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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Learn and Share

Joel Moutray

Sean Wycliffe

01 - How to Bridge Business with Ministry

Ever wondered what God can do with a humble green smoothie?

Hi, I'm Joel Moutry, and you're listening to the Learn and Share podcast.

In today's episode, I sit down with Sean Wycliffe to discuss exactly that.

And we're excited to have you on because we're gonna talk about Christian entrepreneurship, specifically Seventh-day Adventist entrepreneurship, because God has called people to full-time ministry, pastors and teachers and missionaries, doctors, et cetera.

People has also called people to work for other companies, you know working for a bank or working at a hospital as a nurse, etc But God has also called people to start businesses to be a witness in the marketplace and that's what God has called you to do and it's very inspiring and so tell us about the fruit tree and how God led you there and what God is doing from a business perspective.

So there's a couple things that have happened in the past with the fruit tree.

It really started with my dad having a heart attack about 18 years ago.

He's a doctor in Loma Linda and after that he started reading books about health And he ended up becoming a raw vegan mostly and started making these green smoothies, and they're extremely healthy They still are extremely healthy, but they taste really bad And so my dad would would eat these and he would try to get me to eat them, and I would have a hard time doing it.

So a few years later, my wife actually took that concept and tried to make it taste good so that I would actually get my greens, because I came from a background of never eating greens.

And so she came up with a great recipe, and so I started drinking that, and we started sharing with friends and at our church and things like that and that was all it was.

Well about a year and a half ago or so 1 of my really good friends, Dilan, he had come back to the Berkeley area to to do some campus ministry with us and things like that.

But we were also praying and looking at different businesses and ministries that we could start that could help him be supported financially and maybe something beyond that.

So we looked at a lot of different things.

We looked at Maybe setting up a concert tour set up and different things and so 1 day we we were talking and he said hey What if we start selling green smoothies around our church?

And so I thought about it for a little bit initially didn't make much sense He said let's do a door-to-door, you know, Let's see how that goes and so I was thinking I don't know and I started thinking about it more and and God put it In my mind, you know that could actually be a good idea What if we actually did that and and got subscribers?

We could kind of be like a modern-day milkman but with green smoothies instead of milk And so all these things started to turn in my mind.

And so I went back in the room and talked to DeLon and said, hey, I think that's a good idea, let's start.

And so he kind of looks at me dumbfounded now, like what, that's a good idea?

And so in any case, we started talking about it and going through the motions.

And a week later, we had blended some green smoothies, we had them in some coolers, and we started going door to door next to our church in Alameda, California.

I mean, you're like, hey, I'm here, do you wanna buy some green juices?

Yeah, we tried that, and we had a couple different canvases that we were trying and attempting.

I think 1 of them was something like, hey we're the neighborhood juicery and we want to help you get greens to your door and that's why we're here.

There's just a couple different things that we tried.

Some of them were off the top of our head literally as we went to the door, whatever came to our mind.

And that went on for the day, and I think nobody bought, a few people sampled, and we just decided we're gonna keep doing it.

So over the course of a few days, some people started buying it, and then over the course of a few days, people started subscribing.

And I'll never forget, there was 1 story that happened.

DeLon was knocking on doors and basically what happened was it was at 8 o'clock at night or something it was really late all right and it was dark and he's knocking on the door And this lady comes to the door and kind of cracks it open, as he told me it, and he gives her a sample.

And without even doing anything other than tasting the sample, the lady said, sign me up, sign me up for a subscription.

And so we just run her credit card right there for 150 bucks or whatever it was, and you know, that was when it really dawned in my mind that, okay, we really have something that could be really big here that God has given us.

And so we continue to grow the home delivery subscription business from there.

Before we go into the successes that the Lord has brought you to.

Let's talk a little bit about actually what it is.

Do they come in, you know, how do you guys produce it?

So we sell organic green smoothies, non-GMO.

Everything's local, everything's seasonal.

And so that's the trick is to make it taste great and also be extremely healthy.

We actually have a kitchen now, commercial kitchen in Alameda where we blend the smoothies every night before we go out and sell them the next day.

And it's just all organic, blended, really good.

We put them in glass jars and we seal them and we basically sell them to people.

And so when people bring us the jar back, We'll actually give them a refund for the jar.

We do a jar deposit and so that way we can eliminate using plastic bottles And so we compost everything that we don't use although we do smoothies So we use most everything and so yeah So we're trying to make the healthiest thing also tastes great and also be great for the environment.

When you say blend, do you use a blender or do you use a juicer?

So we actually use a commercial Vitamix blender.

Now let's talk about what God has done for the success of the business.

So, so we started in August, 2017, and it's been almost a year and a half now.

It started as door to door as we were talking about.

Now we're in 26 farmers markets every week.

We also started selling them in PUC as well at the Grind convenience store that they have up there.

And then we're also in a local grocery store now in California.

And we're just expanding more farmers markets, more retail outlets, and we also still do home deliveries.

And so God has really blessed this quite a bit.

We're selling maybe about a thousand or so bottles per week at this point.

And so this has went from a little let's try this and see if this will help, you know, with the little local church ministry too.

There's about 6 of us doing it full-time now, about 4 part-time people.

We're recruiting to try to get another 4 or 5 missionaries to come with us, either full-time, part-time, long-term, seasonal, just to help expand more farmers markets and more retail outlets.

So since we're already talking about that, you are looking for people to come work.

Where can they find out information about that?

Yes, so if you go to thefruittree.co, you'll see our website, and we don't have too much information in there about the job opportunities, So if you email us at help at the fruit tree dot co, or you can call or text us at 5108336085.

We're at the underscore fruit underscore tree.

Anyway, just contact us and we can let you know about our current opportunities.

Dan Serns

02 - How Literally Anyone Can Share Their Faith

Have you ever wondered how to be an active soul winner?

Hi, I'm Joel Moutre and you're listening to the Learn and Share podcast.

In today's episode, I have Pastor Dan Serns with me to share 4 successful, simple ways to share your faith.

Pastor Dan Serns, thank you for joining me.

And I'm excited to talk to you because personal evangelism, sharing my faith one-on-one is 1 of my favorite things to do.

I did it part of my job in ministry before, but also, you can't share what you don't have.

And I love Jesus, and when you have Jesus, a natural result is to wanna share him.

But today we're gonna talk a little bit about the the the ins and outs of that the hows and the whys and really the challenge that Christians have to share their faith.

So before we do that though share us a little bit how did you get involved with training people how to share their faith And why are you so excited about sharing Jesus?

Well, for a lot of my life and my ministry, I'm a fifth generation Seventh-day Adventist, but I had to have my own conversion experience.

My junior year of college, my world fell apart.

I went to Korea as a student missionary and I started seeing all these Buddhists that I was becoming friends with Asking questions about what it meant to follow Jesus and I thought wow This is amazing And so trying to simplify it all down and share and watch many of those Buddhists become Seventh-day Adventist believers was addicting in a good kind of way.

And so I said this is the kind of thing I'd love to do.

I had the chance to go to as soon as I graduated from college with a business degree and a religion degree to go to the Texas Mexico border and start a language school ministry similar to the experience I'd had there in Korea.

And during that time we had lots of student missionaries come in for anywhere from 6 months to 2 years and training them and showing them how it doesn't have to be all complicated.

It's your own experience where you're not perfect, but you're growing in Jesus and you're sharing that with other people.

And there the light is coming on in their eyes, and watching that happen is contagious.

But now here I am after many years of ministry, and I look back and I realize that for much of my ministry, I was approaching Preparing for the second coming of Jesus on the 500 year plan instead of the 10 year plan And when you start saying what if we really went after it on a 10 year plan?

So those kinds of things started going through my mind about 10 years ago.

And I left working in a union office to go back to a local church on the condition that the local church was going to be all in to take the evidence message to all of the people of the Dallas Fort Worth area as fast as possible.

So I wound up at Richardson in 2010 Richardson Seventh Adventist Church at that time it had 600 members from about 35 countries when we left there about 6 and a half years later by God's grace.

We had 970 members from 51 Countries and many of those we'd baptized along the way so now I get to the conference leader said we want you to take What you've done at Richardson and start spreading it all over, Texas.

So that's it just keeps going from there You mentioned it briefly many people think you know, they're a young person.

You're like, hey, I'm not a pastor You know, I didn't work at a union office.

I don't have a lot of money I don't have the 05/10/2030 thousand dollars to hire an evangelist Etc.

I don't like preaching or I don't know how to preach etc.

You mentioned sharing your faith is not complicated.

Please go a little bit deeper in on that Well if you love the lord Then you want to tell other people about him But if you're shy, you don't know where to start and if you're not shy You may forget to even share So what we need to do is to have simple roads people can run on, you know, instead of driving in the mud and off into the ditch and that type of thing.

So what we, 1 of the things we developed in Richardson is we said, everybody has spiritual gifts according to the Bible.

Use those gifts for God's honor and glory.

But there are 4 things that every believer can do no matter who they are, no matter what their education level, background, ethnicity, age, whatever, these 4 things everyone can do to advance God's cause.

When he was called to go deliver the people of Israel, Jesus asked him a very simple question, which is, what's in your hand?

I love that concept because we don't have to complicate it.

And so if you have food, gather food, gather what you have, your personal story, even in Revelation it says by the word of their testimony, they overcame, so there's a personal benefit for the sharer as well as for the receiver, And so I think that's so awesome just sharing what you have.

Let's dive into those 4 things because you're making it seem like it's so simple, yet so many people have a fear and a phobia and an overwhelming, they almost go into distress thinking about the great overwhelming, like the gospel to the whole world.

You know, I have a family member that when she when when she passes out glow Tracks, I should be like Lord, please help them not to ask any questions You know, there's a general fear of showing your faith because they might not know everything What are the 4 things and let's let's dive into those to make it practical.

People who are ungodly even pray for people.

But intercessory prayer, everybody can make a prayer list of people they would like to see converted and fully surrender to God and someday soon serving God and to actually make specific lists with that specific intention in mind.

I had a lady in 1 of my churches in the past who was an invalid.

And she said, pastor, I used to be the head greeter and I was a Sabbath school superintendent.

I worked with young people when I was younger, but now I can't do anything.

I said, nobody can stop you from praying.

And she became 1 of our greatest intercessor repair warriors.

And so we encourage, we just have what we call a like card, L-I-K-E.

List people you'd like to pray for, I as intercede for them, go to the throne room of heaven and say Lord Please surround this person with godly influences right now in response to our prayer Remind them of something that in their childhood send somebody across their pathway help them to come across something on the internet or a piece of literature.

And then K is kindness shown through simple acts.

And then E is encouraged Bible study and prayer.

We give these out and update them at least twice a year sometimes 4 times a year throughout the whole congregation or wherever people can have these cards and they can list the people and just begin interceding because we believe that God will do things in response to prayer That the devil would cry foul in the great controversy if he did them So God will always want to save all people But when we pray and God intervenes and the devil says that's not fair God says I'm just answering their prayer over there.

I think group prayer is almost like signing a petition, you know, because you know, the governments can do things and they can write policies But if there's a petition there's a or a vote like we do in elections, you know We're putting our thoughts on our prayers together literally and saying Lord we want this to happen and as fellow human beings we give permission for you to intercede and to change this person's life.

I really like that even having that list card With with those different things that you can do.

I like how there's kindness involved because not only praying but actually pouring out blessings Yeah, that's right If you're praying for somebody you tend to notice them more you become more involved in their life.

And so intercessory prayer, everybody can be a prayer warrior.

There's nobody that can't do that if they love the Lord.

The second 1 is everybody can be a glow missionary.

You've mentioned glow tracks, and yes, when I was at Richardson, on the fourth Sabbath of every month, which we called a high Sabbath, because that's when we always filled the baptistry, always the fourth Sabbath, We had a table in the lobby and we had a mountain of glow tracks of packs unopened.

We said the church is the wholesaler and you are the retailers.

So sign your name and put your phone number or your email address and that gives you permission to take 1 or 2 packs of 100 to pass out during the next 30 days.

And so everybody had access to GloTracks.

We had GloRacks where they could find them other times, but this is when we really had the push, and we'd get out about 70, 000 GloTracks a year from that 1 church, just all over the country and all over the world, wherever people were going, we'd load them up and then we'd feature stories.

But we would tell people everybody can be a glow missionary.

You can walk through the airport and just say here, here, here, here.

And when people say to you, well, what does security say?

Well, they say thank you just like everybody else when you give it to them.

And when you're walking through the neighborhood, you can say here's something to brighten your day.

And most people don't say, Well, I don't want a bright day.

They say thank you We found that if you give 2 titles at a time They're more likely to take it than if you give 1 title if it's 1 title They think what is it?

They think I've 1 of these looks good And I'll look at the other 1 later So we just some simple things This never diminishes the role of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit has to be working on people's hearts and in our hearts.

But what this does is it allows the Holy Spirit to work through us.

Is not just about signing people up for Bible study, and it's not just about giving information to people, even though both of those are great.

It's about letting people know we're available to be used by God.

And I tell people, even if you are scared to death, you can be a GLOW missionary by doing chicken witnessing.

Allen Lloyd

03 - How to Defeat Depression and Thrive

Would you be shocked to know that 1 of the leading causes of death in young people is all in their heads?

Neil Nedley about the challenging problem of depression and much more.

Nedley, thank you so much for being on the show.

It's a, it's, it's a blessing to have you because you have a lot of experience and expertise in the area of mental health, development, you're a doctor, you're a published author, and you know, articles and research, etc.

There's a quote that fascinates me that says that our first duty to God and man is self-development.

And that's what I want to talk about today, is the Christian and mental health and self-development.

There's a lot of worldly philosophies and there's also biblical philosophies, and we just want to learn practically as well as being inspired what we as Christians—the young person, the young adult—what we can do, etc.

So starting off with that, why is it important for the Christian to be even thinking about, no pun intended, mental health and IQ, EQ, etc., and to be intentional to maybe even grow that and to cultivate that?

Well the only area that God can really influence us is actually through our brain.

And so if our brains are mechanically flawed or faulty, or if our software is faulty, it's actually going to limit our ability to glorify Him.

And that is, you know, the overall purpose is having our priorities straight and glorifying God.

And if we are going to do that we do need to be very intentional on optimizing our brain and having that brain working as well as it possibly can.

I Really like that answer and I think you know, our brain is our greatest asset even just in practical life But not only that but in the spiritual life as well.

Our brain is really the antenna that picks up God's voice Exactly, and that's really the difference of why you know what God meant when he said let us make man in our image.

You know, this is, we have a frontal lobe that is far larger than any other creature, which gives us the ability to accomplish creative things, to accomplish, you know, advanced planning and destiny.

Things along those types of lines, our analytical abilities, our ability to plan way in advance and multi-stepped.

You don't see that in any other creatures.

I mean, some creatures that have better frontal lobes than others, like dogs, might be able to plan 3 steps ahead.

And that amazes the veterinarians and the animal lovers that they're able to do that, those type of plannings.

But we can plan, you know, well over a hundred steps ahead because of our frontal, if our frontal lobes are working well.

And that gives us all sorts of creative and amazing abilities, as well as abilities to be able to empathize with others and to be able to help others in ways that other creatures just never would be able to.

What are some do's and don'ts when it comes to mental health?

I mean, there's obvious things like drugs, etc., that are don'ts, and what are some practical things just right off the bat that you can mention that would affect someone's mental health as a Christian?

Well, anything that's going to suppress this front portion of your brain.

That's the area that we've already started to discuss.

And there's a lot of things out there that humanity participates in that actually intentionally suppresses this area of our brain.

And this is the area where willpower is centered.

It's the area where empathy is centered It's the area where our brakes appropriate brakes on human behavior are So that we don't cross the line and do things that are really, you know Not only foolish but will hurt us in the long run.

And so, you know, alcohol adversely affects the frontal lobe before it affects any other portion of the brain.

Marijuana actually is a frontal lobe suppressant and our country is endorsing it because it makes people feel more peaceful.

I can tell you from our programs, you know, we run depression and anxiety recovery programs And a lot of people think this is the natural way of improving depression and anxiety, but this is 1 of those short-term gain, long-term problems because if we suppress the frontal lobe, this is the area that we need to have enhanced in order to eradicate depression and anxiety.

Just about any mental health condition starts out with frontal lobe suppression as front and center and you'll see it on the PET scans, you'll see it in any way that you can analyze it on the on the SPECT scans would look at activity in circulation of the frontal lobe.

And so we don't want to participate voluntarily in anything that's going to suppress this area of our brain, particularly selectively.

It would include even certain forms of recreation, certain forms of music, certain foods even can have a subtle effect on suppressing the frontal lobe.

Even nicotine is being vaped at record levels now by young people actually as a frontal lobe suppressant, not as bad as alcohol.

And so a lot of people say, hey, well, you know, it might be better than alcohol as far as the brain is concerned.

But, you know, it kind of disturbs me that humanity, particularly our young people, are fascinated by things that have both benefits and risks.

You know, Caffeine actually blocks the adenosine receptors in the frontal lobe of the brain.

It does stimulate you, but typists, for instance, can type a little bit faster under the influence of caffeine, but they make 10 times as many errors because it's what it's doing to the adenosine receptors.

And we now know that in even sports, you know, quarterbacks, it turns out they're the only player on an NFL field that requires an intact frontal lobe to be successful on that field but they do far better with 0 caffeine.

Tom Brady never consumes caffeine and that's why attempted murder can be going on all around him but he's emotions are stable and he makes the right decision with the ball.

It's a violent sport and they're really trying to take him down but nonetheless a lot of people advocate caffeine because of the so-called benefits, but at what risk?

You know, we've named a lot of things that suppress the frontal lobe.

There are so many things that enhance the frontal lobe that have 0 risk, only benefits.

And there's, you know, a huge list of those, but yet humanity isn't fascinated with those.

You know, the fact that they help and they don't have risks, they tend not to be discussed at all.

But yet God has given us so many things that can be enhancing for our frontal lobe and can help with our own self-development, that if we focus in on those many more choices that can be made in that area, we can really start participating in what God would really have us do, and that is to glorify Him.

What are some examples of those good things?

You know, blueberries have anthocyanins in them, and they actually go selectively to the memory and the frontal lobe aspects of the brain.

You'll be able to actually see the blue pigment selectively be taken up.

And this actually helps our brain's analytical ability.

It helps our ability to focus and concentrate.

Even turmeric has been shown to be helpful.

And it's something that can really help the brain.

I mean, we can, speaking of other food items, you know, foods that are high in tyrosine and tryptophan, pumpkin seeds, you know, for instance, are great for the frontal lobe of the brain.

But it goes beyond that to, you know, music, Bach's music that was written for the period of the Reformation actually was very frontal lobe enhancing.

And it's been shown that when we listen to Bach's even Brandenburg Concerto the frontal lobe will start lighting up and it not only lights up during the time but it stays enlightened for quite a period of time afterwards And a lot of people are only interested in the effects of music when it's being listened to But I'm far more interested in the after effects of music After we quit listening to it and what's going on with the brain And there's great music that can enhance that frontal lobe for a long period of time afterwards.

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