GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

Homer Trecartin

1. Risk Takers

2. Even THEM?

3. Miniskirts, Mothers, & Muslims

4. Approaching Footsteps

5. Open Your Eyes

6. Small Beginnings

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Dear Lord, thank you that you can be everywhere with us, wherever we're from.

That you are with us in our homes, you're with us as we gather here.

That your Holy Spirit can be here present with us in this seminar and in all of the others.

And we just pray that you will guide and direct each of us as we learn things that might help us to be able to better reach out to those around us.

All right, on some of your chairs you might have seen a brochure.

Some of them say total employment, some of them say Waldensian student.

I'm not going to talk about those much today.

I will talk about those some tomorrow, but you can always go to our booth.

This morning I mentioned that if we contacted 1 person a day in the Middle East and North Africa, how long would it take to contact everybody?

If you want to see that visually illustrated, go over to our booth.

They have a big bucket of black beans and they have 1 white bean in the black bean bucket to represent the Adventist amidst all the others.

But then they have some little bottles that show you illustrations of other countries too.

And feel free to contact us or ask more information about those programs.

The title for today's seminar, Miniskirts, Mothers, and Muslims, is not original with me.

It came from an old book that's out of print now, but you can still find a few copies on Amazon, and I'll mention it again at the end.

It's by a Christian lady who is married to a Middle Easterner who spent her entire life in the Middle East.

And she has lots of illustrations about the cultural problems that we encounter in those countries as we try to reach out to people.

Things that we don't even understand would cause a problem.

But the same things apply to us when a Muslim moves in next door to us and we're trying to figure out how to relate to them.

So I'm going to share, not just from the book, a number of different things, and then at the end I'll put those books, I have 2 books actually that I'll recommend, and I'll put them up on the screen as we get to the end.

This morning I mentioned that in the Western countries, the United States, Europe, Australia, 75% of all the Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims say they don't know a single Christian personally.

They might serve us in a restaurant or a hotel or drive our taxi or whatever, or be a doctor in the hospital, but they don't know us as a friend.

Well, part of it is that we're all really busy with our day-to-day activities and our circle of friends, and we don't branch out of that very often.

We pretty much stick with the group of friends that we're used to.

Part of it is we're afraid of them, right?

We are all at least a little bit afraid at times.

But I think the biggest part is we just don't connect.

We do the same things with our Muslim neighbor that we do with our Christian neighbor, and we connect with the Christian neighbor but it doesn't connect with the Muslim neighbor.

Or we get in a taxi cab and what works with 1 taxi driver doesn't seem to work with a Muslim taxi driver.

When we don't connect with people, what does that do to our witness?

White says that Christ's method alone will bring true success.

He mingled, he met needs, he won their confidence.

If we don't connect with people, we aren't going to have a chance to really influence and witness to them, are we?

We need to find out how to connect with people.

Now what I try to share with you here in 1 hour is not going to make you an expert on culture.

Don't go out and think you know everything about cultures.

I've lived there for several years and I still don't even begin to know all of the things.

It's not going to make you an expert on Islam.

But what I hope it does is to get your curiosity up.

I hope it gets you excited about saying, okay, they're different from me, but how are they different?

How can we understand our co-workers and neighbors?

You know, there is a clash of cultures going on between the West and the East, between Muslims and Christians, in many different cultural groups.

And I want to start with 1 of the things that's very obvious.

Whenever we talk about Muslim, you almost immediately have 1 thought in your mind.

And it's probably not this kind of picture that's here on this building.

I thought it was a good illustration of that clash.

There's a mosque and right next to it, a very modern picture.

This, what you think of usually when you think of Muslim is something like this, right?

Immediately, that flashes into our minds.

Now a few years ago, I went into a restaurant in Egypt.

Philip and Mindy are back with us, living in Egypt.

They took me, my first trip to Egypt many years ago, they took me, somebody took me to a TGI Friday.

And as we walked in the door, I was shocked.

Because out on the street, I saw many people like this.

But as we walked in the door, there was a very, definitely an Egyptian young lady, but very western dressed, very short, tight skirt, very, very provocatively dressed, greeting everybody as they came in the door and seating them.

1 of the people with me whispered, out on the street she'd be arrested if she dressed like that.

But in here, it's okay because this is a Christian business.

I said, is that what people in Cairo think of when they think Christian?

Barbara and I lived in Cyprus, and I was often ashamed.

South Cyprus is Christian, North Cyprus is supposedly Muslim.

It was a closed border because of the war many years ago.

When we first moved there, people couldn't go back and forth across it.

We could go to the demilitarized zone and look across, but that was all.

The Muslims from the north started coming to the south Cyprus.

And do you know what they saw when they came?

In the Christian part of Cyprus, they saw lots of advertisements and shops selling pork.

They saw lots of advertisements for alcohol.

They saw lots of big billboards with almost naked ladies selling cars.

On the beaches, it's very European and there was lots of topless bathing on the beaches.

We went 1 time and decided never again were we going.

We went up in the mountains in the summer.

We would go to the beaches in the winter when nobody else was there.

Series

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

3. Miniskirts, Mothers, & Muslims

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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