ASI 2016: Called. Chosen. Committed.

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Business & Management

Kelly Coffin

Now or Never. The Beginning of Business

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning.

We thank you that you have placed it in our hearts to be here today and to learn of you.

But Father, we will be talking a bit about eternity today.

And we know that eternity, Lord, will be spent many things, including learning more, expanding our horizons, our thoughts, and perceptions of everything in this world and space around us.

But Father, I want to submit to you that that starts here today, and that we are incapable of taking hold of this if you would not consent to send your angels and pour your spirit out upon this place.

I pray that you would send them and that you would come personally and speak to us and guide us Lord so that we could be about your business.

We pray these things and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

So this morning, I have to tell you in advance, I had high ideas of putting together a nice PowerPoint presentation and pointing to things on the screen and whatnot, but I was not raised in an environment that would foster those kinds of things.

I was raised around big machines and bulldozers and trucks and tractors and all kinds of things so I always tell people if they could figure out PowerPoint and maybe paint it green or yellow or even international red or something and make it burn diesel fuel, I'd probably have no problem with it, if I could put a wrench on it.

So this is gonna be my PowerPoint for today but I also want to I want to say I'm I don't intend to spend all of this time How much time do we have incidentally?

It's like an hour, hour and a half or something, wasn't it?

So we'll try to speed through it because I want to make sure that we take any time that is necessary that you'd like to ask questions, I want to spend time on your questions.

Additionally, if we don't get through this today, I will be here through the end of tomorrow, I believe, and I'd be happy to meet if anyone would like a little extra time afterward.

I'd be more than happy to do that and give you any time that I have.

So I'm going to start this morning with giving just a little bit of background, a little bit about myself and my history, what's behind it, but I do that only so you'll understand where I'm coming from.

And I want to look at this from a very practical perspective.

In fact, as we begin, I want to make note that, I don't know if everyone received 1 of these, but there's a number of questions that were asked here in the intro, and those questions were pretty simple about business and particularly what is the business of eternity.

This whole event here at ASI this year, I really appreciate it, called, chosen, and committed.

I thought, you know, this is really strikes at the heart of what we're going to be talking about today.

But we'll reiterate these questions and talk a little bit more about them in a minute.

But I also want to say that I realize that there's a lot of people, or most of the people probably in this room, understand much of my perspective on this, I would assume.

And we share a very unique perspective in our faith, But there will be many, many people I know that are already asking about this that have no idea, no ideas concerning this, that have never had any exposure, like myself, to these concepts that we're going to be talking about.

So I will be speaking in fairly general terms, and my intent is to answer the questions, and if we go over some ground that's a little redundant for all of you, then you'll just have to pardon me for that.

But I come from a very unique belief structure that we're going to talk a little bit more about today and as a Seventh-day Adventist, and we're all learning that it can be a little dangerous these days to share one's unique belief structure in this world.

And we're certainly seeing that play out in the political arena.

Cabot is very famous, and if anyone has ever been to Cabot, they will know of the name Cabot for a certain type of cheese.

It's the best, I tell people it was, to me, the best cheddar cheese in the world.

My family owned a farm up on Cabot Plains in Vermont and in our heyday, if you will, we got up to milking 250 head of Holsteins with the exception of a short stint of 52 jerseys in the mid-1980s.

I had really no religious convictions whatsoever.

I went to church a few times with my uncle, but I really had no religious structure under me, knew very little about it.

Each day was spent on that farm, and I can tell you that the work was very hard, and there was very little rest.

Dairy farming, has anyone here ever been around dairy farm?

And the rule that I was raised with was very simple.

If you're gonna die, you get your work done first.

There's no excuse whatsoever and I remember times where it was 20, 30 below 0 and I'm in the pit milking cows when I'm 9, 10 years old and there were a few days where dying probably would have seemed like a pleasure to me, you know, but there was very little rest, you know, and working with cows is really interesting, particularly in the summer months.

Every 1 of them, almost everyone had a name.

You took extra care and attention of certain ones.

And you'd go out into the field in the summer months every day and you would have to gather them in and you'd have to work with them you'd have to milk them and whatnot and if you didn't do these things then then you could have animals that would die and I can tell you from experience that some of them are really dear to my heart even to this day and we lost a number of them.

And these things really paved the way for my thought process that I entered into years down the road.

And if you allowed my children to, they would dote on those horses every single day and they would ride every day.

But I've learned a lot of the same characteristics.

I learned a lot about animals and business from that farm and even from our farm that we have today, which is very different.

But I learned that they responded to love.

And I didn't really appreciate these things until later.

And we're gonna be touching on that as we go.

And I immediately put my, what clothes I had in my truck and my chainsaw and I headed out west and struck it out on my own out in the West and became fairly successful.

I lost a lot of those ideals that I had grown up with with the farm.

And I tell people I became very successful in selfishness.

And that became problematic to me later down the road, because all that changed.

And we're gonna be talking about that change today.

We're gonna be talking about some of these personal beliefs that really changed me to the core and they drive me today in everything that I do.

I won't bore you with the details but I will tell you that I went to work when I was in Montana.

I ended up working with some Seventh-day Adventist businessmen and it had a profound impact on my life and changed me, changed me and caused me to diverge from the course that I was on, but it was through business and through that interaction that I came to, that I had a shift in the paradigm, in the very structure of my thoughts, because of the interaction in business.

And that's going to become important to us as we talk.

So I stand here today, I am a Seventh-day Adventist.

I'm very proud of that, but as Seventh-day Adventist, we have a very, very unique belief structure, and it really touched me to the core because I found it to be so practical and so logical.

I spent a lot of time with many other folks in many other faiths, studying these things out.

And when I came face to face with Adventist, with Seventh-day Adventist through business, and they shared some of the principles that this faith represents.

I was more like stunned by what I learned.

And we've come to—many people look at the Seventh-day Adventist faith more as a church and whatnot.

I look at it as a set of fundamental beliefs that can truly change the very fiber of a person's being and inspire them in a direction that I found nothing else could.

So with that, there's a lot of views regarding eternity today that I found, but most of them in some way, when you take them down to their, really to their irreducible minimum, to their very core, I find a foundation of selfishness within those.

And the reason the view that was shared with me was so interesting, in fact, those faces, they talk a lot about eternity and what is beyond us, and I appreciate many of the views that are out there, but what I find so interesting with ours is that it includes an eternity of work, of rest, and of learning, and expansion of the mental faculties that is really limitless.

And if anyone would like to talk more about this, I'm more than happy to share on some of those details.

But suffice it to say, what really intrigued me and what touched my heart when I began to work with folks in this field, particularly through business, was I saw a structure for business that was focused solely upon the blessing of others outside of myself.

And when I came face to face with that, it really moved me to the core and caused me to follow a different course.

And I'm gonna suggest that this is 1 of the primary things we're gonna be talking today, 1 of the rules for business as I've come to see it.

It simply includes giving, lifting, engaging, helping, building other people up outside of myself, outside of myself.

But really to our core, to build people up, to help and lift others.

I read a statement years ago speaking about angels in heaven.

Steve Dickman

Denzil McNeilus

Radim Passer

Ed Zinke

What We’ve Learned in Business

Our Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the privilege of us being able to be here and talk about your work.

And Lord, I know we're talking about business, but also Lord, we know that it is your business and that we are just stewards of what you've given us.

Lord, we pray that today as we talk about your business and reaching people in our marketplace, Lord, we pray that only your will will be done, that our words will become your words, but most of all, Lord, we pray that all honor, glory, and praise goes to you and you alone.

Bless us Lord and bless the people that hear this message that they will be carried in their hearts and use it to your honor and glory.

Well, our first part of the lesson is we're going to have each 1 of the people on this panel tell a little bit about their history for just a couple minutes so that you know what their business is and what they've been involved with and where they are to this point.

So we're going to let our president of ASI, Steve Dickman, he's going to be the first 1 to share with us.

Okay, it's time to tell the truth, right Denzel?

I've never taken a business class in my life, Except in the school of hard knocks.

I was raised in ministry, supporting ministry field, grew up in supporting ministry, I finished a degree in engineering, went to work in the engineering field, and then God called me back to ministry.

And when I showed up back in that kind of business, it was a surprise to me.

When I say a surprise to me, I hadn't planned for that.

But I learned very quickly a couple of things.

And that is that experience is going to be a good teacher.

And so I came back to Harvard Hills Academy as principal first, and then transitioned to President and General Business Manager a few years later.

And I've been there about 25 years doing that.

And so my experience was never in business.

But God has taught me some very interesting lessons over the years.

And so that's kind of my experience of coming to this understanding, and so I hope that maybe if there's a few ministries here today, some of the lessons I've learned at some point might be valuable to them.

I would just say this, God leads in mysterious ways.

It seems like that the path He leads us on is not necessarily the path that we would choose.

And so I've just found in my own experience, for instance, coming into ministry and having to think about and begin to learn how to manage a ministry from a business standpoint.

And if you're in ministry you already know that or you're not in ministry anymore.

You have to manage things, they don't manage themselves.

And so, but God is faithful in that He can take us if we're willing and He can teach us.

Not always the easy way, but we do get taught.

You can understand, you have to concentrate a lot to understand my poor and not pure English.

I am less than 3, 000 weeks old and I have to tell I grew up in former Czechoslovakia during in former Czechoslovakia during communist era.

I was a non-believer and in 1991 after Velvet Revolution in our country I started my own business in real estate.

And first 7 years I did business as a non-believer.

I accepted Jesus as my personal savior and it was the most important change in my life and the best decision which I ever made.

And from that time we are a little bit untypical developer because we are doing just 1 project, but big enough.

This is about 100 acres in, let's say, a good location in Prague.

Mostly it is a business park, but there are even other function like residential and retail and sports center.

And I can speak a little bit later about it.

I never expected to be in business either.

I started out in the ministry and was committed to the ministry.

Shortly after I started the ministry I was called to the General Conference to work in biblical research.

And that was a real shock to our financial system.

We had always hoped that my wife would stay at home with the kids.

And when we got to the Washington DC area we realized that was an impossibility.

We had dreams of buying a home and our friends were all buying beautiful paneled homes for $20, 000.

Of course remember this was a few years ago.

But nonetheless, we thought certainly if we went to 30, we could buy a house, you know, 50% more than my friends were buying homes for.

And a realtor was happy to show us the homes.

And you didn't need to open the screen door.

When you got out of the car, you were afraid to get out of the car.

You weren't sure if you'd be able to get back in by the time the neighborhood got through with you.

So we realized that Ann would have to do something, so we started working on things that she could do at home.

Well, actually, tried 3 or 4 things without success.

And by the way, that's not totally uncommon with entrepreneurs to try several times.

And then my dad said, why don't you try Nets?

Now that was a business plan that took us for 35 years.

So we tried that and fortunately the general conference was working with us and went down to the general conference during the noon hour and sold I don't remember if it was pounds or dollars but anyway 800 whatever it was of almonds and walnuts all in the noon hour.

She got home and everybody was calling her, you know, we'd like more, we'd like more.

And so we never dreamt it would be anything more than something to keep her home with the kids.

That's not too hard when you start with a small business, but we doubled every year.

And at the end of 8 years, our home was way too small to handle this and if I have time I'll tell about a government official that worked things out so we could stay there a few months longer but anyway then we moved into a warehouse within 6 or 7 years we had rented all the warehouses around us we moved to bigger whoops bigger warehouse and 6 or 7 years we had rented all the houses, the warehouses around that, and we moved to another 1.

And in 6 or 7 years, we were spread into 11 warehouses, which was inconceivable to operate that way.

And then we bought a property in North Carolina, which was 200, 000 square feet.

And we thought this will last us till the Lord comes.

And within a few years, we were either buying or renting the warehouses around there.

Our prime customers were Walmart, Sam's, Costco and Target.

If you'd taken those away you would have taken away 90% of our business.

We sold in 2008, and 1 of the reasons I sold was so that I could get back into ministry type of things.

I don't know if we'll have a chance, but I can talk about that later if we get the opportunity.

Yeah, sold and then went back into things I'd been doing before with the General Conference and with other SDA institutions.

Well, I'm Denzel McNeilis and I started out in the family business and where we started building concrete mixers in garbage trucks.

Started as a small operation and built our first mixer in 1976.

But he really enjoys doing things today, like one-day churches and creating different types of schools and engineering, and loves to create, loves to build and loves to create to this day.

And so I went to work with my father and my brother.

We went to work in the business and there were 9 manufacturers and we were number ninth.

And we had always paid our tithe, but we always paid it at the end of the year.

So what we decided to do was that instead of paying at the end of the year, what we would do is we would put so much to tithe and so much to offering, every product we sell.

John Chung

Race For the Crown

Our precious Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to come and get together and talk about doing your work and your will.

I pray that you be with us this morning and help us and fill this place with your Holy Spirit.

And I ask that you forgive me for my sins.

And with a pure heart, I pray that you will speak through me.

Amen The California coast was shrouded in fog that 4th of July morning in 1952.

21 miles to the west on Catalina Island, a 34-year-old woman waded into the water west on Catalina Island.

A 34 year old woman waded into the water and began swimming toward California determined to be the first woman to do so.

And she had been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.

The water was numbing cold that July morning and the fog was so thick she could hardly see the boats in her own party.

Millions were watching on national television.

Several times Sharks, which had gotten too close, had to be driven away with rifles to protect the lone figure in the water.

Fatigue had never been her big problem in these swims.

It was the bone-chilling cold of the water.

More than 15 hours later, 15 hours, numbed with cold, she asked to be taken out.

Her mother and her trainer alongside on the boat told her that they were near land.

But when she looked at the California coast, all she could see was dense fog.

She had been pulled out of, she had been pulled out of water only a half a mile from the California coast.

Later she reflect, she was to reflect that she had been defeated not by fatigue or even the cold.

The fog had defeated her because it obscured her goal.

She said, if I could only see the land, I could have made it.

It was the only time Florence Chadwick ever quit.

2 months later, She swam the same channel with the same conditions.

But this time, she swam with her faith intact.

This time she kept saying to herself, There is land out there.

Now, She was the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel, but she beat the men's record by almost 2 hours.

If you look at Hebrews 12, 1 to 2, it says, Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about what so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

For the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." You know, life is an endurance race, a race where you sometimes want to give up.

It is only by faith that we may endure and see through the fog.

And in Hebrews chapter 11, it's the fifth chapter as you know, it's about Abraham.

By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place, what he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed.

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Those are 3 of my favorite verses.

You know, so, Abraham didn't even know where he was going.

He went purely by faith because God told him to do God called him to do this You know in st.

Lawrence River there was a boat it was going at a very high speed You know all the passengers were very very worried and and they were getting upset and they were saying the captain is so reckless because there was such dense fog.

When the passengers looked out, they couldn't see anything except the fog and they knew this boat can hit something anytime.

You know, but when they were looking at the ship's crew, they were just just fine.

They had, they were just acting totally normally and they had absolutely, they were, they had absolutely no fear, no worries.

And so 1 of the passengers asked 1 of the crew members, Why are you guys so calm?

He says, well, where we are, we only see fog.

But where the captain sits is high above.

He's above the fog, So he can see everything.

The people, the passengers, were traveling through their own eyes, right?

But the crew, they were traveling through what?

You know when I was done with dermatology, I got accepted to Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation on La Jolla, California for Mohs Micrographic Surgery.

And that is a specialized surgery where you take, you examine all the margins of the tumor, 100% of the margin of the tumor.

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Business & Management

What We’ve Learned in Business

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