Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 2

Father in heaven, as we meet together today, I pray that your Holy Spirit will be with us.

Thank you for deacons and deaconesses, the role that they play in their churches, and it's not just a play role, but a serious role of leadership.

I pray that your Holy Spirit will give us instruction today.

I pray that you'll speak through me and that my words will be yours and that you'll also give ears to hear for those who are listening to what we do today.

Thank you for being with us in Jesus' name, Amen.

All right, this morning I want to introduce you to what we're going to be working with in terms of tools and you have some documentation in front of you that will be of help to you.

I'm not going to make a lot of reference to this particular book, except to let you know right now, this is a Deacon and Deaconess' Handbook that is produced by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adonis.

It is a valuable tool and has only been out since last year.

They used to have 1 before and then they kind of run out of them and then it's time to update it and then it takes them years to get that done and finally last year they came out with this handbook.

And so we're trying to make it available to people.

I give it out to people that come to a class like this because I feel that you need to have the information and it's my reward to you for taking the time to come and being part of this class.

So you don't have to go buy it, because I'm giving it to you.

The second thing that you have is your textbook, and this is where we're going to spend most of our time.

And I'll explain a little bit more about this textbook here in just a few moments as we get into it, but this will be where we're going to spend most of our time together with what I do on the screen and the things that I add to our conversation along the way.

So this is our main source today, along of course with the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy that are undergirding everything that we'll be doing.

Then the last thing that you have is the workbook.

The workbook looks like this, and I will not spend any time in the workbook at all.

The workbook goes along with this book and it's just a nice tool for you if you're going home you know and you don't want to, boy you say, huh I need something to keep me awake while I'm reading this book or or whatever and the workbook kind of helps you focus in on some areas that are of value and or specifically the author who made the workbook you can tell where things were important to him and he put them in the workbook and you can kind of work through that.

It's, you use on your own tool and that's its purpose.

I also have a, have a pen if anybody needs a pen, and I have notebook paper, blank notebook paper, line paper, if you want to take notes.

But if you're like me, I get a book like this and there's something there I'm going to write right in it because I don't want to lose the notes somewhere along the line.

So whatever works for you is great and those are our resources today.

I'm the Ministerial Director here in Michigan.

And the Ministerial Department is responsible for training and supporting elders and deacons and deaconesses, not just pastors.

So it has to fall under some category and that's a major leadership role somewhere.

It's not Sabbath school and it's not Pathfinders.

It's not in that area and so it falls under our area.

And I tell you that so that you know where to go in terms of getting resources to help you in whatever ministry angle you might be responsible for and we are happy to come out and do training in the local churches.

1 of the reasons I do this is not because I'm getting a big crowd here.

I'm doing it because I know that there's some people that can connect here.

There's so many seminars going on that people are having a hard time choosing which 1 to go to.

And then the truth of the matter is, yes, on Sabbath there's 5, 000 people here during the week, there's 12 or 1, 500 people, but there's 26, 000 members in the Michigan Conference and there's only a fraction of the leaders that actually get here.

And at some point, I hope you're inspired enough to go back and say, we need to have training for all our deacons and deaconesses or all our elders or whatever and go back to your local church and set something like that up and all you have to do is ask me and coordinate with your pastor.

And that's how that works and I'm happy to do that.

And by the way, that's exactly what's happened.

I've gone from camp meeting last year and went to 2 or 3 different churches and places where they invited me to come and do some training for them.

So I look forward to doing that because it's in the real world and situation that people are dealing with in a local church and I'm happy to do that.

I believe that the work of deacons and deaconesses and elders, and I'm using all 3 of those, because those positions interact with each other or should interact with each other, just as they did biblically, they should be doing in our local church.

And if these positions are functioning as they should, our churches will be stronger, much, much stronger.

Our churches have become frankly weak today and 1 of the reasons is because these positions have not been functioning at full strength like they should be.

And you'll understand what I mean as I go through this a little bit and explain a bit about what the purposes of elders, deacons, and deaconesses.

And I won't be spending any time with elders today because we've been doing that for the last couple of days.

How many of you are deacons or deaconesses in your church?

Okay, so I know I have 1 elder here today and the rest of you are deacons or deaconesses in your church.

And that's terrific, really glad that you're here.

How many of you are new to this position and it's brand new to you, you've never done it before.

You'll notice that in the notes that I put out about the class, advertising class, it's especially designed for people that are new to this position.

New, I've never done this before, or yes, I've done this before, but I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm hoping to find out.

That's why I'm here, and that's what we're going to be searching for.

That's 1 of the reasons that I really want to encourage churches to get the elders, the deacons and the deaconesses into a training program because it will strengthen the church and you'll understand what I'm talking about today.

So we're going to get right into our material now and take a look at this.

Let me explain that the textbook that you have before you was produced and written and produced by Dr.

He's an Adventist minister, I think he's retired now, but he's a Seventh-day Adventist minister who also got so involved in this whole process of training deacons and deaconesses and researching the whole process that when he worked on his doctoral degree, he used this as a format and a basis for his doctoral degree.

I will tell you that that's 1 of the reasons that the book is kind of laid out the way it is.

Now, that doesn't mean it's so deep and difficult to read that it's a doctoral dissertation, but I am telling you that because the book has references that are very broad.

It's not just written in a total Seventh-day Adventist vacuum.

By that I mean that he has drawn from other sources and he will have some sources in here that are from non-Adventist sources, historical sources, and others.

And why he's done that is to try to help us draw an understanding of what has happened in the deaconess' positions in the Christian church over the last 2, 000 years.

And you can't do that from only Adventist sources, and you can't do that from only biblical sources, because the biblical sources end at 100 AD, more or less, and the Adventist sources don't begin until about 1850.

So, you know, you've got to have Phil in the vacuum there somewhere, and he does that just to have a complete picture of how the whole experience and position of a deacon and a deaconess in the church has developed over time and how it comes to be what it is today.

And what it comes to be today is both good and bad.

We'll explain more about that along the way.

So he's entitled this, The 21st Century Deacon and Deaconess, Reflecting the Biblical Model, and that's really where we want to begin today.

If you have your Bibles, I'd encourage you to take your Bible out and turn to Isaiah chapter 61 because we want to get a little bit of perspective here in terms of the biblical lay, or I should say, background to what we are talking about here with deacons and deaconesses and the responsibilities that they have.

So I'm looking at Isaiah 61 verses 1 and 2.

I would be grateful to have a volunteer read that for me.

He has sent me to heal the broken hearts, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are gone, to proclaim the acceptable fear of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.

Isaiah is the writer, but to whom is he referring?

When it says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Now I want you to think about this in the context of the New Testament, and you remember once when Jesus was in the synagogue and he was talking to the people there, and They asked him to stand up and to read the Scripture reading.

And the Scripture reading that he chose was this passage.

And then after he got done reading it, he made a statement that almost got him stoned.

He said, today this is fulfilled in your hearing.

And the point that we're making with this and we're trying to identify, and this by the way is the first chapter in your book, so if you want to open your book you'll notice that this is the scripture that Dr.

White quotes here in in beginning his book and setting the stage and for the biblical model and showing that Jesus is the model of servant ministry.

He's helping us to understand that servant ministry is modeled first of all by the Messiah, by Jesus Christ.

And that becomes important as we dig in just a little deeper here in the next few moments because we'll begin to see how that connects with the role of deacons and deaconesses.

Same book, Isaiah 53, go back to chapter 53 and look at verse 11.

If someone else would read verse 11, I'd appreciate that.

In verse 11 of Isaiah 53, it says, He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.

Series

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 1

1h 6m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 5 - Mining the Manual

1h 16m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 2

1h 4m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training - Part 2

1h 16m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

1h 8m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dealing With Conflict in Public Ministry

1h 6m

Financing Yourself

Financing Yourself- Part 3

1h 11m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 4 - Doing the Wrong Job Well

1h 18m

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 2

1h 9m

Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

1h 5m

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

1h 6m

Sound Doctrine