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, thank you again for a new day.

And at the beginning of this class, we once again want to ask you to guide our conversation that we have here today, that you will do the training for us.

As we spoke yesterday, we were reminded, Lord, that this is a spiritual work.

It is not just a technical work, and it's not just doing this task or that 1, but it is spiritual responsibility of leading the congregation.

I pray that you will be with us as we meet together.

Once again, give me words to speak and give us all ears to hear you speaking in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're going to, again, I've given you a textbook.

You have the Deacon Deaconess's handbook and you have a workbook that goes with the other.

Again, I'm not referring to the workbook and the workbook is just a supplemental tool for you to be able to utilize.

I do want to remind you that this book, especially as I was reviewing things last night, I picked up something that for some reason I never quite caught before, and I'm not sure why I hadn't noticed it, but He has prepared this book not just for Seventh-day Adventists.

And it is written for Seventh-day Adventists obviously because it's all about Seventh-day Adventist history and all of that, so it's there.

But I noticed later he has some parts of it where he includes details of what other denominations, what would apply to other denominations, and if I understand correctly he's just utilized it in that particular context and there may be some people who have used his material with that idea in mind and do that.

But he's a Seventh-day Adventist minister preaching in a Seventh-day Adventist context, and that's what that's all about.

I'm going to share some things today with you from the book.

I'm going to share some things to do today with you from my own experience, and I'm going to share some things today with you from the book.

I'm going to share some things today with you from my own experience.

And I'm going to share some things with you from the handbook.

So it's going to be a hodgepodge a little bit today that you're going to receive.

So take some notes along the way if there's some things along there.

And the ones that come from the handbook, I'll make sure to try to highlight that for you so that you know that it's in there and you know what that source of that information will be.

Yesterday we were talking about the fact that a deacon or a deaconess are spiritual leaders in the church.

In our early conversation we were talking a little bit about this aspect and in terms of responsibility, helping somebody.

You said you'd been a deaconess for 12 years or something like that, and people are still trying to, you know, talking about how to fix the communion bread and how to get, you know, take the tablecloth off and all of that.

And I wanted to use that as an illustration because that becomes the focus of what we do is with deacons and deaconesses in our church, and we miss out on this great big opportunity that we have.

We concentrate on this little piece over here And it's like going into a state park or a national park, and you see this little portion of the state park like Yellowstone.

And if you only go to where 1 of the geysers is, like Old Faithful, and say, I've been to Yellowstone!

Yeah, you probably did, and yes, that was Yellowstone.

But there was a whole lot more to see you didn't even come close to, and the rewards of seeing all of the rest of it is phenomenal.

Well, you know, when we concentrate on communion bread, And we miss the great opportunity for service, ministry, experience with the Lord, changing people's lives.

And whether we're an elder, a deacon, or a deaconess, God is helping to provide these opportunities for us.

Now, of course, if you go to Yellowstone and you drive in and you go over to the geyser and so on, it's a relatively easy walk over to Old Faithful and you can go over there and it's no big deal.

But if you really want to see Yellowstone, you're gonna be tired.

You're gonna be hiking off into the wilderness.

You may be camping overnight or 2 or 3 nights or whatever.

But if you want to really experience it, you've got to put in the energy and then you really know what Yellowstone's about.

Well, it's the same with being a deacon or a deaconess.

If you really want to understand what it's all about, it's going to take some effort.

It's going to take time out of your schedule.

It means changing what might be seemingly important to you now and changing that for what God sees as important in utilizing in your work.

Now I'm not talking about working 80 hours a week as a deacon or a deaconess unless you have the time and the energy to do that, but I am talking about going from 1 hour a week on Sabbath morning to maybe 4 or 5 or 6 or something like that hours a week in the evenings, ministering to people, organizing outreach ministries of various kinds and not just out of the church, but also in the church reaching out to people who need your specific help.

So that was the foundation that we laid yesterday, and today I want to get into some of the specifics of ministry and meeting some of the challenges that take place in the church.

1 of the reasons, as we spoke about yesterday, 1 of the reasons that this work is so vital is because as with the early Christian church, when the apostles discovered that they had this problem with the need to be meeting the food needs and other needs of the widows in that daily distribution, When they organized deacons to accomplish this work and eventually women got involved as well, either spouses or whatever, got involved in this work, The fact of the matter is the work was able to continue to move forward and even exploded.

There are 19 million members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

There are approximately 25, 000 congregations, if I understand that, around the world, and that may even be a low number.

But the point of all of that is we've got a great work to do, and we have a handful of ministers in comparison to the need that's out there.

So if the pastors are expected to do everything, if they're supposed to solve all the problems, conflicts that come in, if they're supposed to visit all the shut-ins and nobody else is doing that work, I didn't mean that a pastor shouldn't do some of this work.

I'm saying if the pastor is the only 1 doing that work, and the pastor is the only 1 giving Bible studies, and the pastor is the only 1 who is taking care of the physical plan of the church, and etc., etc., etc., How long are we going to be here?

And God isn't going to bypass us because Ellen White actually makes it abundantly clear that the latter rain is not coming until the majority of God's people are involved in the work.

It's less than 20% of the church members are involved in some aspect of work.

And in some churches, and maybe it's just like that in yours, it's down around 5% of the people that are actually involved in doing anything in the church, whether it's a leadership role, giving Bible studies, outreach, or whatever.

Very few people are investing in this because we've gotten to become so involved and so connected with what's going on in the world and our own personal goals and all, not that those are bad, but they've taken over our lives completely.

So I want to get into some of the details today and talk about what God can do with you and I don't want you to be overwhelmed.

I want you to be encouraged that there's a greater horizon in front of you that you may not have realized was there.

And that you get through to all of those places on the horizon by taking 1 step at a time.

If you wanna see all of Yellowstone in 1 minute, you can't even do it in a plane.

If you're gonna see it on the ground, you're going to have to take a step at the time and you'll get around to it.

If you wish that you had 10 deacons that were trained or 10 deaconesses that were trained to do that work, and there's only 1 of you because you came to this training program, and you're going to go back, and you've only got 5 deacons, and you wish you had 10, and you need them, and they could be that number because of the size of your church.

Now, some of you don't even have 10 members coming to church, so you're not gonna have 10 deacons, you know that, right?

But you will find that God will provide what you need in time.

And if you will start doing your work, God will start blessing your church, your church will start to grow, and you'll see those resources begin to develop.

He provides what we need when we need it.

So the training I want to do today is I'm going to start talking to you about conflict work as conflict managers.

Because that was the first thing the deacons and deaconesses in the New Testament were involved with.

There was a battle going on, and it was a cultural battle, and it was a battle between people as we looked about in Acts chapter 6.

You remember we went through that yesterday, and in that story, what the people were experiencing was a significant challenge.

They were unified until it looked like there was a problem or that it, you know, some people thought, well, there's a problem here and maybe it's because they don't like Greeks.

And so people started doing what people do.

They started talking about each other and dealing with that kind of situation.

So I want to talk to you about being a conflict manager.

Yes, you as a deacon or a deaconess, that your work is to assist the pastor with conflict issues when they arise.

But even better to stop them before they arise.

Because sometimes you know something's brewing in your church long before the pastor.

Pastor is usually the last 1 to find out there's a problem.

But you are sitting at potluck lunch 1 day at the church or you've invited somebody else over to your home and they are mumbling to you.

I know that doesn't happen very often, but they might be doing that and they are telling you a little bit of how unhappy they are, that the pastor has 45 churches instead of just 1, and he is ignoring them especially, and they are just getting really upset that the pastor doesn't care about them.

And besides that, they're really upset with Sister So-and-So because of what she did last Sabbath to them when they came into the church.

She turned around and walked away just as they came in.

Series

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 2

1h 9m

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

1h 6m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training - Part 2

1h 16m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 2

1h 8m

Plenary

How Can You Make a Big Difference in Children’s Lives When You Teach Sabbath School in a Small Church

1h 18m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training- Part 2

1h 11m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 1

1h 6m

Plenary Sessions

War!

54m

Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 1

1h 15m

ECYC 2012 Seminar: Christian Leadership

Christian Leadership

55m

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

58m

Sound Doctrine