Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

Father in heaven, thank you for this afternoon and for all that we've been able to benefit from here and camp meeting so far this year.

You've already blessed us abundantly, and even if we even went home right now with that experience that we've had up to this point, we would be blessed.

But Lord, there's some things we still need to learn that you want us to learn.

We want to be the best that we can and we have be in our leadership roles and here we have deacons and deaconesses that have come to learn as well.

Pray that your Holy Spirit will be here and that you will guide our conversation, our learning, and the words that I speak in our ears that hear.

The key book that we're going to be using in our seminar today is this 1, entitled, The 21st Century Deacon and Deaconess, written by Vincent E.

I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a moment.

A couple of other books that you have also been given is the companion to this book, and I'm not holding it up at the moment, but I should do that, and I'm doing mainly for the video, but this companion book will help you.

You and I are not going to be able to go in depth through this book.

In other words, I can't cover everything that's in this book in the short amount of time we have.

We have all of 6 hours and a half to be able to do this, actually not quite a half.

And that's not enough time to be able to actually go through this, but you can go home and say, all right, he's whetted my appetite, I've got an idea where I'm going now, but I want to look at this more in depth, and I also want to, I want to share this with others, and so you'll have that book to go along with it.

This companion book is a workbook that goes along with the chapters and just gives you a study tool.

I'm not going to try to go through this chapter by chapter today.

You'll find that basically what he does when you take and use this tool and review your material, you'll find that what he does is he starts at the beginning of the chapter and then he goes from paragraph to paragraph and not always every paragraph and then makes his way through.

That's in the first chapter so you can start at the beginning and kind of work your way through.

You get to the second chapter and then you say, wait a minute, I'm lost now and that's because he starts jumping.

And he instead of the first paragraph and the first question paralleling the first paragraph in the book, he might go somewhere else first and then work his way back.

So just a little clue if you're going through this.

It is in there and you will be able to find it.

I'm giving it to you to work with right now and I just want that to be beneficial to you.

This red book that I've given to you is entitled Seventh-day Adventist Deacons and Deaconesses Handbook.

Previous classes I've taught did not have this handbook because it didn't exist.

It has recently just come out, produced by the General Conference, and it's something that you definitely want to have produced by the Ministerial Association of the General Conference and I've given it to you.

You don't even have to go buy it and it's free to you but it's going to cost you a lot of time and a lot of work and God will use you because of it.

It's a good tool and some of the things we'll be talking about are reflected in here and we will look at some special parts of this, but this is a reference tool for you.

If you're as a deacon or deaconess, you're trying to understand how you should do something or what you should do in particular, if you open the handbook you'll see some of the chapters that are listed there and you'll recognize a little bit of where this is going and what it might be able to be, how it might be of value to you.

Look at chapter 9, for example, talks about the baptismal service.

If you're a new deacon or a new deaconess and you've never done it before and your pastor isn't going to be able to help you for some reason, which pastor should be able to help you some way, but you want to understand the baptismal service and some of the details of your role in the baptismal service, That's outlined here.

And how many of you are none of the above?

We don't mind people who are looking, you know.

So we are providing you with this tool so that you can use it as a point of reference.

It's also a good book for you to read and recognize some of the issues of responsibility, your job description, and so on.

These 2 books really are companion books.

This individual does it from the perspective of a pastor and also a teacher and he recognized the need for this kind of leadership training and he started doing it as a pastor in his church and over a period of time He developed it more into a very, an ongoing seminar, and he was, and probably still is, giving that seminar in a lot of different places and teaching, and because of that, he began to realize that there was a need for him to put it in printed form so that it could go to places he couldn't.

And it made its way to my desk, and I took a look at it, and I said, that's a tool I need, and gave me a foundation to be able to teach this class a couple of years ago, and I've done it for a couple of camp meetings now.

It's all right for you to come back again, but if you're all back again, there's 1 of 2 things.

I didn't teach it very well the first time, or the second time you didn't learn it very well, no, I'm kidding.

All right, so here's the material that I'm giving to you.

A couple other things that would be very beneficial to you to have that are supporting materials.

It wouldn't hurt for you to have the Elder's Handbook, so you have a little bit of idea what your companion leaders in your church, their responsibilities are, and so that you know who to go to and what expectations that the church has of them, the Elder's Handbook would just be a good learning tool for you, a very important tool for everyone and we kind of addressed it in our elders meeting this morning, but I'm going to talk a little bit more about it there later.

Here, and that is the discipleship handbook.

How many of you have seen the discipleship handbook?

I love it when I see that many hands go up.

I hope you the same percentages apply to the rest of the camp meeting attendees because if we've done that, that's a wonderful thing.

You've been through the course and that's great.

If you haven't gotten this, make sure you get a copy of it.

I'll try to have some copies here in the next couple of days if I can remember to do that with all the other duties that I'm doing.

And last but not least, the Church Manual.

You should have a copy of the Church Manual.

You are leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Therefore, you need to know what the Church Manual outlines for you, not only in terms of your responsibilities, but also how this church operates and how it manages things, how it deals with issues like discipline, which we'll talk about a little later in the week, how you handle challenges that come to your church and conflicts within your church, and how the church functions in its departments and how they interact to each other and how you can be supportive of that role, those kinds of things.

The church manual is a very important tool.

I would say of all the tools that I've given you beside the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.

If you have to say, I've got to make a choice, and the next so long, and I want to know which of the priorities, these are the 2 that I would have you read.

Now the only problem with this 1 is this is the old version of the church manual.

And there is now a new version, and I hope they have them upstairs.

We warned them about the kinds of things that they needed to have, and I hope that the church manual is on that list.

It's been out for all of about 2 or 3 or 4 weeks, at least in terms of I've seen it.

It's going to eventually be available online.

The last time they did this, by the way if you're not aware of this, they do it every 5 years.

They revise the church manual every 5 years, coincides with the General Conference session, which makes sense because that's where the decisions are made and policy issues are addressed, And then they have to have time to get it printed and get it out into the field.

And General Conference was a year ago and we're just getting the new church manual now.

You gotta be able to speed that up a little bit.

Don't read the, if you never read the church manual, don't read the old 1 now.

You want to get the new 1, unless you want to have to read them both and figure that out.

So start with a new 1, then work back if you've got time and you can see where the changes were and all that.

All right, let's dig into our materials here a little bit now.

Take out your book and we're going to start with the first chapter and lay the foundation for what we do.

Now I've taught 3 classes today so my mind is just kind of flowing together here.

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you for today, and I pray that the blessings that we received in the time that we've been here so far will continue to be poured out upon us.

The truth is, Lord, we're here anticipating that your Holy Spirit will come to us in a mighty way at this camp meeting.

How wonderful it would be if the fulfillment of the promise of the latter rain would take place while we're here.

Lord, we are here today to learn how to serve you better Because when you work in our hearts, we know that you're going to work mightily to advance your work.

And when that happens, even more so than it is already, that we will have even more work to do and we need to be organized and strong.

I pray that you will guide our class today and I thank you in Jesus name, amen.

Alright, yesterday we took up some of the basics of being a deacon or a deaconess and today we're continuing that.

This is the second half and notice that if it's the second half, it would be the last half, right, of the class on basic work of deacons and deaconesses.

And we kind of set the stage for what a deacon or deaconess is supposed to be, some of the qualifications of being a deacon or deaconess, and then we focused in on some of the basic job description of deacons and deaconesses.

The emphasis that we're placing here is that deacons and deaconesses are called to a specific work that is not just some of the basics that have become what deacons and deaconesses typically do in the local church.

The taking up of the offering is important to God's work, isn't it?

But it's more than just collecting an offering on Sabbath morning for deacons, or in some cases deaconesses assist with that as well, or opening the church or locking the church up.

But we talked about a number of different things yesterday that fit into the category of the things that deacons and deaconesses should be doing.

And just by way of A quick summary of that, in the Deacons and Deaconesses Handbook on pages 66, actually a little before that, but in that neighborhood in the chapter of Partners in Ministry is a delineation, a listing of duties of deacons and deaconesses, assistance at services and meetings, visitation to members, Page 68 is where I'm at right now.

Preparation for baptismal service, baptismal service, assistance at communion service, care of the sick and aiding the poor and unfortunate, care and maintenance of the property.

A couple of them are not the kinds of things that you typically find deacons and deaconesses doing today.

And as we launched into this in the main textbook that we're using by Vincent White, We identified the fact that Jesus himself was a model for us, a servant leader model, that he demonstrated for us what he what he expects of his people and that he was not a king or a ruler but he was a servant and the word deacon diakonos in the Greek is is a word that helps us to understand servanthood is what God has called us to be.

We don't have keys to the church that that makes us a deacon because the Bible doesn't talk about having keys to the church and therefore you're a deacon.

The Bible talks about how deacons came to be and they came to be because there was a conflict in the church and the people needed to be served, the widows needed to be served, and so the deacons were appointed to a task, they were ordained.

You don't need to be ordained to carry a key around, but to serve the needs of people, the spiritual and physical needs of people, you need to be ordained.

And that's part of the work that is outlined there and is spoken of in the Bible.

Some of these other things come along the way as caring for the needs so that the elders and the pastors, pastors are kind of like, I wanna be careful with this, I don't want you to go away with the wrong idea.

The pastors are like the apostles of old, and the elders are like the elders that were designated in the church.

But the bottom line is those individuals are set aside for the purpose of being the spiritual leaders in the church and praying and preaching and doing that work.

But that doesn't exclude the deacons and deaconesses for having some of that spiritual duty as well.

And the reason it doesn't is because deacons and deaconesses are disciples of Jesus Christ, right?

You have to be ordained to be a disciple of Jesus.

You have to be baptized eventually along the way, right?

The ordained disciples have a specific duty to do beyond what all the rest of the disciples are to do.

According to Jesus in Matthew 28 we are called to be, go out and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

That's what we're supposed to do and everyone who comes in the church is supposed to be a disciple.

So the disciples include deacons because deacons are First disciples and deaconesses are also disciples.

So those deacons and those deaconesses, because they're disciples, they're going to teach the Word.

They're going to let other people know about Jesus and what Jesus has done for them and their lives.

They're going to be soul winners themselves.

But because they've been called to a higher calling in terms of responsibility, doesn't make you higher than anybody else, doesn't make you a king or a queen.

You are a higher calling in terms of duty and responsibility, and your work is to train other people to do what God has called them to do.

Your work is to fulfill what Ellen White calls the establishment of our churches as training centers for Christian workers.

Chapter 5, page 59 of Christian Service tells us that our churches should be training schools for Christian workers.

And that means that you, along with the elders and the pastor, are the teachers, the leaders, the ones who are leading the school.

You never send your students, your kids, if you have kids still in school, or kids or friends or whatever, or yourself to a teacher who doesn't have any experience.

So if you are in the church, you expect the leaders, the teachers to be having that experience that they're going to pass on to you.

But I can tell you that all the math teachers that I sat under did know their math.

So you are teaching people to be disciples.

That means you know what it means to be a disciple.

What I'd like to do today, That's just a little summary of some of the things we did yesterday with a few little added pieces in there that I wanted to share.

I want to bring in a piece here, and I really don't want to get bogged down on this because if I do, it's going to get off on the wrong track, but somebody did kind of address that at the, near the end yesterday and kind of wondered what, like, alright I see the deacon part in here, but where did the deaconess come from?

And let me just give you a little bit of history.

That's the interesting thing that this book is really the layman's form of a doctrinal dissertation that Vincent White did.

And he did it as a study, and that's why as you read this book it's kind of like that.

It feels a little bit like a doctrinal dissertation.

And he brings a lot of different things in here.

He brings some history here about various denominations and what they did in terms of deacons and deaconesses and how this worked over time and so on and so forth.

Well, when you're doing a doctoral dissertation, that's what you're doing.

You're trying to get everything exhaustively out there that you possibly can to contribute to your understanding of that particular topic.

White was doing some of that kind of thing, and he's pulling that information in.

But it's helpful for us because some of us wondered, I did, where did all this stuff come from?

And he not only does it throughout Protestantism and builds that connection, but he also brings in the Adventist connection and how deacons and deaconesses came to be.

So I'm gonna bring out a couple pieces here for you and I'm gonna look at chapter 3 to start with, page 13, entitled Female Deacons of the First Century Christian Church.

I'm going to hit everything here, but I do want to bring out these couple of details.

As far as we can tell, deaconesses were not there initially in the church.

Well, we know that because there were 7 deacons appointed, right?

And it's very clear that they were men and that that was the situation.

I do want you to know that the discussion we're going to have in the next few minutes has no relevance and is not connected to the discussion of women's ordination or not, okay?

And he actually points that out later in the next couple of chapters because he wants to make sure that, and he wrote this before GC last year, but he wanted to make sure that we weren't getting caught in that discussion.

But he's just simply pointing out the history of how this developed.

It appears that some of the deaconesses, the development of deaconesses, is that they might have been Mr.

And that naturally there were some things that began to develop.

Because as I pointed out near the end of the class yesterday when we were talking about the sick and the poor, there were no hospitals in those days.

Luke was a doctor and I'm sure he treated people to some extent, but that was really the extent of it, and there weren't many of those doctors, and you can just imagine the difference between a doctor in 70 AD and a doctor in 2016, and the kind of environment that that would have.

When you got sick, you were basically on your own, and you had to fight that disease as best you possibly could.

Now we know that the woman who had an issue of blood had gone to all the doctors because the Bible tells us that in the Gospels, and that Jesus healed her of that.

She'd gone to everybody, including the priest, trying to find help and had gotten no help.

If you got sick, if you got the flu, you got some whatever, you got a more debilitating disease, and if it was a communicable disease, and there were people in your family that got sick, the husband got sick and the mother got sick, the husband wasn't out in the field working, neither was the wife able to do that, and the kids they got sick.

Well who's gonna go to the store and get the food?

Well they might have been places where they were selling some things.

Certainly that was happening to a certain extent.

Agriculture was the focus of what was happening.

90 plus percent of the people were farmers.

So even if there was a store where you could go buy some things, maybe a stall on the street where you could buy trinkets or you could buy maybe some food that people brought in or whatever, most of what you got, you got because you grew it.

If you were sick and couldn't grow it, you would die eventually because you didn't have the food to eat to grow for yourself, you couldn't keep that going or whatever.

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