Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Amazing Disciples

Mark Howard

4. It’s Not My Gift

Kameron DeVasher

1. Orientation

2. What is a Disciple?

3. Your Gift or Mine?

5. As a Witness

Marshall McKenzie

7. Friendship Evangelism, Part 1

8. Friendship Evangelism, Part 2

Wes Peppers

9. How to Reach the Atheistic Mind, Part 1

10. How to Reach the Atheistic Mind, Part 2

Jean Ross

11. Divine Commission

12. Cycle of Evangelism

Jim Howard

13. Grow Your Church, Part 1

14. Grow Your Church, Part 2

15. Giving Bible Studies

16. Missing Members

Doug Batchelor

17. Christ-Centered Doctrine, Part 1

18. Preparing for Baptism

19. Discipleship

20. Gospel Presentation, Part 1

21. Gospel Presentation, Part 2

22. Christ-Centered Doctrine, Part 2

23. Outreach Lab

24. Keys to Success!

25. Nurturing New Believers

26. Fishnet Demonstration

27. Caveman Theology

6. Christ’s Method Alone

So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the reasoning behind some of what is up here, which I think is important for you to understand when you're trying to implement something from a local church standpoint.

If you look here at what is on the screen, you'll be familiar probably with the idea of the agricultural process of making disciples that Jesus gave us, preparing the soil of the heart.

How do you prepare the soil of the heart?

Friendship, service, community, what have you, building relationships.

And then this is planting the seed, how might you do that?

Okay, let's hold on just for a little bit on that.

Supper club would be here because unless you are...

Supper club can be here, but let me be clear about the difference between here and here.

So there are a lot of valuable things that we do that are building relationships that are not necessarily yet getting to the point of sharing Bible truth, okay?

As a general rule, that would be supper clubs, though there may be some supper clubs where we're starting to move into some seed planting, and that would be valid as well.

But that's the distinction that you would sometimes see.

This, since it's including the Word of God, would be like spiritual conversations you would have, giving your personal testimony, you're moving into spiritual things.

And then what we often emphasize is planting seeds through literature, truth-filled literature and media and things like that.

So here you're preparing the soil, here you're testing it, you're planting and seeing if something begins to grow.

And if the interest begins to grow, then you've got to cultivate that, right?

You've got to water it, you've got to shine the sun on it, you've got to weed it, etc.

And that takes a while while it's growing.

And this is the process of ongoing Bible studies.

And then, at some point, you don't want to study the Bible forever.

At some point, you want them to make decisions based on what they're learning.

Harvesting can happen in Bible studies, but it often happens through public evangelism, anywhere where you're making appeals for people to make decisions for Christ.

And that can be decisions to follow certain elements of the truth or the you know that gateway decision of baptism where they surrender all to following Christ.

Then after you baptize someone of course you want to preserve the harvest and the way to preserve the harvest is to train people to work for Christ.

And so you're training them to be involved, but you're also at the same time deepening their faith in the Bible, getting them developing spiritual habits of communion with God and walking with God personally, nurturing them with integration into the local church and all that kind of thing.

Well, at the General Conference, they have something called Total member involvement.

And when I went to interview, I talked about total member involvement because I love it.

And Elder Wilson and Duane McKee, they kind of were spearheading the development of this initiative at the General Conference, which is about getting every member involved.

And I went to the interview at the general conference prepared, because I went on to the TMI website and I pulled down some of their resources.

And 1 of the resources was a brochure that said a hundred ways to get involved and the hundred ways to get involved included things like letting someone over in the freeway, holding the door open for someone.

All manner of nice, kind things that you can do.

The challenge that I see with that is that if you believe that you are involved in the church because you're being kind in the way that you're interacting with people, then you will never feel that you have any need to be engaged in sharing the message or being actively trying to lead souls into the truth.

So I talked to him about it and I actually took a brochure.

If you open up a brochure, you've got like 60 of them were on 1 side and 40 of them were on the other side when I opened it all the way out.

And so I took the 1 side that had like 60 and I highlighted any on there that were not preparing the soil.

Anything that was not preparing the soil.

And of that 60 on the front page, there were 2 that were not preparing the soil.

And so I showed him, and then I got the story, that in essence what happens is total member involvement as they first began, I don't know if you remember, they went to Rwanda.

In fact, when I was here, I invited Dwayne McKee from the General Conference to come and he gave a little report during 1 of our meetings.

I think it was for Bible study offer, we had a big kickoff.

And Dwayne McKee came and he did a 20-minute presentation on Rwanda and what they did for total member involvement.

And as you may know, in Rwanda, through that event, they baptized over 100, 000 souls, which was the highest baptism count from any event that's ever been conducted in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And so, and by the way, I've been to Rwanda, and they are still going strong.

The very next year, even without General Conference people going there, they had over 50, 000 baptisms.

And when we talked to them about what they're doing with those baptisms and what their retention is, it was very strong.

So while you might sometimes worry that those are all gone 6 months later.

Rwanda is doing very well, beautiful country, which is good after all they went through in Rwanda.

Now when TMI started there and you had different people from the general conference going and preaching meetings and what have you, there were some who began to say TMI is just about public evangelism.

It's not really total member involvement, it's just about public evangelism.

So kind of the back, the response to that was to start creating things like this brochure that made it kind of flip side of you can just hold the door open for somebody, or do whatever, and that's being involved too.

I felt as I was speaking with them that they needed a clear way of expressing what is needed for a local church to be actually growing versus just being involved.

Because you can be involved, and I made the point on Sabbath morning, I'll share it again, that personal ministries department, the whole purpose of the personal ministries department is to involve every member, enlist all members and children, I love the word enlist, I mean that's a pretty strong word.

In some form of personal outreach or missionary service.

So that's been in the church menu for a long time.

So the whole TMI initiative and everything, it's just a little secret for you.

The job of the personal ministry department always has been.

And so I always ask the question, if every member was involved, would the church grow?

And of course, you know, as I sat there during Sabbath school, I got that resounding yes, and I gave them my response, which is, well, that depends.

Preparing the soil, planting the word, cultivating the interest, harvesting decisions, and then preserving and training.

You know, and I mentioned how all these, you could be strong or weak in every area and you need to be working on all areas, but then what if you have this type of scenario where everybody was doing only 1 thing, like preparing the soil.

By the way, preparing the soil is kind of the emphasis of some of our greatest organizations like ADDRA and Adventist Community Services.

All our health ministry, while it has an element of planting, it is primarily preparing the soil.

She says it's an entering wedge preparing the way for other truths to be received into the heart.

So this would not cause the church to grow even if everybody was doing it.

To me, this is the bigger problem than total member involvement.

I guess that is what I'm trying to get at underneath it all.

Here in the North American Division, there's a great initiative, Compassion 10, 000 or something like that, and the initiative is all about trying to get Seventh-day Adventists to recognize the need for compassionate service and I for 1 think it is a pretty spot-on need like we have a problem with some of our...

The way we look at this type of service in the church in that we have a particular department or community service center.

And 3 ladies who have been working in the community service center for 65 years are still running the thing.

Have to ask the deacon to occasionally help them fix the leak in the roof.

You've got these saints who have been working this, but the younger generation is not feeling it.

And not just the younger generation, but the entire church.

I mean, it's not something that we have always looked at as a churchwide thing, but as long as the church is doing something, then we feel we've got that phase covered.

This is part of the problem that I sense we have.

So I don't have any problem with the emphasis on compassionate service, but I do feel that it swallows up what I believe, and I can speak only for myself here, but what I believe is the central part of evangelism, which is the message.

You see, this doesn't negate the importance of, you know, having Christ-like characters in our witness, and Matthew 25, and making sure that we are visiting the sick, and making sure that we are caring for those who need cared for, and all those things.

But In order for someone to be saved by the gospel, they eventually have got to hear it.

That is the part about the early church that made it grow.

When you look at the picture of the early church and what made it grow, it was the message.

Because your kindness is wonderful and you can attract people and you can cause them to have confidence in you and everything else, but you do not really want their final destination to be looking at you favorably.

Ultimately, that's for the purpose of then being able to share with them what has brought you to the point that you are, which is Jesus Christ.

And so you're trying to draw them to Christ.

That's the whole point of preparing the soil.

So we've got to get to this issue that you can't have a 1 thing that you consider evangelism and then as long as everybody is doing 1 thing then that's fine.

In fact I hear some people say I read in an article trying to remember where it was I think it was in an e-newsletter I had.

It came to me here in the North American Division.

Series

Amazing Disciples

13. Grow Your Church, Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary

The Multiplication Mindset

1h 6m

Our Soul-Winning Bottleneck

1h

The Great Harvest

I Saw Satan Fall

28m

GYC 2012 Seminar: Unleashing the Power - A Practical Guide for Finishing God's Work

Beyond Good Intentions

1h

Plant-based Evangelism

50m

Experiencing the Revival

1h 16m

The Art of the Christian Conversationalist

The Art of the Christian Conversationalist- Part 1

49m

Plenary

Almost Engaged

49m

Fire in My Bones

42m

How Prophetic Preaching Touches the Heart

How Prophetic Preaching Touches the Heart - Part 2

54m

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Do You Even Like People? Why Having the Heart of God Matters

55m

ACM: 4 The Mystery of God

51m

Sound Doctrine