AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Plenary

Bob Gregory

“Good” Can be Enemy to “Best”

You know, this is the first opportunity that I've had to spend any time on the ground in Texas other than inside an airport.

And I feel very blessed to have had the experience of safe travels here with my wife, Anita, and have spent quite a bit of time just enjoying the landscape and considering what is happening here.

It's amazing to me, you know, when I started this journey in Adventist agriculture, it was in part because I knew there must be something better than what I was doing, which was basically peddling poison and working for large monoculture agricultural interests that didn't really seem to have the interests of the consumers in mind.

They weren't concerned about food quality.

And I was really wary of that, even though I felt for many years that I was actually doing service to the public because I didn't know that there was any other way that we could feed the 6000000000 people that inhabited the planet at that time.

I couldn't conceive of an army of youth or an army of people that had interest enough in agriculture to consider it as a vocation and to function differently than the paradigm of large-scale monoculture agriculture.

This is the way that I had grown up, the Earl Butts era of agricultural policy where we simply wanted to plant as much as we could, produce it as cheaply as possible, and our concept of efficiency was that it took less than 1 person to feed over 100 people in society, meaning that farmers made up less than 1% of the population.

As the industry likes to tout, we considered that evidence of terrific efficiency.

As I look at it now, it breaks my heart, because what it means is we have concentrated all the choices, all the decisions, and have delegated all of the power over the food supply for most of us to a very tiny handful of people.

And believe me, it's only a handful of people within that 1% that is involved in growing food that make choices about what you and I eat.

And those choices are not predicated on the benefit to you and I.

The choices are predicated on what provides the greatest profit.

This model of monoculture agriculture has spread across the globe now and is displacing small family farmers all over the world.

And as I address you here tonight, I want to offer some praise, I want to offer some testimony, and then I want to present to you a challenge.

Because frankly, you and I, as Seventh Day Adventists, have had the opportunity to live a legacy of an agrarian lifestyle for over 100 years.

You know all of the references, you know all of the counsel, and if you don't, I want to suggest to you that you take time to avail yourself of some of the books that have recently been published.

On agriculture, others that have been published expressing in great detail the calling that we have had as a people for well over a hundred years.

That legacy founded in the biblical principles of Adam being placed in a garden and told to dress and keep it, or to serve it and preserve it, depending on your translation, is as true for us today as it was for him then.

The Lord placed Adam in that garden so that he would have an opportunity to learn of him in an intimate, practical way that simply speaking face-to-face could not convey.

And when he failed that test, he was offered redemption in the garden.

If we look at the opportunity that we have to work with the soil for our daily bread, if we look at the sweat of our face as a mechanism to keep us healthy, to reignite within us a desire to know and love the Lord through practical methods of observing his creation and involving our lives with him in cooperation, we have opportunity for a deeper understanding than a theoretical or an esoteric understanding.

Ellen White recognized that as we have all heard that agriculture is the A, B, and C of education.

She advocated for all of our educational institutions.

And what's the first educational institution?

She advocated that all of our educational institutions make agriculture the A, B, and C of their studies.

Recognizing that there is a richness in that experience.

There was a richness for Adam in the Garden of Eden, there was a richness that the Lord was offering to us also in coming to a deeper understanding of him.

As I look out here this evening, it warms my heart tremendously to see the numbers of people here.

And I want to take just a few moments to praise the Lord for what he is doing through and with this organization and with those of you that have committed yourselves to seeing that agriculture reassert itself in its role in Seventh-day Adventist education, be it in our homes, be it in our academies, be it in our colleges, be it in our missionary institutions, be it in our sanitariums, regardless.

It's absolutely wonderful to see this taking place.

And I want to remember, I want to pause for a moment and remember a man that was helpful to me in coming to understand the role of agriculture, not only in education, but in my life personally.

I'm a man that has spent the last 50 years of my life growing crops.

I'm a man that was Fortunate through God's grace to be exposed to a wide variety of agricultural education and deep understanding about what it takes to grow crops and produce food and to be abundant and to have success.

But what I didn't learn through that aspect of my career was how important agriculture is to my spiritual life, to my opportunity for being the best that I can be for God's service and by his grace.

And there's a man that was very instrumental in helping me to recognize that.

When I first went into ministry, I hadn't read the book Education.

I didn't realize at that time the role that agriculture played in Seventh-day Adventist education.

And I wanted to use those skills in farming to further God's work.

And when I first went to the college where I served as the Ag Director for a period of time, a swarthy man came walking out to the greenhouse 1 day while I was there, who walked as if he had taken more steps on soil than on concrete, and I knew that I had found a friend, someone that would understand some of the challenges that I was faced with.

Many of you that are dealing with institutional environments in agriculture are faced with some really serious challenges.

And I was in a situation where I was facing these challenges and I didn't really have anybody but folks that were of an academic mindset to try to counsel with, to try to find out solutions to these problems.

It was a very lonely feeling at that time.

And this man was Bob Jorgensen, who happened to be on the board of the institution where I was working.

And he introduced himself to me and he said, hello Bob, good to meet you.

And we started discussing some of the challenges for the role of agriculture within Seventh-day Adventism.

A few years later, this was in 2001, a few years later in 2004, he started holding a series of meetings called True Education Meetings.

And the first 1 that I attended was in 2004 in North Carolina at his home church.

And at that time, again, in his thorough understanding of the history and the purpose of Seventh-day Adventist education, agriculture played a role in those meetings.

And it wasn't long after that that he and I talked a number of times about organizing some sort of agricultural conference, some sort of way to network with people that were involved in agriculture.

We knew of a few individuals here and there that were scattered around the country, all of them struggling with either institutional roles in agriculture or, you know, folks like the Dysinger family that have been so important in helping to organize this organization.

Everybody was kind of doing their things on their own.

They were being challenged in various different ways and there was no real support, no aggregation of all of the resources that we have.

And Bob decided that maybe along with his true education classes, we should also consider adding an agriculture element to those meetings.

And in 2009, my wife and I had just settled on to our farm, and we decided to hold the true education meetings at our place and to hold meetings with an agriculture component too.

For the first time in perhaps many, many years, I don't know when the last meeting devoted to Seventh-day Adventist agriculture was held, but I know it wasn't within my membership in the church.

So we had about 150 people that came to our place for a few days.

We had a rough gymnasium building where we had old seats that were left behind.

The facility that we have is basically an old elementary school that had been abandoned for about 10 years.

We had porta-potties out in the back because we didn't know whether the plumbing would work or not, but people came and people were blessed.

The following year we held another meeting.

I believe that year we had some of the folks that are sitting in this room come and attend.

At that point we had outgrown our facility and it was obvious that there was an interest, that something was taking root here that had significance and was touching the hearts of people.

Bob moved the meetings to Uchee Pines, held them there for a couple of years, and at that point the Ad Agra concept and the Ad Agra organization took root.

And at this fourth meeting, I'm just warmed deeply, and my heart is swollen in my chest right now as I look out here and see what is taking place.

I feel so blessed by the effort that so many people have put in to making this happen and the effort that those of you that are attending here have expended in order to be here.

It's obvious that something is going on, that there is a movement taking place and that the role of agriculture once again is prominent in people's hearts and minds.

1 of the things that motivated us in Recognizing that we needed to do something to enhance the awareness of agriculture and Seventh-day Adventism was a statement that I read when I read Ministry of Healing.

2 books were very, very instrumental in my conversion and opening my heart to the Lord.

1 of them was the great controversy and the other was ministry of healing.

I often turn there for gems of wisdom that she gave us.

And 1 of the gems that is here is on page 183, where she wrote that in God's plan for Israel, every family had a home on the land with sufficient ground for tilling.

Thus were provided the means and incentive for a useful, industrious, and self-supporting life.

And no devising of men has ever improved upon that plan.

To the world's departure from it is owing to large degree the poverty and wretchedness that exists today." That's a pretty potent statement, folks.

I don't know how that could have escaped the minds of people that were studying Ministry of Healing or what appeared to me to have escaped their minds and allowed the role of agriculture to be so diminished within our denomination over time that when I came into the church, There wasn't really much of anything happening.

I am still troubled by issues that I see.

As I was introduced, it was expressed that, you know, I kind of studied the book of nature before I came to study the Bible.

And it's still my firm conviction that it requires study of both to be well balanced and to fully understand our purpose and our calling in this Christian life.

And in my study of nature, I came to comprehend that there are lessons there that can be found that you cannot find in the Bible alone.

There are allusions to those lessons in the Bible, but unless we have that practical experience, unless we have that practical dependence on the Lord, those are very, very difficult things to teach and to learn in an academic setting.

And I was frankly quite surprised that when I came to fully understand the role of agriculture in Adventist education that it had been so marginalized, so suppressed.

I understand practical reasons why that happened, it was expensive.

Some of you that are working in institutional agriculture today are still facing those challenges.

Eleida Feliciano

Will We Believe?

I never dreamed I would ever be speaking at an agriculture conference in my life.

Years ago I loved flowers, so I attempted to grow flowers.

And I killed every plant I ever tried to grow, whether it was an inside plant or an outside plant.

My grandmother felt sorry for me, so 1 day she brings me this plant and it was a weed, but it had a little blue flower, which blue is my favorite color.

She gave it to me and she said, this is a weed.

And I took this weed and I planted it And I managed to kill the weed.

And then I came across the messages that have been given to us about agriculture.

And I come to the point where I have to decide, will I believe in my experience or will I believe the Word of God?

If you like me think that you can't grow anything just remember as we are told in Christ's object lessons page 146 it is not the capabilities you now possess or ever will that will give you success it is that which God that what the Lord can do for you.

And against all odds, I began to pray and plant.

And today I can tell you that I have eaten tomatoes, lettuce, kale, garlic, onions, potatoes, green beans, all sorts of things of my garden.

I am still a beginner but God has blessed me as I have chosen to trust in his word.

So this is my prayer, that my presentation this morning, if nothing else, will strengthen your faith that God does have something better.

And even if it doesn't make sense, even if it looks hopeless, you can trust his word and he will make it better.

And so my presentation, or this presentation originally by the way was titled Something Better.

And when I was invited to present it here, since the conference title is Something Better, I gave it a different title, Will We Believe?

Will we believe truly that there is something better?

There's no question that God has something better.

What we need to come to grips with is to believe it and to grab hold of that.

And so today this is what I hope to share with you.

I'm not talking to you about agriculture necessarily.

I will be talking to you on the subject of true education.

Now I know some of you may think, well, I'm not a parent and I'm not a teacher.

This topic of education applies to every 1 of us.

And I truly believe every Seventh-day Adventist Christian should read the book of education.

Because The reason why we are still in this world is because we have not learned our lessons.

We are the students and this life is our school.

So if we don't understand God's way of teaching, We may not be learning the lessons he wants us to learn.

So the principles I'm going to share are going to be very specific to what we're doing at the elementary school, but they all apply to each of us whatever we're doing because every day we are being educated and We need to make sure we're being educated by God.

And so before I go on, I'm going to pray and invite the Lord to be with us, if you can join me.

Dear Father, we come to you because we want to learn from you.

We come to you asking for your Holy Spirit.

You have promised that the Spirit will teach us all things whatsoever you have commanded.

And this morning as we look at what you have commanded, we pray for you spirit to teach us, to teach us our duty, to teach us how to apply these principles in our lives.

Give us humble hearts, teachable hearts, that we will learn from you day by day, moment by moment.

Something better is the watchword of education, the law of all true living.

Whatever Christ asks us to renounce, he offers in his stead something better.

So whether it's education, whether it's agriculture, whether it's family life, whatever it is, God has something better.

The weightier truth of God's word are for those who are humble and willing to learn at the feet of the divine teacher." Right?

So we need to learn to be students if we are to learn the great truths of God.

They're for those who are willing, humble and willing.

Now as I mentioned, the book of education is 1 we all need to read and many of the quotes I'm going to share today are from the book of education.

This 1 is found in the very first paragraph, page 13 and it says, our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range.

There is need of broader scope, a higher aim.

True education means more than the pursuit of a certain course of study.

It means more than a preparation for the life that now is.

It has to do with the whole being and with the whole period of existence possible to man.

It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers.

It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.

Now let's start looking about how we can be educated from God in this way of education.

Here speaking about Jesus it says, His education, this is education page 77, His education was gained directly from the heaven appointed sources.

From useful work, from the study of scriptures and of nature and from the heaven experiences of life.

God's lesson books full of instruction to all who will bring to them the willing hand, the seeing eye, and the understanding heart.

So God is all the time teaching us through useful work, through the study of the scriptures, through nature, and through the experiences of life.

If we learn God's way of teaching, His way of education, we will be learning lessons every day of his character, of his love, and of what he wants us to do.

So as we study these councils and look at what we needed to do at the elementary school, I began to work there 5 and a half years ago and I come from a worldly background of education.

I studied in public schools, I went to university in public schools, I taught in public schools for 10 years and then I come to this school, only have heard a little bit about true education and have nothing else but that.

And I was reading everything that was in the councils about education.

I was counseling with people who had knowledge about it and I was praying, praying and studying, praying and studying and applying as I was learning.

So the first thing that came clearly to my mind is that the study of the Bible is 1 of the most important aspects of true education.

The entrance of thy words giveth light, it giveth understanding unto the simple.

In Christian Councils of the Church, page 202, it says, students are to be educated in practical Christianity and the Bible must be regarded as the highest, the most important textbook.

Now, what I came to understand was that it's not just Bible time that the Bible should be used, but in every 1 of our studies.

Now that does not mean that I open the Bible and teach them only about things from the Bible.

We use the Bible as our main textbook and we use other books as resource books.

Right now we always teach the principles of the Bible whether we're doing math, whether we're doing science, whether we're doing social studies, in anything that we're doing we are carrying in there the principles of the Bible.

So it is not enough to begin the day, read the Bible, and the rest of the day you go back to education as usual.

Everything needs to be based on the Bible principles.

If there's any part of the studies that is not complying with Bible principles, it goes out.

So we have a curriculum, we have certain things that we are expected to cover every year, and we look at them, some of them we cross them out because they have nothing to do with the training our children need to be missionaries for Christ.

And some others we adapted, we moved it around so that we are teaching the subjects but with the principles of the Bible.

Anything you do needs to be able to be in harmony with these principles.

If it is not, waste not a moment teaching it to the children.

And because of that, we understood that there are some things that must be left out of our school.

There are many things, and I'm going to share 2 with you that I found to be a very big issue in schools that are expected, that people are expected to have there, and do not have the spirit of Christ in them, and do not have the Bible principles in them.

And in Christians and Councils to the Church page 170 it says, those whose imagination has not become perverted by the reading of fiction will find the Bible the most interesting of books.

The problem why youth do not enjoy studying the Bible is because we raise them reading fiction books.

John Dysinger

From Best to Worst

Dear Heavenly Father, I come before you, come before these people realizing that if I speak my own words, I'm wasting a lot of time here tonight.

So I just pray Lord that you'll use me and that you will gain all the glory and that you will convict that you will cut where it needs to be cut and Heal where it needs to be healed Thank you Lord in Jesus name Amen In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

After 6 days, and I believe those were literal days of creating, God looked back at everything he had made and behold it was very good, the Bible says.

So here we have God's perfect masterpiece, fresh from the hands of the Creator.

This was his ideal plan, the culmination of, we don't know how long, of probably years and maybe tens of thousands of years of planning.

So I wanna just quickly review this plan with you from the Bible.

And I have identified 7 components of this plan.

Now, I'm not gonna argue with somebody who comes up with more, but I think there's at least 7 unique components to the garden plan.

Genesis 2.8, And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

The garden, the garden was the location, right?

Genesis 2.15, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Third component, family life, Genesis 2.18, and the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

Also Genesis 2.24 therefore shall a man leave his father and mother shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be 1 flesh So family life Well, let me read 1 more Genesis 1 28 and God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply.

So, God's plan for families was a husband and a wife and children.

So we're not going to talk a lot about this.

Not that it's not important, but I don't have time to cover all these.

The garden was the schoolroom, Nature was the lesson book, the creator was the instructor.

Genesis 129, and God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.

And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And the last component, number 7, is what?

The Sabbath, I think I heard somebody say the Sabbath, weekly rest, Genesis 2, 2 and 3, and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made, and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." So there we have the 7 and again you may think of some others, but 7 components that made up this original ideal plan.

The more nearly we come into harmony with God's original plan, the more favorable for recovery and preservation of health.

Or, an alternate wording, the more nearly we come into harmony with God's original plan, the more favorable will be our position to secure health of body and mind and soul.

So, I want to spend a little time studying this and I don't want to get bogged down in this because I personally don't like to put a lot of quotes up.

But I feel like inspired words are much better than my own.

So we're going to go through a number of quotes here pretty quickly because I want to make sure we understand.

You know, I realize all of you understand this in theory, but are we living as close to God's original plan as we can are you okay let's talk about location the creator chose for our first parents the surroundings best adapted for their health and happiness.

I don't need to explain anything with the, I mean it's pretty straight forward.

The home of our first parents was to be a pattern for other homes as their children should go forth to occupy the earth.

That home, beautified by the hand of God himself was not a gorgeous palace.

He can create, you know, build a house out of gold.

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