A Center of Influence is a ministry where the community can come and experience the love of God through meaningful interactions. Their purpose and implementation is discussed.

<p>A Center of Influence is a ministry where the community can come and experience the love of God through meaningful interactions. Their purpose and implementation is discussed.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist City Ministries

Jeff McAuliffe

ACM: 3 Establishing Urban Centers of Influence

Because I want to be I want to kind of bring some Practical application to what we've learned some summary stuff and I want to also just I know we're gonna have a Q&A later this afternoon But we can ask some questions along the way so that we have more clarity with some of the things we've been talking about Is that okay with you?

Okay, and then we're gonna have a wonderful sermon and presentation by Pastor Buddy.

I want to just take a moment to thank Pastor Tom Henline for being the man on the moment because we would have been looking at some neon orange PowerPoints here today if he didn't help us.

And so something went wrong with the cord and thank you, Tom, I appreciate it.

And thank you all of you for being here and participating.

This is, it's been a good, solid time in the Lord.

So today we're going to talk about centers of influence.

Everybody gets excited about opening a center and we need to look at what we might need to do before we actually open a center.

Our Father in heaven, today we would ask you that you would bless us with your Holy Spirit.

Lord, these things are, this is your plan and it's by far too hard for us to completely comprehend but we're stepping into it Lord just like you asked others to step into the Jordan and we know that you're gonna part the way for us Lord and you're gonna show us the way to the promised land And so we count on that today and as we move forward in these ministries that we're moving in faith with you as our leader and we know Lord that because you are leading the way that many souls will be won because of the efforts.

And we praise you and we thank you for that today in Jesus' name, amen.

Centers of influence is really a term that comes out of spirit of prophecy.

It's not something we're gonna find in the word necessarily.

White used terms interchangeably as she wrote about this particular aspect of the city work.

Sometimes she would call them a center of influence.

Even the church changed its, the way it talked about these centers.

Remember they used city missions first in the 1880s.

Then they thought, well people are getting confused.

They think that that's a welfare mission so we're gonna change it to canvassing stations which sounds more confusing to me if I were from the other side because that sounds more like theological talk you know we have our own language don't we Adventists Have you ever been in a situation where you're talking to other people about it, you know, what we believe and how we are, and we talk like Adventists?

And so when you're searching and you're looking for counsel, you have to kind of cross-reference a lot of things.

If you want, I can make available to you a few years ago when we started this in this conference, we did a pretty comprehensive research document on the different phases of it.

I can make that available to you, all 160 pages of it if you'd like.

And it kind of breaks down all the different areas of city ministries and more information than you probably want.

But that's how things get started, it's by collecting a lot of knowledge and then kind of breaking it down.

I want you to know that this comes right out of, because we've been studying the Ephesus model.

If you'll open your Bibles to Acts chapter 19 we can review.

At this point in the seminar a lot of stuff is review because we've used a lot of the text, but we're gonna see if I can open some a few new ideas to you today.

We're gonna look at Acts chapter 19 and verse 9 and we're gonna focus on this text when Paul makes the decision to take his new discipleship team, the people that he has found in his training, and he departs from the synagogue, and he separates to a place called the School of Tyrannus.

This is an enormous irony that Paul, the apostle of grace, is teaching in a school of tyrannous, which essentially means tyranny, but that's where he is going to teach the gospel to the people that come there.

And so what we know about the school of Tyranus is not that much except for the fact that in the Greek manuscript there's a little subtext that says that Paul was at the school between the hours of 11 and 4.

And for most people that's not a very interesting comment, but it is to me, and I'll tell you why.

Because in the Greek culture the hours between 11 and 4 is siesta time, okay?

And so the schools would meet first thing in the morning when it was cool and in the evening.

And so the possibility of having time to rent a place or use a place would most likely be in the middle of the day.

Also in the middle of day, therefore, guess where all the people are?

They're either asleep or they're free to come and listen to Paul.

Okay, so Paul then, who was a self-supporting missionary, when would he do his work?

He would do it in the morning or late in the evening and Mrs.

White said sometimes he would work all night long.

He would be making tents because he wanted to be available at the time when the people were available.

So he worked when he worked, when other people were working, and he made himself available when the other people were available in order to minister more effectively.

You see how this life is, you have to, it's, This is not a life about us.

It's about a life about being in touch with people and ministering to their needs in their time frame.

That's why this little tidbit's kind of interesting, it's because we get an insight into the Apostle.

Now this idea of Paul having a place that we're calling a center of influence, we can only see 1 separation of that place, so to speak, in Ephesus.

If you go to look at his time in Philippi, he spent, he used Lydia's house as his center of influence.

If you go to Thessalonica, he used Jason's home, not my nephew Jason.

If you go to Corinth, he used the residence of justice.

And so we can see a repeating pattern of Paul's use of a center of influence or a place where he can stage his mission out of to the city that he's working.

And that's really what a mission does is, and we're going to get to it in a little bit, does can a church be a mission?

We're going to try to talk about that a little bit and see if that can actually be the case.

So I want you also to take notice by these 2 texts that the ministry or the mission didn't start immediately.

When it's referring the next verse in Acts, after having gone off to the mission, or off to the school of Tirides, it says that, and this continued by the space of 2 years.

That is to say, the mission continued by a space of 2 years.

However, if you go to chapter 20, verse 31, the Apostle says, Therefore watch and remember that by the space of how many years?

3 years I ceased not to warn everyone night and day and with tears.

So what we do know is that Paul's time in Ephesus came to an abrupt leaving.

And what we can assume is that he worked at Tyranus right up till that time.

So it looks to here by the text here that he had there was about a year's space in time between the time he started his ministry in Ephesus and the time that he actually was in the school of Tiridus.

We know for sure, for certain, there were 3 months that he spent training in the synagogue.

It's an important thing to remember because 1 of the things we tried to do in simplicity was immediately look for a place.

And if anybody is familiar with church planting philosophy, The very first thing that a new church wants to do is get a place And it's probably the last thing you should do as your church planting and the reason is as soon as you have a place you have to take care of the place and Taking care of the place becomes a big deal.

So as soon as we had our mission in Allentown, now we have to figure out all kinds of schedules for cleaning and for maintenance and all of those things.

And all the time that you spend in the house means there's time not being spent on the streets.

And for those of you who have larger missions, you have to think about keeping spaces full in the building, is that correct?

That's not an easy thing to do necessarily.

You have to, there's just business aspects to taking care of a building.

White suggests that it should be, your missions or your center should be very simple, nothing elaborate.

I'll tell you a story real quick in our mission.

It's amazing how much counsel there is with regards to these things and how you can count on it.

We finally found a place after searching for a long time and it's not very big.

It's big enough to do what we do and probably we can do more.

But there's the space the fellow wanted a thousand dollars for the space, which in the city doesn't seem like a lot.

But the man who owns the building is a notorious real estate...

I don't know what the next word should be.

Anyway, I'll give you a hint as to his character.

I went to him recently, about 6 months ago, and talked to him and I said, I'd like to buy this building.

And his secretary sent me a note and she said, the owner would like to sell it to you for half a million dollars.

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ACM: 3 Establishing Urban Centers of Influence

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