Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application

Royce Snyman

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 1

Father in heaven, I want to thank you for this opportunity we have to meet together today and to study this very important topic that affects our churches in a significant way.

I pray that your Holy Spirit will be in charge of what we do and that we will clearly see and understand the principles that the Word of God gives to us in the spirit of prophecy in relationship to working on behalf of people who are struggling with the problem of sin in their lives.

This is the class on redemptive discipline.

I'm saying that mainly for me because the last class I had all these folders out already and it turned out that was not the right class to be teaching.

Sorry, I just got really busy and got in my head that I was teaching this class second period instead of third period.

You all here for redemptive discipline, right?

Okay, then you're in the right place and I'm in the right place.

I want to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be doing and the material that you have in your in your hand.

You have a notebook that looks like this, a folder by which you can keep the materials that I'll be giving you.

They're right here and if somebody would just take 1 back to them, that'd be great.

I could make you move but I'm a nice guy so I won't do that.

Now inside here, let me tell you what's in here.

First of all on the left-hand side is the notes for today, the outline for today, which is entitled The Concept of Redemptive Discipline.

We'll be using it extensively today as part of what we're going to be doing.

Behind it you will find an evaluation, which if you're going to stay for the whole 5 days, I would encourage you to hold off on that evaluation until we get done.

And so I'd appreciate that and I'd encourage you to stay for the 5 days.

We're building each day and dealing with the issues that apply to redemptive discipline.

We'll share some of the basic concepts today and then talk, especially tomorrow, about more of the application of those principles and work on that from there.

Behind that is some blank notebook paper that looks like this, and it's just notebook paper that's lined and something you're able to use.

I have included today which is something we are not going to refer to in the sense that it's not the major content of what we do, But it is some handout of materials, and by the way, Joe, you don't have to hold that.

You can set that down there and you're good.

You're just controlling what's happening with that.

I didn't want you to get tired of holding it, that's why I'm saying that.

I went online and I looked for some information out there in relationship to discipline.

I found spiritual discipline, redemptive discipline, And I found some interesting articles here that came out.

The 1 that's here, this 1 came out in the Admirist Review.

But at any rate, Dan Cern is the author of this and his title is, Is Church Discipline Still Needed?

Dan happens to be a personal friend of mine.

We went to school together and he's serving right now as coordinator of evangelism in the Texas conference and doing a wonderful job down there.

But he wrote this article here, and I encourage you to read it.

It's not a very long 1, but it does help you to understand the value and the importance and the need for discipline in the church.

We'll talk about what kind and all of that as we go through this.

But also I found somewhat fascinating about some articles that come from non-Adventist sources because we think of a lot of Protestant churches especially as being liberal and they don't care about what anybody does and so on.

There are a lot of good Christians out there and I'm not going to them for my source of my theology, but I did find some value in relationship and I just wanted you to understand that even in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whereby there are some who have moved away from the idea of discipline in the church, There are those who recognize not only the importance of it, but the value of it, and the fact that it will help to build a church and strengthen the church, not damage the church.

Of course, doing it the right way, and that's 1 of the articles that is here.

And so there's several of them here, and 1 of them is about discipleship, really, I mean, discipline, really works.

It's by an individual whose article and material I will give to you later on in the week.

That author is, is named Ken Sand, and he wrote a book called The Peacemaker, and it's a really excellent book, not just dealing with discipline in the church, but dealing also with solving people's problems and interactive combat that goes on in churches from time to time.

And really, He has some excellent material.

He's not a Seventh-day Adventist, but he's a Christian lawyer who has applied this in his own law practice and in his own church in helping people deal with conflict in the church.

And redemptive Discipline and discipline in the church sometimes does deal with the issue of conflict and so it will be a part of that as well.

So just wanted you to be aware of the material that's in there and what it's there for.

Now I want to get us launching into our class for today.

I'm gonna share with you the scenario that's in your material as we are looking at the issue of what discipline, redemptive discipline is, the concept there, and then we'll eventually in the next 4 days be working towards application.

Alright so you have your material and if you turn to the first section there you're going to find that there is a scenario and I'd like to read through that scenario with you right now, and we're going to discuss it just for a couple of moments.

It's gonna set a stage for us for our discussion.

I'm going to read it because of the microphone.

I'd actually rather have somebody else reading it, but because we are taping this, I want to make sure that that scenario gets recorded on here.

So, by the way, This class material, the basic foundational material, was originally developed by Elder Jay Gallimore, and he shared it with us as pastors some years ago, a lot of years ago, while I was still pastoring, and that was a lot of years ago.

And I was able to say, wait a minute, that's just what our church needs and what a wonderful thing to have in terms of principles and implemented it in the church that I was pastoring at the time.

But he's given me permission to teach this class along with him.

I've done that before and also to teach it as part of my role as Ministerial Director for the conference.

So I'm sharing some of the material that he developed and then I'm adding to it and giving you modified materials along the way.

Here's the scenario that I want you to think about for a moment.

He is a gifted with an enthusiastic leadership talent.

He's 1 of your elders and the General Sabbath School Superintendent.

His wife is not a member of the church, but does attend fairly often.

Who tells you with reluctance that she has suspected her husband of being interested in another woman.

She tells you that through a private investigator she has evidence he has been having an intimate affair with a woman at the local spa.

I don't mean push the pause button, but pause what I just shared with you.

You notice that it didn't say that the head of the board sent out an investigator, right?

This was a wife concerned about her husband.

She is not a member of the church, and that private investigator brought back evidence.

We are not investigators, and we're not detectives.

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 2

How grateful we are to be able to call you our loving Heavenly Father.

Father, we need your help to know ourselves how to be loving.

We're here for a class on redemptive discipline.

It's because both of these are needed in our church today in a very real way.

And we pray, Father, that you will help us as we seek to make it complete in the way you want it to be.

So as we talk about some practical applications of the principles that are here, I pray for your wisdom and your understanding.

I pray that you'll give me words to speak and for those who are sitting in this class, ears to hear, we thank you in Jesus' name.

Okay, Well, we want to begin our second part of our study.

Just a reminder that yesterday we spent some time in the Word of God, a good place to be always.

Specifically we spent some time in Revelation, I mean Revelation Matthew chapter 18, and in Matthew chapter 18 we were looking at the counsel that Jesus gave, and we looked at basically the whole chapter.

We went all the way through to the end of the section where Jesus speaks about the pieces that he wants to put into place and the specific steps in relationship to discipline that he wanted to carry out.

And then we also briefly at the end reminded ourselves of the parable that Jesus taught, and on the issue of forgiveness.

And today we want to take that foundation of Matthew chapter 18 and apply those principles in as practical a way as we can.

Now Let me tell you that the purpose of this class and my goal in what we are doing in this class is to be as practical as I possibly can be.

I'm not only wanting to give you theological tools, but I want to give you practical tools, and I also want to give you a chance to practice those tools.

This to me, I believe, is a vital missing link, not the missing link, but a missing link in developing our churches into being strong churches for Jesus in these last days.

The material that I handed out to you yesterday, the supplement of material that I gave you yesterday, that's in your notebook, speaks to the value of discipline in churches.

1 part of it written by Seventh-day Adventists, Dan Searns, and then some other parts written by non-Adventists, which you would not even hardly expect in Christianity today, because it feels like, not necessarily as true, but it feels like the Christian world has kind of abandoned any kind of standard or I don't want to use the word rules but you know it's it kind of feels like anything and everything goes and that's the feeling that you kind of pick up from Christianity today, but that's not fair to all Christians.

Not all Christians are in that particular mode at this time.

And some of them understand, even when they've got wrong theology, in terms of the Sabbath and other things, they do understand that in order for their churches to stay strong, there needs to be some level of standard and direction for their churches.

So That's that material, I wanted you to be aware of, reminding you of that, doing a little bit of backup work.

But now I want to take us into our study for today.

And we're gonna start with a small group project.

Now you Remember we started with 1 yesterday, and we kind of worked in a general way with that.

But today I want you to take the principles that we established and apply those principles to this work.

Now I'm going to go a little bit farther here for a moment.

I want to go to this slide and then I'll back up here for a moment.

It's in your notes under the section 2, applying concept of redemptive discipline in a local church.

I just want to review this Matthew 18 process because some of you weren't able to be here yesterday and that's great I'm glad you're not great that you weren't able to be here but great that you're here today And I want to apply those principles here, and if you're not reminded of what those principles are and those steps, then you're gonna have a little bit of time struggling with that.

So Matthew Process makes it clear that there are 3 basic steps available.

Sandy, I don't think you got anything yesterday, right?

This is from yesterday to add to your collection, okay?

So reviewing what we did yesterday, Jesus told us that if our brother offends us, and we're speaking generically here, a brother or sister offends us, one-on-one visit with a member is what we need to do.

One-on-one, an individual going there and working together with them privately.

If that doesn't work, we move to the second step, and that's 2 or 3 leaders who are visiting that offending member.

The third step is if that still doesn't work, the offending member is brought before the congregation.

But I want to remind you that these steps can be applied in all kinds of discipline processes.

We named Ostrich discipline, we named judgmental discipline, and we named redemptive discipline.

And we said that ostrich discipline is what is prevalent in most of our churches today.

And you all get the analogy of the ostrich sticking its head in the sands would put you by the way they don't actually do that Speaking from Africa, you know and growing up around ostriches, they don't do that But anyway, somehow they got the reputation of sticking their heads in and that's what the people in our churches are doing most of the time.

We just hide away and pretend that it's not going on or that it will somehow solve itself.

And if we leave it alone, it's better that way than if we try to deal with it.

The second kind of thing we dealt with was the issue of judgmental discipline, comparing that with discipline that is redemptive.

And we talked about the similarities between them and the differences between them, recognizing that these 3 steps can be taken in both, but not come out with the same results, that there is a redemptive discipline step, and that is the step that God wants us to be taking.

Does the sheet got up here, but I'm not sure it got back to everybody.

If you were here yesterday, just sign your name.

If you were not here yesterday and you're signing in today, please put your name and your address on there so that I know how to contact you.

If you're in another 1 of my classes, put your name and address there anyway because if I'm looking at that sheet I don't want to have to go look somewhere else to know how to get in contact with you if I wanted to or needed to.

So these 3 can be prevalent in discipline that is judgmental and it can be present in discipline that is redemptive.

And our goal is redemption so that the sin can be contained.

We are also concerned that the Matthew 18 process be followed and if any of the steps in the process the sin problem is stopped, redemption can be accomplished when you can stop it and you contain the problem.

We're going to come back to that in just a few moments, but take your notes right now and do this if you would.

I wanna spend a few moments talking about this in a very practical type setting.

I'm gonna ask you to break into groups a little bit and All you gotta do is just turn your chairs.

And I like 4 groups, if you would be willing to do this.

Now, not everybody likes small groups, and I get that.

But Ellen White says that small groups are actually a training tool that she saw as a valuable thing, and so I'm gonna take advantage of that opportunity here.

We gotta do something a little bit different.

Now don't fall into the trap, because some of you, I mean the ones who were here yesterday you say, that's the same thing we did yesterday.

I'm gonna Get in your groups and then I'm going to read through it and then I want you to talk about it.

Well, I'll help all of us here for a moment.

Okay, we're going to spend about 5 to 10 minutes doing this.

I want you to have enough time to discuss it, but I don't want you to develop a whole theology and write books on this, so we'll limit it to about 5 to 10 minutes.

Here's the scenario, you can follow along as you read.

I'm standing up here with a camera and reading it so the camera knows what we're doing.

That's for the people who will watch it afterwards, you understand.

Alright, this is a hypothetical situation.

Any similarity to reality is totally coincidental.

The scenario is that you have a man in your church, Mr.

B, who's gifted with enthusiastic leadership talent.

He's 1 of your elders and the general Sabbath school superintendent.

B who tells you with reluctance that she has suspected her husband of being interested in another woman.

She tells you that through a private investigator she has evidence that he has been having an intimate affair with a woman at the local spa.

B shows no sign of vengeance, but states that she will appreciate whatever you can do to save their marriage and protect the good name of the church, which, she says, she has come to respect because she attends from time to time and she appreciates the church.

B alone, with you and 1 of the other elders.

After prayer, you discuss with him the situation you have been informed about and ask him what you can do to help if it is true.

Almost immediately, he begins to lash out at his wife and you for bringing someone else from the church.

He defends his conduct and tells you that you don't know his wife.

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 3

Loving Father in Heaven, how grateful we are for your love, your care.

And we know that in this world there is sin, and in the church there are sinful people.

And we all struggle against the enemy, and in some cases the enemy gets control of people, and that can turn around and become very detrimental to your church.

So we're talking here about what we can do and steps we can take in order to be able to Allow your Spirit to be working in our churches again as He would desire to.

We want to be faithful in our duties, especially as leaders.

We pray that today your Holy Spirit will guide our discussion.

All right, I want to make sure you have the class materials and I do have materials from the past as well as from the materials from the present.

The Deaconess class was at 9.30 this morning and the next 1 will be at 930 tomorrow morning.

I know it's confusing, even I've been confused so and I teach the class so.

Alright, we're going to get started here and take on.

At this point in the week, you're going to begin to notice a pattern.

And that pattern is there's some repetition in what we're doing.

And I want you to understand that This is a biblical principle.

The biblical principle is repeat and enlarge, repeat and enlarge.

I don't claim to be a prophet by any means, but if God can use that as a way for us to learn and develop the tools and the skills that he wants us to learn, I believe it's 1 that we can do too.

Now I take a certain risk in that, and that risk is that you might get to say, wait a minute, I'm kind of repeating here.

But you are repeating, but we're also enlarging as we go and dealing with different aspects of these problems that come up.

For example, tomorrow we're going to be talking about handling conflict because as we said yesterday and as we'll talk today, when you get into these situations in depth, you will get into conflict.

When you start to get situations like what we talked about yesterday and that we will talk about today, these kinds of experiences as they begin to develop, it's interesting to go to talk to people who are walking down a sinful path, and they've got to make a decision.

The decision they have to make is, is the path I'm walking the right 1 or the wrong 1.

If they are convinced it's the wrong 1, then the journey can take a certain direction.

But if they are convinced it's the right 1, even though we know it's the wrong 1, because the Bible makes it abundantly clear it's the wrong 1.

You now have a conflict and that person has a conflict because that person has decided it's the right road to go down and that's the 1 they intend to walk and now you've got to get into conflict with them, convincing them that what they think is right is actually wrong.

And only the Spirit of God can do that, but when people are determined to do that, it's going to bring about some kind of conflict eventually.

So today we're going to take another step forward in the concept of redemptive discipline.

I'm not going to break you into groups today.

We're going to just talk for a few moments about this same scenario, but we're going to twist that scenario a little bit, because people are all different.

How many of you come from a church of 50 members or less?

How many of you come from a church 50 to 100 members?

How many of you come from a church larger than 100 members?

Okay, all right, let me back down that for a moment.

Okay, all right, I think I'm getting the scope of the land and since I know some of you, I know where we're talking about.

So you see that there's a broad spectrum here, all the way from churches under 50 to over 300 members are represented here.

I don't care how small your church is, you're going to run into this problem somewhere along the line, unless something's going on in your church that would surprise me.

But I like to be surprised, so that's okay.

Why would there be any difference in any Catholic church?

Other than the fact that churches are made up of human beings, and human beings that are wanting to follow the direction that the Lord has outlined are 1 thing, but there are sometimes those who are choosing to go a different direction.

Let me tell you, 1 of the challenges we face today is there's a broad spectrum of what people think a Seventh-day Adventist is.

I believe there's a very narrow spectrum of what God expects of a Seventh-day Adventist, but there's a broad spectrum of what people think a Seventh-day Adventist church is and what it's like and what to expect from it.

And as a consequence there are the titles, these labels that are used of conservative and liberal and whatever people attach to it.

But what you and I want to be is simply faithful.

We want to be faithful to doing what the Lord Jesus has asked us to do.

And 1 of the challenges is that as people today are wrestling with these things, you know, let me, let's try to put everything on the table so we can begin to understand this.

There was a day when you and I would not even be having some of the conversations that in the last year or 2 we're having to face.

Would we ever have had a discussion and God loves everybody, right?

But God does not love everybody's sin, and he holds sinners responsible for the decisions they make.

God loves those who are caught up in the LGBTQ whatever world.

It seems like every day I wake up they've added another letter to that list.

And the whole homosexual agenda and bisexual agenda and all the other elements, All of those elements are out there today that when I grew up in school, yeah, you heard about this in a derogatory way, but you never heard about it being a direct issue in relationship to the church.

But today, you and I are finding that it is directly impacting the church.

It's affecting our young people in a very real way.

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Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 3

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Parts

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 1

1h 15m

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 2

1h

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 3

1h 15m

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 4

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Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 5

1h 13m

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