Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elders Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

Father in heaven, thank you for this morning.

We are grateful for Camp Meeting, the opportunities it provides.

I pray that you will bless our time now and that your Holy Spirit especially will be in charge of what we do, what we say, what we hear, and what we learn.

I've got 2 basic classes today and tomorrow.

And then I'll have 3 advanced classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

And the purpose of that is that I've been teaching this class for a couple 2 or 3 years now and I always have people that are new, people that are aspiring, people that are interested in this and that's perfectly fine.

I don't mind teaching people who want to know and learn, and also those of you who are elders that have been newly appointed, maybe a new, relatively new Adventist and now being asked to serve as an elder.

And so this is an opportunity to learn the basic duties.

But in some cases, Jim, what was I supposed to have been doing when I was an elder, right?

And so we're going to talk about that today.

So I'm going to talk about some of the basics.

I'm going to talk about a job description.

I don't want it to be boring, because job descriptions can sometimes be boring.

So first of all, I want to talk about the elder's call and election and qualifications for ministry.

You know, 1 of the things that happens in nominating committees, and I hate to say this, but nominating committees are under the gun.

When a nominating committee meets, everybody's trying to think of in that first meeting is how quickly can we get this process over with, and how can we do this in 1 session if possible.

And in small churches, they sometimes are able to pull that off.

They simply say, well, these people all take the same offices as they had last year, and they say, okay, go call all those people and bring us a report at the next meeting.

And in some cases, they don't even schedule the next meeting.

In more normal processes, the nominating committee meets together and they start going through the offices and they try to identify who would be willing to do that office.

Not so many times are they asking what are the qualifications for that office and who should be in that office and who shouldn't be in that office.

Because quite frankly, some people shouldn't be in certain offices.

And other times, there's some people who should be in offices that are doing something else and in relationship to an elder as well.

Would you pass a textbook down to him and if you need to take notes we have some notebook paper over there as well.

So I want to really help us to understand that I don't like the idea of higher offices versus lower offices in the church, because I don't want anyone to think that their responsibility is not important before God.

My toe is just as important as my head at times.

And I need to make sure that I realize that I'm a tool for God, I want to be used by Him.

But we must also understand that the responsibility of an elder is a very serious responsibility.

That we are called by God to carry that role and that responsibility here.

And the elder's call is that God is the 1 who leads to that position.

There are even times when we think about calling people to ministry and we find out that as we invite them into ministry and they get involved in ministry, that the truth of the matter is, and I'm talking about pastoral ministry, after a period of time, we realize and they realize they're in the wrong place.

And that's actually what the first 4 years of ministry is supposed to be about.

It's supposed to be evaluating whether or not a person is called to pastoral ministry.

Well, and elders are also in responsibility of being called to the task of service and ministry.

And elders who realize that their calling comes first from God will appreciate the importance and seriousness of their leadership responsibility.

I just realized that in all of this I didn't even push the record button on this 1.

So that's the first process is to recognize the importance of this role.

It's not a power position where okay I get to tell the church what to do.

This is a responsibility that God has provided to you and the responsibility to do what He's asked you to do.

And He is the 1 who guides you and teaches you what it is that he wants you to be doing in your life and in your service in your ministry.

You're elected by the congregation and the reason you are elected by the congregation is because they are the ones who recognize the gifts that God has given you.

I've seen people that I thought should have been elders when I was in Kalamazoo, Merv, and I recognized at that point that these people had those gifts.

But when I approached them in relationship to be an elder or the nominating committee approached them, they did not see it, they did not feel it, they did not believe it.

And it's interesting to me that 20 years later, those individuals are elders in that church now.

And that's kind of the way God does work with us.

He could have used them even back then if they had recognized that God was speaking through the church, speaking through the pastor and helping them understand that those gifts were there and that they could be used.

The other times, there are times when we think we've got the gifts and the church doesn't recognize it.

That is a good time for us to realize we can just back off and let God have His timing.

Because it's really God who's in charge, not us.

When I have somebody who tells me that they should be a minister or they should be an elder and nobody sees it, that really begins to worry me because sometimes we think more highly of ourselves than we ought to and let God take care of the work of leading us into position that He wants us to be in.

Elders should not be just simply put in that position because of some standing they have in the community or because of some skill or training that they have.

There are many professional people who would make good elders, but they are not committed Christians.

They are not committed Seventh-day Adventists.

And that reality is a challenge sometimes for people, and the church has to work within that reality.

And the church becomes weaker when people are put into a point of leadership for a responsibility God has not placed upon them.

And we do it only because they've got money, they've got position, or they've got something else that we think is community recognized but not God recognized.

And these issues of leadership are a very foundational, important aspect of this responsibility.

So if God has called you to this position and the church has recognized it, then the things that we list after this begin to help you to understand that you are carrying a major leadership responsibility.

An individual can be ordained as an elder.

Jim, you were ordained as an elder, is that right?

Lou, you are ordained as an elder, right?

But if you, and when you are ordained as an elder, you are ordained for life.

It's something like the Biblical's, Bible's definition of eternity.

When you die, that obviously is the end of your life.

But in the case of being an elder, you are ordained and don't have to be ordained again, but you don't automatically become an elder in a church that you transfer to.

So if Bob leaves Wilson and goes someplace else and he doesn't come in and say, well I'm already an elder and I'm gonna take over the church.

Okay, so if he comes over to Brighton and joins your church and you're excited to have him, he's still gotta be elected by the local church and put into that position, that responsibility there.

So you have no authority, even in the church you were ordained in, unless the church elects you to that position.

And if they choose to give you a year off or 2 years off, praise the Lord for the break, take it easy.

No, keep being a soul winner and go on from there.

There are some elders manuals here that I'm handing out.

And if you don't have 1, there's 1 up here and there's some in a box up here as well.

All right, So we're appointed in every congregation because you're respected and you have to earn that respect as Bob pointed out.

And these are individuals that are giving leadership in prayer and other issues and anointing the sick and many other issues that we're gonna be looking at here in our job description.

If we look in the New Testament, we find that they carried a major leadership role.

And the Bible defines the work of an elder as to what God has called them to do.

They were to be overseers, they were to be shepherds, they were to be examples and that was the New Testament directive that Paul gave to Timothy and explained to him what his responsibilities were.

And they were individuals that were to be not only respected, but able to speak well.

Now some people, some elders are elected to that position and feel very inadequate, but fail to remember that speaking ability can be learned.

And even though you may feel very inadequate at it to start with, doesn't mean that God can't use you and that you shouldn't be an individual carrying that responsibility.

I don't know, how many of you heard Elder Boonster speak this weekend?

Did you hear in 1 of his sermons how he told about his fear of speaking?

And even today he says he's scared of speaking, and so he takes his shoes off.

Now, you've got to be here the whole sermon to get all of those pieces together.

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you for all that you do for us and your caring.

Thank you that you're not dependent on computers.

And thank you that you can help us with this technology to be able to have a tool to learn with.

Just pray that you'll bless us today and help this technology to work so that we can communicate.

If it doesn't help us to communicate anyway and to be able to identify a way to serve you better as elders and leaders in our churches.

Thank you for hearing our prayer and for your caring for us in Jesus' name, amen.

Alright, what I'd like to talk to you a little bit today, we're going to deal with the area of nurturing in your church.

And as I mentioned to you yesterday, nurture comes in many different forms in the work that you do with your church.

And I don't think I put it quite that way yesterday, But 1 of those forms of nurture is visitation.

But there are other ways that we nurture our members.

There are other ways that we care about the needs of our church members and express that.

Not only do you have a list of duties to do that we talked about yesterday as being an elder, but there are some basic things that are critical to the future of your church.

You might do a good job of organizing your church and having people up on the platform on Sabbath morning and having a nice schedule outline, everybody knows ahead of time who's doing what and all of those kinds of things, you may be doing all of that, but that's not going to advance the future of your church.

That's going to maintain your church, and it may even do less than maintain your church, it may actually help your church to eventually die.

And the issue that's going on with our church is organization is vital to be able to keep your church moving.

So even if your church is moving ahead, you have to be organized.

You cannot continue to move ahead and not be organized.

And the reason for that is because God doesn't want you just to be organized.

He wants you to be organized for a reason.

And if it's not functioning at the capacity that God gave it to exist for, and not living up to its reason for being, it is going to die.

So organization is good, but if that's all that's happening and all that you are doing as an elder, if you happen to be the elder and that's all that you're accomplishing, you are going to die.

I told the deacons and deaconesses this yesterday, I didn't tell it to you, but we're looking out over our churches.

My wife gets around and visits churches as much, or in some cases, almost more than I do.

And as she visits those churches, she comes back and tells me, and you know, if she's been to your church, don't panic, okay?

But she goes to the churches and she sees and she can see that there's like 5 or 10 adults attending that church and no kids.

And there's just no life in that church and slowly the church is evaporating.

And in a couple of cases she said, you know, 1 or 2 people in that church dies, it's done.

And I'm going to tell you, you may know a church that I'm talking about, it could even be yours.

That's because that's not what we're all about is maintaining churches.

I don't know if you happened to hear Elder DeVasier this morning, but he talked about the experience, or I should say the quotation from 1 of our early church leaders that was quoted in a newspaper talking about the fact that we don't hover over our churches or we don't have pastors that are assigned as permanents in our churches and he says I hope we never will.

Unfortunately hope is not enough because the truth is in North America that's exactly what we have in most cases.

And that means that something needs to be happening.

So what I really want to share with you today is the fact that that there are some things that you can do to especially be nurturing your church and developing your church.

Nurture is usually thought of what we do to help to strengthen the members and keep them going strong.

But true nurture is not just coddling them and holding their hands.

Some members think that nurture that they need is when somebody comes and visits them and every time that they stub their toe, that you need to come over and pray with them over their toe.

And any time they need you day or night for that toe, you know, that hurting toe, you need to be there.

You understand What I mean by what I'm saying, right?

The times when people are hurting and they need to be there, maybe 02:00 in the morning and they need you there.

I got a phone call from a family and you know, the first words out of the lady's mouth was, she's dead.

Well, you know what, that's not a hurting toe.

But when somebody keeps having something that they're complaining about or they just feel like they need you and they feel like, you know, nobody cares about me, the pastor should visit me once a week if he really cared, and all that kind of stuff, that's the hurting toe syndrome, that's what I call it.

And that's not what is needed, that's not the kind of nurture, that's enabling, and that's hurting people, That's allowing them to continue on in this kind of an experience and getting nowhere.

That's the kind of experience that Ellen White talked about when a lady complained about what was going on in her life And Ellen White told her, said, you need to quit looking at the thorns and start looking at the roses.

And and 1 of the things that you need to do in order to be doing that is to get out there and help people.

Well, that's what we need to be doing with with what we do.

So what I'm going to share with you today is going to have 2 parts.

I'm going to share with you about some basics of visitation, and the second thing I'm going to talk to you about is I'm going to talk to you about the soul winning in your church and the responsibility that you have in carrying that out.

I consider these 2 things to be essential basic ingredients of being an elder in your church.

The things that I talked about yesterday was an overview.

Several of those things that we talked about are items that you already knew about.

You know, the organization, developing the schedule, and some of those kinds of things, and having a board of elders.

How many of you do have a meeting with your pastors, say once a month or at least every other month?

If you're not doing it, you need to ask for it.

That's what should be happening in your church.

You and your fellow elders need to meet together.

If you have a district of 2 or 3 churches and it's more convenient for you all to get together at 1 time so that that can happen and the geography really allows that to happen, then go ahead and do that.

But you do need to meet periodically because you need to be praying together, you need to be planning together, you need to be figuring out where you're headed as a church and what it's going to take to do that.

And don't just all of the time be dealing with the problems in the church.

If all you're going to do is deal with the problems, you will spin your wheels forever.

So part of what you have to be doing is planning and looking ahead and figuring out what steps you need to take and so on alright I'm getting to preaching and let's go back to this Did you notice that it's still been on the screen?

Love and unity are certainly Christian requirements.

As John says in 1 John 3, 14, we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren.

He who does not love his brother abides in death." And when you look at the church at the time of Pentecost, the church at Pentecost was a united church.

That's why the Spirit of God could be poured out upon them.

Until they reach that point of unity, the Spirit of God would do them no good.

Because it's not the purpose of the Spirit of God to be poured out in the latter rain, early rain, latter rain, just for the sake of uniting us.

Now the Spirit of God has to unite us, so don't misunderstand me with that.

But if we're expecting the latter reign to unite us, the Lord wants to unite us before that latter reign experience happens.

But on the day of Pentecost, when it had fully come, they were all with 1 accord in 1 place.

The unity of seeking the Holy Spirit was the opportunity for the Spirit to be poured out upon them.

So, nurture is seeking to draw your church members together into unity.

Christian love produces unity despite differences.

The fire of Christian love dissolves the dross of class hatreds, racial clashes, social ruptures, and minor theological controversies.

We live in a world that is suffering from fractures and divisions over race, over language, over I don't care what it is.

Anything that can be divisive, the devil is using to continue that division.

But the truth is in our churches it shouldn't be there.

And if it exists, then part of our work is to ask God to help us to overcome that problem and to be able to help people to grow beyond that situation in their lives.

So As you are thinking about these kinds of challenges, and by the way, this 1 here is growing, right?

The theological issues are getting serious among us, not that they haven't been, but they're becoming more broad and widespread.

And I know that in several churches in the western side of the state, the churches have had to disfellowship members over 1 particular theological issue.

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Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

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Elders Basic Training - Part 1

58m

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

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