Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.

AMEN Australia 2018: Healing, Surviving, Thriving

<p>Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Angie Thompson

Getting Involved in Outreach

Heavenly Father, I just come before you Lord in Jesus name, I'd just like to pray and ask that you could be with us just now as we spend a little bit of time together.

And I pray that your Holy Spirit would be here and help us to speak about and talk about what you have in mind for us so that when we leave here this time we're able to reach out and help others that you intend for us to serve and help.

We know that you're coming soon and our ultimate goal is to help others to do the same.

Thank you for listening to this prayer and guiding us.

Alright, now getting involved with outreach.

I've written here, reaching out and helping others is a blessing for the people you help, but also to yourself.

I'm not trying to say to be selfish, but I run around sometimes like a headless chook, you know, trying to do 50 things at once, as everybody does, seems to do here, and you forget about the blessing you get for yourself.

And you pull your hair out and you think, you know, because you're doing it as a volunteer.

I do my work as a volunteer and I hate the word health director.

I like it as health ministries because it's a ministry, you know, it's just such a blessing to serve God and sometimes you think, this is not much of a Sabbath if you've organised something on the Sabbath or I've got kids so I'm not being a good mum, the washing's out, you know, what I haven't done that properly and have they been fed properly?

And all these things sort of mess through your mind trying to figure out how to fit things in.

But it seems to be when the program's over or whatever the event was that you coordinated, the blessings seem to flood in and you realise, oh, that person was made well, or on the path to it at least, or you might have worked with another person that you didn't know very well, another volunteer from the church, they just said, look, I'd like to help, and they maybe they were a greeter at the door, whatever their job was, you got on better with them and suddenly formed a new friendship.

All these unexpected blessings seem to come out of outreach.

So I'm just letting you know that there is enjoyment to the thing as well.

So there are going to be moments where it feels like just like playing hard work, what am I doing?

I hope that you'll remember back that it can be really enjoyable and a blessing and as you build on it layer by layer like a wall, like Nehemiah's wall, 1 brick at a time, you'll find the blessings are very rich and rewarding and it gets a little bit addictive at times.

You know, like, I don't know if you've ever tried running, you think, what am I doing this for?

But if you keep it up, if you're walking, you kind of want to keep doing it.

So I'm hoping to not put you off, but to let you know that it actually is very rewarding and an amazing blessing to reach out.

So reaching out and helping others is a blessing to the people you help but also to yourself as you work to serve God within the sphere of your influence you have.

So you've got to remember it's the people you know, not my dino or whatever, it's the ones that you have in your life.

There'll be many trials and issues that are likely to come your way.

If you plan well and keep the goal in sight, whatever the goal might be that you're planning to run, you and your team can achieve amazing things for God.

Remember to pray with your team and reassess your pathway on the journey, checking regularly that you're still on the right track, because it's so easy to diverge and get lost.

Okay, we'll go over those few things in a moment.

First of all, what is an outreach program?

Lift you when people aren't involved with you.

I think it's the touch meets the community.

Something I do want to say about outreach is we often think that, you know, what's the purpose of an outreach?

Because sometimes you can get a bunch of baptisms and then the people aren't necessarily looked after and then they disappear through the cracks.

So for me, and I don't know if I should even say this here, but for me, in-reach and outreach go together.

So people inside the church are just as important as people outside the church.

So I just want to say that, and that's 1 of my bugbears.

I'm at a conference meeting, and we're all talking about how you get baptism, get this passed, get all that.

I always say, you know, what about the people inside the church?

They're hurting and we want to keep them feeling loved.

So it's really important that your approach is what you believe in.

So for me, I don't have a problem if somebody says, yes, but more church people came.

So we all tend to find a lot of people get caught up and then we want to bring the people in off the streets.

But I want you to really look after those you already have under your wing because some of them, probably everyone, has a story to tell and on Sabbath morning we say, how are you doing?

And if we could just see the baggage, the invisible baggage that they're carrying behind them on a big string, we realise they're not fine and so they need these programs as well.

I think if you're effective, outreach is going to be effective.

You have to have a strong, connected church working together.

So if you don't work on the inreach and get that all sorted out and supported, then bringing people in is a waste of time.

Alright, so you've probably heard of some of the programs.

We've got CHIP, which is Complete Health Improvement Program.

And Depression and Anxiety Recovery Program.

And there's a whole lot of other ones out there.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what the program is that you think you might want to do.

So I tend to think of a CHIP program, I've been doing that 10 years now, I trained in November 10 years ago.

I tend to think of that as just a solid lifestyle medicine program.

The problem is people can quickly convert that 1 into a carrots and bananas program and a big B program where you...

I like to have people come up to me and say, oh, that's where you're trying to lose weight, or that's where you're trying to turn people into vegans.

So as educators or people going out there on an outreach situation, you have to be careful of some of these little comments that come from the cracks.

Then they can potentially set off a bushfire or put people off coming to these programs because they don't realize that's not what it's about.

All these programs, all of them are just like an educational tool.

It's what you do with them that makes a difference.

So Think of the programs that you do as an opportunity to give the education to the person.

Then when they've collected that piece of education, they can do what they like with it.

They might want to go all out and be plant-based and they may end up being the big V, you know.

They might lose weight and have to go and get a new wardrobe, but that's not what the programs are about.

Even depression, anxiety, we hope that people will have mental wellness, but the point is to give them the education and as a presenter we are not the...

As a presenter we are not the experts, It's the 1 that we're often presenting.

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Getting Involved in Outreach

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