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

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Community Services

Nancy Coon

How to Become an Organized Center

Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for camp meeting.

Just an exciting time when we can come together and just be filled with your Holy Spirit and share thoughts and ideas that the Holy Spirit has given us with each other.

And I ask, dear Lord, right now that you will specifically be with Holly.

They need to move, but how to do it, who to do it, all these things, dear Lord, they need your guidance.

And dear Lord, help them to know they need your guidance and to listen to you.

Dear Lord, Lapeer, organization is a challenge right now and that happens to all of us as we get started or change things and so dear Lord help Leona to just glean wisdom from you on high and have the Holy Spirit working with her.

In Grand Haven, dear Lord, they need this center, and I guess the right people aren't, are just not there right now, or they don't know they're there.

Dear Lord, just put your hand on that area and bless the people, help them to realize how much you're willing to help them if they'll do what you're prompting them to do.

And dear Lord, Traverse City, we're changing and Brenda's stepping down and someone new is coming in.

And we just ask that that person just give them a double portion of wisdom and bless them and help the changes to be only positive and help us all as we draw closer to you, draw closer to each other, I pray in your name.

If you wanted to be at the seminar organizing your center, you are in the right place.

So the average American wastes 55 minutes a day.

That would be about 12 days a year looking for things they own but can't find.

The average office employee spends 1 and a half hours a day.

Now just think about how long they're at work, about 8 hours and 1 and a half of those hours on average looking for things.

Americans waste more than 9000000 hours each day looking for lost and displaced articles.

So if you think you need organization, you're not alone.

So it's clear that organization is very important.

So I decided personally 1 day to take my son with me to go to Walmart.

We needed to do a Walmart run, which is a regular occurrence in my household, And he needed his shoes and they weren't together.

There was 1, but the other 1 was missing.

And I searched all over the house and finally found the shoe and luckily he hadn't decided it was time to eat, sleep or do anything else.

We actually were able to make it out the door but I realized that day that I desperately needed to be organized.

If I wanted to be able to just jump out the door at a moment's notice, if I wanted to be able to find things, if I wanted to be able to have a calm environment, I needed to be organized.

So I basically bought or borrowed every book I could find on organization.

I took a class on organization and I can now until they make a law that says differently I can actually call myself a professional organizer so there you go.

I'm not perfect but I can call myself a professional organizer.

Most importantly I put my knowledge to use to organize.

I didn't just read it about it, I started to use it.

I used it in Sabbath school closets in the church, you know, closets for cradle roll, kindergarten.

I used it to help a client organize their wardrobe, taking pictures of the top and bottom so she knew which tops and bottoms went together.

I even went and organized a friend's basement.

Who had just incorporated 2 households and was trying to figure out what to – where to put things and how to put them.

And I've organized business offices, I've organized the Heartland Center, and I discovered a passion I love to organize.

I just, I walk into a cluttered place and my eyes light up.

I want to jump in, declutter and organize.

So we'll have a list as to whose house I'm going to next.

My husband was so sweet he gave me a clicker and I'm just so excited to use it.

Okay, so in a community service center there's usually about 3 main areas that we need to organize.

We need to organize our people, we need to organize clothing, we need to organize paperwork.

I want to come around and tell you a story.

I'm better at some things than others, But organizing people, the Lord does that a lot of times.

The Heartland Center, whoops, I need to click.

Years ago we had a church member who was coming home from a work trip, couldn't make it home in time to be there before the Sabbath.

And he stopped off there, and he spent Friday night and he spent Sabbath there and he listened to all the talking, all the seminars, the speeches, the meetings and he got enthusiastic about our community service center here at the Cedar Lake Church.

And what he had inadvertently happened on was our community service fall retreat.

I would highly encourage anybody that's involved with community service to be a part of the fall retreat.

It's a time to just share with each other, learn from each other and grow together.

And this year it is, I put it on here, September 21 through 23.

I just highly encourage if you're any part of community service come to the retreat it's it's just a it's a great time of learning an organization not not organization just learning sorry getting my tongue ahead of my mouth which isn't easy so back to my story the church member gets inspired he's excited about this He comes back to the Cedar Lake Church and he has a building on M46, which is thousands of people drive M46 every day.

He is willing to give the church this building so that they can move their community service center from the old, run-down schoolhouse that had books from the 1800s in the walls, which we discovered later.

And he's willing to do this, and so we have a church business meeting, and the people that came heard about and resoundingly said, no thank you.

He had offered them this wonderful, wonderful place and they were not interested because that involved change and they didn't have vision.

So some of the people that had been to the business meeting and had been ones that wanted this change said, well, let's see what's wrong with, you know, what can we do to improve our center?

So they asked me, because they knew I loved to organize, to come and help and organize.

I said, well, I haven't even been to the Cedar Lake Adventist Community Service Center.

Turns out it was just down the street, but I'd never been.

I said, well, before I go, I need to see how they'll operate because you can't come in and just change things.

So I came in and they were only open on Tuesdays from 10 to 12 and the first Tuesday we were there, not a soul came in.

The second Tuesday we were there, finally, almost 15 minutes before we closed, a couple came in.

And we realized, those of us who were younger and were looking at how this was working, that part of the problem was the people were only allowed to stay on this side of the counter.

They had to tell the community service person their size, what they needed, And the person went out and got 3 shirts for this lady.

She could only get 2 of them, but they had 3 shirts and they showed her the 3 and she could choose 2 out of 3 of them, not knowing what color.

We were like, aha, this might be part of the problem.

In addition, the building didn't smell so good.

I don't know if an animal had gotten in or clothes were donated that an animal had been part of, but it smelled like cat urine when you walked in the door.

We figured out we need to put new windows in, need to do lighting, need to, you know, we came together with a dollar amount.

The church board said, yes, we want to do something about a community service center.

We involved the academy students at GLAW here.

And they helped us take bag after bag of clothes that had never been – we had a pile up to the ceiling of clothes that hadn't even been sorted.

And so we just emptied that with the help of the GLAAS students and several of their Bible classes.

And then we started – we showed pictures on the screen at the church of this is the community service, this is the GLAAD students helping and we've got a workbee.

Diana Bruch

Improving Interviewing Skills

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessings that we have of coming to camp meeting and being able to learn, to learn more about you and to be closer to you, to spend this time devoted to this on a daily, multiple basis.

It draws us closer and gives us visions of heaven.

I pray that you'll be with all the classes happening.

And thank you that everything worked out IT-wise.

And I pray you'll bless this class that we can learn what we need to do in our centers.

Diana Brooke, community service director for 17 years.

When I first got here, I felt totally incompetent, I have to be honest with you.

My husband assured me I was born for this job.

And I guess he knows me better than I know myself because I really own this ministry at this point.

And I just read every book I could find, went to every class I could.

And I'd been a community service director before, but I'd never been to it on this level.

So when I go to all these conventions and I learn all this stuff and I want to bring it home and then give it out so everybody can know what I know.

And I'd have classes, and I'd bring speakers in, and I thought, what a waste of time that was.

Then I'll find 1 person got inspired, and they started a ministry, and that's all it takes.

You know, So I signed up for this interview course because I thought that's something we all need to do better at.

And the NAD puts this out, this instructor's guide, and I want to read to you 1 thing it says at the beginning.

You know, there are tens of thousands of some of the AVIDUS in North America who faithfully volunteer in ACS And they staff all kinds of agencies, food pantry, clothing, health screening, disaster, all those things.

But nonetheless, as we evaluate the Adventist Community Services organizations across North America, we are aware of 1 area of considerable weakness.

And this is in the people skills that must go with the distribution of material help.

The interviewing class, They developed to try and get you to realize how important in interviewing Class really or you know the fact that you have to interview to help your clients better And how we're shortchanging both of us, the helper and the client, by not interviewing.

The interviewing process is 1 of the weakest skills in the ECS.

She was just opening, so I took her some tables and some forms and maybe a rack, I can't remember, the stuff that she needed for a center.

And she had it all organized and clean, it was really beautiful.

She goes, oh no, I don't have to interview, do I?

And I'm like, oh, how do you know what to give your clients?

You ask them, and they tell you that's an interview.

And she goes, well, I don't want to have to fill out a form.

And I said, well, it's better for you to do that, and we're going to go through all the reasons why.

It's really not something I want you to think of, oh, no, an interview form.

Now, the NAD does go a little uber on their statistics.

We are required to prove that we don't discriminate for any reason.

And the only way to do that is to keep records of who we help.

What an interview is, a conversation with a purpose.

The act of listening to what a client says, assessing their need, responding appropriately by providing the services that are requested or that you assess, and making referrals to other organizations.

For this purpose, process to be effective, it must be private.

All records are kept confidential even from other staff.

Watch talking about clients among yourself.

We're going to go through all these in a more in-depth as we go.

When I went down to Katrina, I was all about distribution.

So it's like, throw the stuff out of the truck, go on to the next 1.

And I realized I was the only 1 in the truck.

Everybody else was back there listening to the story.

All those victims, they had a story and they wanted to tell it.

It's not about us, it's not about the stuff, no, the goods, it's about the client and helping them.

And they didn't feel like we were helping them unless we listened to their story.

And they were so appreciative that we were able to do that.

I was totally humiliated and I learned a lesson that day.

It's not about me, it's not about the stuff, it's about, okay, listen to the story.

And You assess their need beyond their request.

Sometimes you can listen to their story and you can sort out maybe they need more than they're asking for.

Maybe I can help them in more ways than they realize I can help.

Screening for eligibility for other agencies.

I'm trying to get out of the screen so you can see it.

We can't help everybody with all their needs.

Just don't even try, because, you know, we can't do everything.

But maybe we can refer to another organization that can help their needs.

So we need to be aware of what else is going on in our area.

Now, when I first got here, I tried to learn what every entity was out there in every county.

And like realizing that's way beyond my scope, my ability and even logic.

So I just try to encourage our center directors to know what else is out there and what they are and to network with them.

Let them know, hey, we're here, we give away clothing, whatever.

And demonstrating care, meeting emotional and spiritual needs.

We will go through all of this a little bit more.

A normal conversation is you say something, I say something, you tell a story, I tell a story back, you give your opinion, I give my opinion, and we just go back and forth and it's fun.

You're the helper, they're the client, and it's not about you.

You shouldn't be telling them personal stories.

Interviewing is not just screening for eligibility or filling out a form or financial management or Bible instruction.

It can be all of the above and more, but you should more than anything demonstrate that you care.

It's a form with all the information that an interview needs to intake.

Series

Community Services

How to Become an Organized Center

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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1h 5m

Balanced Living Bootcamp

Balanced Living Bootcamp- Part 5

1h 11m

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35m

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6. Tools of Creative Language and Speech

1h 20m

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1h

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6. Cutting Timothy

55m

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47m

Sound Doctrine