

I'm joined in this panel discussion by 2 very good friends and colleagues of mine.

We have Michelle Dukamas, who is an assistant associate professor, assistant professor, there we go, of business at Southern Adventist University.

She's also 1 of the instructors at the SALT program.

SALT is Soul Winning and Leadership Training.

You know how we Adventists love acronyms, can't seem to get away from them.

So SALT is Soul Winning and Leadership Training.

It is the soul winning school, evangelism school of It Is Written and Southern Adventist University.

And we have at the far end of the table there, Douglas Naa.

He is the director of the SALT program there on the campus of Southern.

You know he's dedicated to the work of soul winning because he came to the program from pastoring in a place called Hawaii.

So we are grateful to have him here, absolutely.

And our hope and prayer is that our time together this morning from 1045 till right about noon is going to be beneficial and will give us some practical ideas of how to build a sticky church.

So let's begin with prayer, then I'll share with you a little bit of a story.

Those of you who have maybe heard me speak before know that I love stories, and the kind of stories I love most are ones that we call true stories.

So I'll be sharing a true story with you to get started.

Then we'll have a little bit of discussion among ourselves and then have a bit of a panel discussion.

So we'll kind of work through this hour in 15 minutes and by the grace of God, it will be a blessing to you.

Father, this morning, we're grateful to be able to be here together to talk about the work that you have called each 1 of your children to, and that is witnessing and soul winning.

I can't imagine that there's much that brings greater joy to your heart than seeing someone who makes a decision to choose to be with you throughout eternity.

So bless us as we seek to find ways this morning that we can help our churches to not just gain members but to retain them and to teach them how they can be active participants in the work of soul winning as well.

So I want to share a story with you about Keith and Jenny.

I met Keith and Jenny several years ago when I was doing an evangelistic campaign in Kentucky.

And as I visited with them, they were members of the church, had been for a little while anyway, and I talked with them and I always like to hear stories from church members about how they came to the church.

What touched their hearts and made them make that decision to join the Seventh-day Adventist church?

And so I was having dinner with them 1 evening.

They're a youngish couple, I guess they're getting younger and youngerish and youngerish by the year as I get olderish and olderish.

But they were probably early 30s and had a couple of young kids.

And they said, you know what was interesting?

We got a handbill in the mail 1 day for a seminar, a Bible prophecy seminar, and it sounded really interesting.

We couldn't go the first few nights, but we went several nights after it had started, and the night that we went, they were identifying the Antichrist Beast of Revelation 13.

We thought that sounds really interesting and so they came and they were sitting there in the audience in the chairs and as the evangelist was going through the identifying marks of the little horn and the the second beast of Revelation or first piece of Revelation chapter 13, Keith started to kind of sink down in his chair, point after point after point after point.

He said, I know the identity of the Antichrist.

And it just so happens that Keith and his wife were raised Catholics.

So he was seeing the points and they were settling home and he knew kind of where things were going.

But he also realized that what he was hearing was biblically accurate.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable, but I can't deny it.

And at the end of the campaign, Keith and his wife, Jenny, were baptized and joined the church.

Excited about it, but not long after that, some members of the church kind of pulled them aside and said, you know that seminar that you went to was really, really good and they shared a lot of things with you, but there are a few things that they didn't cover during the seminar that it would be good for you to know about.

And they started to tell Keith and Jenny about the time of trouble that was coming and how there was going to be great persecution against the Adventists.

And they started to tell them about how concentration camps were being built across the country right now to house the Sabbath keepers during this difficult time.

And how the government had already begun surveillance of them from the time that they were baptized and how black helicopters would circle their neighborhood and keep watch on them.

You can imagine what this did to Keith and Jenny.

They started looking over their shoulders everywhere they went.

They, after a while, they started thinking, you know what, if this is what it's all about, we really don't need this.

And so they seriously began to contemplate leaving the church.

By the grace of God, some other members saw what was happening.

I will say some more well-balanced members saw what was happening and they drew close to Keith and Jenny and they built positive relationships and friendships and trust with them and help them to see the gospel a little bit more clearly and to not focus on some things that may not have a complete element of truth to them.

And so, by the grace of God, Keith and Ginny were brought back into a little more positive relationship with the message of the scripture in the church and they stayed in the church.

I think if you're here this morning it's probably because you're familiar with 1 or 2 stories that don't necessarily have good endings.

And so, or at least don't have good presence, maybe the ending yet will be good by the grace of God.

But I wanted to give us a little exercise to get started this morning.

Why do people leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

Often there's really not a single reason, but it's a journey.

It sort of starts with something, a seed being planted and then that seed grows into something more ominous and then something else gets added to it and there's this snowball effect that ultimately results in people leaving the church.

I want to encourage you to think of someone you know who is no longer in the church.

How many of you can think of at least 1 person that is no longer in the church.

Think of that 1 person or family and ask yourself what significant events in their journey brought them to that point of decision.

If you have some idea, what were the things that brought them to that?

I want to encourage you to find somebody near you, groups of no more than 3, 2 or 3 people, share with your neighbor about this person or this family and what caused them to leave.

We're not going to judge or critique their decision right now.

Just describe it to the person who's sitting next to you.

And then we're going to share together as a group.

And we'll share about 2 or 3 of these stories and see if these stories marry up to what we're about to share with you for the general experiences as to why people leave the church.

So take about 4 minutes, something like that, just share briefly with somebody who's seated near you about someone you know who left the church.

Have them share with you, and then we're gonna share a few of those stories amongst ourselves.

So take just a few minutes to do that if you would.

I'm going to ask for just a couple of volunteers who in, over the course of about 3 to 4 sentences, can just share very concisely about the experience with the person that you're talking about.

If you're willing to share just very briefly about that person or family that's on your mind and what brought them to the decision to leave the church.

Again, we're looking for just 3 or 4 sentences, very brief.

This will kind of give us an idea of what everybody is experiencing.

GYCSE 2018: Given to God

Kyle Griffith

Michael Hasel

Justin Kim

Ester Lopez

GYC Southeast

GYCSE 2018 Q&A Session

I'm serving currently as the associate speaker of It Is Written.

And we're, of course, located right here in Chattanooga.

I teach here at Southern Adventist University in the School of Religion.

I teach archaeology and Old Testament and Hebrew.

And delighted to be here again for GYC this year.

My name is Justin Kim, I work at the General Conference.

I'm the assistant director and 1 of the editors for the young adult Sabbath school quarterly.

I'm Esther Lopez, and I am a nursing student here, first semester in the BSN program.

Hello, my name is Kyle Griffith, and I'm a biology major here.

I've been here now 3 years and I'm also from California.

I'm Michelle Dukamas and I teach business here at Southern Adventist University as well as overseeing our Enactus program for student entrepreneurship and the Institute for Ethical Leadership.

And I get to be your panel moderator today which is really fun because I get to ask the questions and they have to answer them.

But these are not my questions these are your questions.

These are the questions that have been sent in throughout the week and we're excited to go over them together.

And what you don't know maybe is that all these people on this panel have a wide variety of backgrounds, of mission experience, and also just a personal experience with the Lord.

And so keep it all in prayer as we discuss these things together and try to go into some of the questions that you all have sent and discuss that together.

So I'm gonna start with 1 here and address this to Pastor Eric Flickinger down there on the end.

I'm glad I'm glad he's willing to start us off, right?

Someone asked, I am struggling with opening the Bible, reading and studying it.

I think this is a challenge that most, if not all of us face at some point along the way.

How do you get there to open it and study it?

1 of the things that's helped me over the years, and I'm sure it's helped you as well, is to take Jesus as our example.

And in Mark 1, verse 35, it says, and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed.

So 1 of the things that Jesus did was he got an early start on things.

I don't know if your life reflects mine at all, but I tend to be kind of busy.

And life kind of, it creeps up on us and the tasks for the day kind of pile up.

Getting an early start on things is immensely helpful.

Because many of us probably struggle with getting up in the morning and getting to the things that we need to do.

1 of the things that I've found has helped me is to get to bed early.

And I know getting to bed early is a challenge, especially when you're studying.

I remember back when I was a student at the university, I had a lot of assignments that were due.

And I felt like if I didn't get them done before I went to sleep, they weren't going to get done before the next day.

But what I also found was as I was working at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1, 2, 3 in the morning, I was rereading the same thing 5 times, trying to understand what I just read the fourth time.

The brain doesn't work real well at night, and so getting to bed early allows you to get the rest.

You wake up early, and you can get a fresh start on things.

1 other thing that I've found very helpful is to develop a routine.

It was Jesus' routine to get up early and to pray.

If you've watched YouTube at all recently, you've probably seen a video that has floated through on a regular basis about the first thing that you do when you get up in the morning is to make your bed.

If you do 1 thing as soon as you wake up, that starts the routine.

And if your time with God is part of that routine, which it ought to be, it just naturally flows from 1 thing to another.

All right, so those are some tips about how to get started.

If any of you want to add just maybe what you do when you study the Bible, how to get something out of it.

Yeah, there's a book called Power of Habit by Duhigg.

And there's something powerful about a habit.

And I think sometimes we may be a little bit afraid of habits.

We don't want to create the, just make it routine.

But There's something efficient about habits that we don't have to, there's not a lot of neurological energy expended upon brushing your teeth.

I mean, you mindlessly open the, I mean, whatever toothpaste you use, but you put it on your thingy and you put it in your mouth and you're brushing and you're da-da-da.

But how many of you are consciously thinking about it and like, oh, this is such a habit, this is just a chore?

And at your age, if you're still thinking there's something wrong with your teeth, but you're just brushing your bruh-da-da-da-da.

And then I think as disciples of Jesus, we need to have the habit of opening the Bible and reading it.

And I think we shouldn't feel guilty if we don't have that habit that's instantaneous.

Habits, they say on average, need 66 days to be developed on average, some maybe 127, some after 3 days.

But for me, I got to admit, there are some days where I just don't feel like opening the Bible.

I want to just watch YouTube the whole day, 24 hours, and that's wrong.

So I know that the habits have helped me go on through the low parts of my life.

And that's when, after the habit is efficient and you get to the habit of opening it, then you get into the neural exercise of understanding and reading and prayerfully getting through it.

So there's a renaissance of habits that are coming in this day and age.

And the crazy thing is this, the crazy thing is this, that there are things you can do to prime your mind to create habits more easily or easily, easily, easily-er.

Clearly English is not my forte as an editor.

And then this is what the crazy thing is.

Exercise is the 1 prime habit that if you start exercising, it affects almost every other habit in your life.

Stop drinking caffeine, stop drinking soda, sugary drinks.

And I'm like, water, it primes the brain, da, da, da, da.

This is what Adventists should have the best brains out there.

Need some sunshine, some water, and some exercise.

So we have been given this message almost 100 years ago.

But right now, the research is just coming up to par and helping out with our lifestyle.

So a long-winded way of saying we should read our Bibles.

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Presenter

Eric Flickinger

All Recordings

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

1h 18m

GYCSE 2018 Q&A Session

39m

Sound Doctrine