GYC 2018: To The End

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Living Dangerously: God’s Call to Mission Service and How to Get Involved!

Gary Blanchard

1. One Year in Mission and Mission Caleb

This message was presented at the GYC to the end in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

Why don't you turn to the person next to you and say good morning and say hello.

All right, now take a minute to exchange credit card numbers.

Let's go ahead and start with a word of prayer.

I'm Pastor Gary Blanchard, and we'll be talking about living dangerously.

And I'll share with you really quickly what we're going to be talking about for the next several sessions, so you can kind of find out which ones you want to be a part of and which you may not want to be a part of.

But today we're going to talk about living dangerously for God.

So let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Jesus, we're talking about living dangerously today, but really, it's more dangerous living for the enemy than it is living for you.

Actually, you tell us if we live dangerously for you, we'll actually find our life and not lose it.

So Lord, help us not to be deceived into thinking that serving you is the most dangerous thing we can do.

So God, we are choosing the best path and that is to live our lives for you and we know we're gonna face dangers but we know we'll never be alone because you will be with us to the very end, you've promised.

All right, I wanted to read the verse to you that we spoke about on Sabbath because I want to make sure this is our key text for the entire event.

If you have your Bibles, let's go to Acts chapter 1 verse 8.

We just want to use this as our springboard passage.

And most of you might know this by heart, but ye shall receive what?

The Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be what?

Now, remember yesterday we talked about how that verse contains 2 very important things.

Provision or His power through the Holy Spirit.

So here we have his vision, all of it right there.

God's vision and the power to make it happen.

And by the way, this verse is not only for everybody, it's also for you personally.

Because notice 2 times the word you is mentioned in there.

Turn to the person next to you and say, you buddy.

You don't need to wait till your pastor gets on fire, amen?

You don't need to wait till your neighbor gets on fire, amen?

You don't need to wait till your brother and sister and your parents get on fire, Amen?

1 of my favorite stories is of a woman who went to a pastor 1 day and said, pastor, my church is so dead.

The people are all gossipy and judgemental.

I want you to go upstairs to your room." She's like, okay, this is cool.

She said, he said, I want you to go inside your closet.

And he said, I want you to get a piece of chalk.

He said, the pastor said, I want you to draw circle on the ground so cool houses I want you stand in the circle howard pastor ask god in the closet in the circle, to change you first.

Don't try to change a church, you change first.

So we want to live dangerously for God because that's his vision for us.

Remember the word witness means martyr So it's not just about it's about sharing Jesus to the end not only the end of the earth But also possibly to the end of your life.

So we're talking about living dangerously We're going to talk about 1 year mission Because we want to make it practical we want to talk to you about how you can actually get involved with some initiatives that are already happening Like when your mission everybody say oh, yeah Caleb everybody say Caleb and everybody say gh 20 gh 20 stands for give him 20 and We'll talk about that in a minute.

These are some initiatives that you can get involved in right now to start living dangerously for the Lord.

How many of you have heard the term rewilding before?

It is a term that just showed up in the 1990s, 1996.

How many of you heard of Yellowstone National Park?

Yellowstone ran into some problems because about 70 years ago, they banished all the wolves.

Well, the problem is when you don't have any wolves, what happens as a result?

And guess what all the other rodents in the world like to eat?

So all of a sudden, all Yellowstone National Park had was deer.

No trees because they were eating the seeds.

In fact, they noticed that the very rivers started to meander in a weird way.

2. Short Term Mission Trips 101

This message was presented at the GYC To The End in Houston, Texas.

We're looking to improve our public campus ministry.

If you want to talk to somebody that is doing that ministry successfully, I will recommend that you reach out to the Michigan conference, Pastor Ramos.

I keep hearing that he's doing an amazing job with public campus ministry.

It is not easy, but it is extremely needed in every single conference, not just in the NAD but the world.

So be a world changer, engage in mission.

How many of you guys heard a lot of criticism towards short term missions.

You know, the ones that are like 7 days, 10 days, you know, raise your hand if you have, you know, you've heard some comments like, I mean, let me ask you, what are some comments that you've heard that are in a negative way towards short mission trips?

You know, they just, what she said is they just go, parachute missions where they just go dump information and then they just go back.

Instead of just raising the money and giving it to the locals so that they can do ministry, that is just much better instead of just raising all this money and then you just go and...

So anyways, there's different ones, but I would like to give you some perspectives into why short mission trips are important and are catapult many times to bigger ministry.

But before I go, As I go through the steps, you guys are gonna see some of the benefits of short-term missions.

You know, so yeah, so that's kind of our motto for short mission trips, changing the world 1 mission at a time.

So in terms of steps to prepare, just so that you know that even though there are negative connotations toward short mission trips, I've seen time after time the way God has worked and changed the hearts of some of the kids that have gone.

As in the beginning, you know, they're all tough, you know, like, you know, I don't want nothing to do with this, you know, my parents signed me up.

Towards the end, you have a total different person.

And you're like, How did this happen in such a fast time?

But anyways, on steps, I believe it is extremely important, not only as you prepare for it, on what you do before the short mission trip as to what you do after the mission trip as well.

And I have had several mission trips that I've organized with my wife.

My wife has kind of taken the lead on that 1.

She is our mission trip coordinator for Texas and she does, she's extremely organized.

I'm not, but I come in very well when things are falling apart.

When things don't work the way they're supposed to work, just God has given me that, that advantage to be able to come with positivity and try to survive.

As soon as you are getting your list of the people that are signing up for your short mission trip, it is important that you start praying for them.

And something I learned from a magazine where Pastor Mark Finley wrote many years ago, probably 10 years ago, it was a blue magazine, and it talked about intercessory prayer.

And it changed the way I pray for people.

And it said that you need to pray out loud for them.

You need to let the devil also, sometimes I get scared, you know, what if the devil is hearing my prayers as well and then he's gonna come and attack, God is way more powerful.

And so he mentioned a couple Bible verses of why even Jesus prayed out loud.

And so I've seen the power of praying over people and mentioning their names out loud.

And in the last 1 that we did, something that I did was write the names of the 40 people that we were taking and just claim certain things for them that I wanted to see after that mission trip on them.

And so, anyways, also pray for what country God wants you to serve.

You know, as you heard in 1 of the sermons, I forgot who it was, but yeah, I think it was last night.

Yes, God might be calling you to that 1 place that you don't want to go.

It might be your own neighbors that you don't like so much.

So pray, pray, pray for God to open doors where you have to go.

Step number 2 is get in contact with the local conference or union.

If there is no conference you might go to the country beforehand.

I gotta tell you this step is important that you kind of go beforehand as you're preparing the territory because there can be a lot of surprises, even among pastors.

I'm not going to tell you which country it was, but we raised this money and this pastor said, we are gonna work on this project.

There's gonna be a church and we need $9, 000.

Can you send us 7, 000 beforehand so I can buy the material for you guys?

I send the money And then I go with the group, first time in the country.

We get to the church and I'm like, all right, pastor, show me where is the material?

And the pastor goes to a room and shows me there's the material.

Oh yeah, you know, the material is really expensive nowadays and yeah, that's, so I need the other 2 so I can go buy the rest of the material.

No offense, Pastor, but It doesn't add up.

Okay, so I went and I told my team and they're like, what?

Okay, how are we going to do construction?

I mean, poor students, they were carving with their hands.

Their nails were pretty much being demolished and it's like Pastor Tenorio this is not going to work out for us, we need to go buy material.

And I started to panic, I said well we only got 2 grand right now to buy everything that we need to finish this church.

And so, there were a couple of doctors on this trip with us and they were furious.

And so, yeah, I said, hey, let's just go to the place, let's just go and buy the stuff ourselves.

And so we went and we started doing our math of the stuff that the pastor had bought.

We said, hey, this is not, we're going to have to, you know, talk to your president about this because this is not right.

If you're in charge of missions for this whole country, then there's a problem.

And so anyways, just to make it short, when you go before, all right, and if you don't have a person that you fully trust with finances, then it's important that you make the trip beforehand.

It will save you, that was our first mission trip.

So it was our first bad experience as our first trip that we were organizing with my wife.

But anyways, just be careful with that and that will help.

And remember, sometimes what is good for you may not be good for the locals.

So pick a date that it will just pretty much be good for both.

And if you're in the US, just remember, spring break, Thanksgiving, our last mission trip to Thailand was during Thanksgiving break.

3. Where to Find Missionary Opportunities

Okay, I think we're starting right on time here.

We want this to be a very practical seminar, so we'll be talking about actual opportunities that are out there for you to get involved living dangerously for God.

Now remember, the Bible says if we live dangerously for God, we'll find our life.

So living dangerous for Jesus is not how you actually technically lose your life, it's actually where you find joy in serving the Master.

I wanted to share really quickly with you some really cool books that are out there right now.

Passport to Mission is an excellent book on how to get ready to go overseas as a missionary.

It's called Passport to Mission and I've got the third revised edition right here.

Excellent book right here to get ready if you're crossing the ocean to another country and want to know how to how best to do that.

She's a dear friend of mine and a real prayer warrior.

Probably wrote the best book on prayer I've ever read besides outside of Alan White's writings and other things.

It's called Daring to Ask and it's filled with really cool stories, some amazing quotes, but I think most importantly written by someone who actually prays and sees miracles happen as a result.

Well, I think you probably agree it's outstanding.

This is our new Adventist Youth Leaders Magazine.

We want to raise a generation of seventh-day Adventist youth leaders.

And this book right here is designed for that.

It's a little booklet that we produce once a quarter.

And it started, we gave this particular 1 to all of our youth leaders at our Global Youth Leadership Congress, but the brand new 1 is coming out this month.

Now can anybody tell me where would you go to download this thing for free, once a quarter in 2019 and 2020?

And if you're wondering, hey, I would like to learn more about how to start a one-year admission.

Where would you go to download this manual on how to start a one-year admission in your union or conference or local city?

It's very simple, take you about 20 minutes to read, and it lays it out for you.

We have a vision to have a 1 year admission in every single union around the world.

This right here happens to be 1 of my favorite books to give to young people if they want to start small groups and pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, pray for God's vision and provision.

Where could you download this book for free if you wanted it?

All the answers are kind of the same here, youth.evans.org.

My last talk tonight, number 6 of my talk tonight, will be on a missionary's best friend, and I'm gonna talk about the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit is getting a lot of bad press these days.

A lot of stuff going around about the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is your best friend as a missionary.

And we'll talk about that, and we'll also talk about how you can use this book, and also, by the way, the best book I've ever read is this 1 right here.

If you guys have ever, this is some of the best stuff on missionary service you'll ever find and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

But I'll talk about the Holy Spirit is your best friend.

So we have lots of people that are going to be sharing with you today.

We're going to focus on opportunities that are out there that you can sign up for today and get involved.

And, how many of you have been to the booths?

So, I want to go through this really quickly with you.

At the GC Youth Department, we have a simple strategy, and you guys already know about it.

I talked about it in my sermon, but I'm also, I talked about it yesterday as well.

Our simple strategy is we believe that young people were designed to live dangerously for the Lord.

And we believe that it's important that we send young people.

Instead of trying to keep young people, that we invest young people into the harvest.

God has called them to go like arrows in the hands of a warrior.

And when a warrior shoots an arrow, where does a warrior shoot an arrow?

Children are like arrows in the hands of the warrior.

So we have identified 3 areas that we're challenging our young people around the world to go into.

And we talked about that a little bit yesterday.

So I won't spend a lot of time on that, but that's our area.

The million dollar question is, how do we reach these cities?

Now, I wanted to tell you something so beautiful.

Do you know that Jesus reached an entire city by reaching just 1 person?

We get overwhelmed when we think about the cities.

There's 10 cities in the world that have 20 million people in it.

Should we ignore those cities because they're so big?

And then she went back and reached other people.

Do you know how the spies reached Jericho?

They reached that 1 little lady named what?

Rahab brought her family into the room, right, with a scarlet cord.

4. Public Campus Missionaries

For other resources like this, visit us online at gycweb.org.

Very excited to talk with you about Campus Ministries.

I have a real passion for that as I'm sure all of you do.

Campus Ministries is important because not only do we have Seventh-day Adventist young people in our schools, amen, or universities, but we have lots of young people who are future leaders of the world in those universities.

I mean, the Babylon universities of the world is where the Nebuchadnezzars are coming to power.

And you have a chance to be the first PCN, like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to go in there, stand for what's right, right?

And express the love of Christ and share the truth with people.

So what an awesome thing to be a part of Campus Ministries.

As you know, also Campus Ministries, campuses around the world are filled with Every Nation, Kindred, Tongue, and People.

What angels' message does that remind us of?

But especially the first angel's message, right?

Every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, they are in the universities of today.

I've mentioned this to you already, but I'm just going to do it again.

If you want to download the manual for 1 year in mission, You can do that at youth.adventist.org.

If you want to get our new Adventist Youth Leaders Magazine that we just produced, a brand new training on how to be a dynamic Christian Adventist youth leader.

We can learn a lot from other denominations on how to do youth ministry, but there's some things you cannot learn from other denominations.

Our mission and message is unique, and the urgency of our message is important.

And so this magazine is geared toward Adventist youth leaders, and you can get that also at youth.adventist.org.

Probably the best book I've ever read on prayer is this 1 by Melanie Mason.

She's doing actually workshops here on prayer, but this book is dynamic, Dare to Ask.

I'm just sharing with you some books that I've been reading that have been a blessing to me and will help you as a missionary.

This book right here will train you how to acclimate as you go to a different country, how to be able to change as you go into different countries.

And my personal favorite, which I'll be talking about in the afternoon when we talk about how to be a missionary through small groups is this book right here on the Holy Spirit.

Not only does it teach you about the Holy Spirit and there's discussion questions at the end of each chapter, the first chapter of this book actually shows you how you can turn this into an evangelistic tool, a missionary tool and reach people.

Series

Living Dangerously: God’s Call to Mission Service and How to Get Involved!

2. Short Term Mission Trips 101

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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Revival & Reformation: God’s Perspective, Part 2

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05-Danger Signals, Part 1

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1h 30m

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04-Exploding the Gay Myth

1h

GYC 2011 Seminar: The World's Greatest Wireless Connection

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54m

Plenary

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1h 15m

GYC 2013 Seminar: Emerging Church & Emergence Christianity

03-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Principle of Emergence: A New Worldview

1h

Sound Doctrine