Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Personal Ministries Leadership Training

Jim Howard

Personal Ministries Leadership Training- Part 1

Father in heaven, we're just grateful for this opportunity we have to meet together.

It's a wonderful camp meeting, Lord, and we're sure that according to your promise that you are here to meet with us.

Give us wisdom and understanding in how we can do our part in mobilizing the laity and giving them resources and training and doing what we can to reach our own communities, Lord, that You have planted each 1 of us in.

So bless us during this time with Your Spirit, we pray in Jesus' name.

Have you ever seen what personal ministries is supposed to be in the church manual?

It would probably be helpful if you have never seen it.

I'd like to point out that first paragraph.

This is the most recent church manual, by the way, which made some changes.

I'm not happy about all of them, but there's some good stuff in there.

But that first paragraph has been tweaked a little bit, but it still has the main components.

It says 2 sentences, personal ministries provides resources and trains members to unite their efforts with those of the pastor and officers in soul winning service.

It also has primary responsibility for programs assisting those in need.

I like to say that you can really boil that down to 2 primary things that Personal Ministries does.

Provides resources and provides training.

So those are, you kind of think about what you do, you got to be thinking about that.

But there's more to it than that, of course, but those are the key components.

I don't have the, let me see, somebody wanna look up for me?

Look up for me the work of the church board, will ya?

While she's doing that, I'm gonna pass something out to you.

But you guys, can you take 1 and just pass it around?

Take 1 and pass back and then we'll collect whatever you have left.

128, business meetings, 129, the church board.

Page 128, business meetings, page 129, the church board.

Okay, discipleship, members, officers, meetings, the work of the board.

Okay, look at number 6 on the work of the church board.

Encourage the personal ministries department to do what?

What do you think of when you think of enlist?

Have you ever felt like an army recruiter as personal ministries leader?

But that's exactly what you and I are called to do.

Enlist all members and, whoa now, Children.

Now, you would think that people would know that since the job is called personal ministries, that we would be trying to get people involved in personal outreach or missionary service.

But do you know what often happens with personal ministries?

We get people involved in corporate church events.

We have them help at the fair booth, and the cooking school, and the evangelistic meeting.

But the reality is, we are encouraged to enlist all members and children in some form of personal outreach service.

What does that word personal mean anyway?

It means that we're intended to try and help our people, our lay people, to do the kind of outreach that you do as someone who's investing in people personally.

And sure, there's personal outreach service that happens at our corporate events.

I'm not saying there's nothing personal that happens there, But it's very clear that this goes beyond that.

This is trying to help everyone to see themselves as a missionary.

Themselves as having a role in sharing the truth with others.

That is actually not in the personal ministry section.

That's in the church board section because the church board is to make sure that the personal ministries department is working to get every member involved.

That's a pretty, it makes you see how important it is.

You don't see it saying under the church board, encourage the deaconesses to make sure that everybody is on the communion bread rotation.

You don't see it say, encourage the elders to make sure they visit every member.

You don't see it say, encourage the men's ministries guy to make sure he has men's ministries brunches.

But for some reason the church board, they make a special point of saying the church board should make sure that the personal ministries department is enlisting every member of the church in active personal outreach service.

It tells you the importance of personal ministries and I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.

As a pastor, I believe that I am leading personal ministries right by the side of my personal ministries leader.

I don't necessarily lead every department.

I don't have quite as much time and investment in every single department.

But I do make sure that I have time and investment in the personal ministries department.

And the reason is because it is the centerpiece of the mission of the church.

I personally believe that there is an entire, I'm pontificating a little now, forgive me.

But I believe there's an entire philosophy that is wrong in many places in the Adventist church that we're seeking to change, and I believe it's happening right at the very top.

Personal Ministries Leadership Training- Part 2

Father in Heaven, thank You for this day You've blessed us with.

Thank You for the Spirit that has been leading and for this opportunity we have to talk about personal ministries, how to mobilize our churches, how, Lord, we can see a revival and a reformation that happens when we get active in Your work.

So please, Lord, I pray that You would give each 1 of us understanding and wisdom today and speak to our hearts.

Alright, so what we did yesterday was we started kind of going through this plan or set of responsibilities for a personal ministries department in a church.

And we talked quite a bit about literature and other witnessing resources yesterday.

And look what I remembered just barely but this is not well I'll go and pass it out and I'll talk about it you just pass them around.

Oh man, I'm just gonna turn it toward me, if you don't mind.

It feels really good okay anybody not get 1 of these okay you wanna pass that back he didn't get 1 back there.

You need a little spunk to be a personal ministry leader.

That's right, for good reason, because it would be a little old.

But most of it is still available and it's not that far off.

I don't know if they're true or not, but they're not that far off.

Just to give you an idea, the first section there says miscellaneous books and magazines.

There's a little booklet called Your Friends of Seventh-day Adventists.

That's probably the best overview type of booklet that I've found, So I put that on there a lot.

When God Said Remember, I mentioned yesterday as a good Sabbath book.

Amazing Prophecies is a magazine that goes through all of Daniel and Revelation in a magazine, and it's pretty good.

Hidden Truth magazine anybody familiar with that from Amazing Facts?

It's got several doctrines in it and it's good.

So then ASI books these are the ones I was telling you about which was the conflict series and at this time those prices are under 2 dollars I'm not sure if that's still the case, but I will say that in order to get their price you need to get case quantities.

We get a lot of people who think that they order through our department all kinds of things.

Even like BibleStudyOffer.com, You don't order that through our department.

That goes through the website and the ABC fulfills it.

Ever since I've been in the office, I have tried to get away from us serving as a store because we have an ABC.

So pretty much everything will go through the ABC, even if we're promoting it.

And we try to like, I mean, We have great arrangements with the ABC.

I'll tell you basically how I said it to Tim, our ABC manager.

I said, I really would like to put a lot of this stuff through you, but if I'm required to mark it up for the churches so that you can have 40% or something, then I'm just not going to do it.

We're going to sell it through our department.

Because the churches need it at a better price.

So they get a markup, but it's not a big markup.

It covers their cost and maybe just a little over that.

I wish I could give more of a markup, but I know the churches struggle too.

For instance, BibleStudyOffer.com, if you look at the stuff that we're selling and how much we're selling it for, we're just covering ourself.

And that means that we're losing money, because when it's all said and done, there will be stuff that gets thrown out, inventory, shrinkage, all that kind of stuff.

We're probably not losing because I build in a few percent on everything so that hopefully we get something.

We will, Anytime you do something like that, I'll give you a little visioning here, you're not going to have the same exact stuff year after year after year.

The glow track will have to be freshened, the studies that you offer, you might need to add something or change it or whatever.

So, whenever you come to the point where you freshen something, then other inventory becomes nobody wants it anymore.

So, we will do our best to manage that and bring it down and have a schedule in place to do that.

Anyway, I don't need to get into all that with you, but that's what I meant.

Not that we're going to stop Bible Study Offer.

At the ABC, who's taken Diane Dowell's place?

And now, because of Bio Study Offer, they were really hammered there.

And Tim's managing not just that ABC, but Indiana and all over the Union.

Series

Personal Ministries Leadership Training

Personal Ministries Leadership Training- Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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