ASI 2019: Business Unusual

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Young Professionals

Gary Rayner

The Reluctant Dissident

Cynthia Heidi

The Neglected Class

K'dee Elsen Crews

Mind Your Own Busyness: The Mental Health Crisis in the Professional World

Jared Thurmon

Is Perception Reality?

David Asscherick

Communicating and Contextualizing the Gospel

Jesse Zwiker

What are you working on?

Alistair Huong

Personal Finance on an Index Card

James Black

God’s Got a Plan and You’re In It!


Does anybody here have anyone in your family who's had drug addiction? All right, I want to tell you a story about someone named Andy. Just As we start, you need to know that Andy, pretty much a total failure. He came from a family where 1 parent was kicked out of high school, who barely got their GED, into drugs, trying to grow them, in a car crash with a friend under the influence. The other parent graduated high school.

He was taught in a minimal classroom by uneducated teachers as a kid. He learned to hustle on the streets to make money. But he took things for granted. He wasn't always kind to people and at times he was known to be a complete jerk. He was encouraged to go to college by his parents, but he skipped a lot of classes.

And he never really used his degree. He made a lot of money after college, and he spent it all. Started some businesses. None of them saw the success that he wanted. Millions of dollars invested.

At times he was overbearing with his wife. He nitpicked at things he probably shouldn't, and many times he was miserable to be around because he thought he knew everything. Clearly no business acumen in his life. Let me tell you another story. There's a story about a man named Andrew.

And we can look at Andrew's story and say this is a total success story. Parents raised him in a loving home. They gave him the best education. He was given the best nutrition. Learned how to be an entrepreneur from a very young age.

Began his first business at the age of 10. Was taught by experience how to interact with others and learn to negotiate. He was taught about the principles of life from the Bible. Some would consider him a serial entrepreneur. After he graduated college, he started a business and he began to do that over and over again.

After a number of years working on private ventures, he decided to work for the Seventh-day Adventist Church and join an organization called the Adventist Review. And those 2 stories I just told you are my story. Every single detail is true. My middle name is Andrew, so the first story, Andy, that's me. And sometimes perception can get us in trouble.

Because perception can have you looking at a moment, at a person's life, and sadly a lot of times in your own life, in the mirror, and thinking, I'm a failure. And then another morning, man, I am a success. Let me tell you another story. This guy was poised for, this is not my story, poised for success. Grew up in what many considered the richest home.

Every class his parents could get him into, he was in. He was trained in the military. He was trained in finance. He was trained in linguistics. And he deep down felt that he was gonna lead a revolution.

And 1 day Moses walks up to somebody and says, you're mistreating this guy and he kills him. And in a moment he thinks, I'm gonna be Pharaoh, commander of the armies, the greatest individual on the earth, and now I'm a murderer. What am I gonna do now? And he flees. And a few minutes earlier, everybody on planet Earth could have said, this guy is poised for success.

And God says, nah, I got to take you out into the University of Midian for 40 years. And you have to unlearn everything you thought you knew. And we learn a couple interesting stories or interesting points about this. Here's 1 about Moses and patriarchs and prophets. His intellectual greatness distinguishes him above the great men of the ages.

As a historian, poet, philosopher, general of armies, and legislator, he stands without a peer. But then into his psyche, the elders of Israel were taught by angels that the time for their deliverance was near and that Moses was the man whom God would employ. Angels then instructed Moses that Jehovah had chosen him to break the bondage of his people. He, supposing they were to obtain their freedom by arms, expected to lead the Hebrew host against the armies of Egypt. And so you can see all these things running through his mind.

Then he's a murderer, then he's out in Domitian. And I think we all can relate with Moses because we go through life and there are these moments sometimes you think man I've got this degree, I got this training, I've got these skills, I am ready. Then Ellie, God puts you on your back. Or with a story I'm sure you know Dr. Naren James, cancer tells you you have months to live.

Or you're having a conversation with your dad about this exciting new venture and then I land 3 hours later and he has been killed in a car accident. Life is going to throw some things at you and you have to be in a place that those circumstances don't throw you off. And I think the story of Moses, and in my own story, it's just perception. My greatest critic in my whole world is me. And I think the likelihood is, if you're here, and you signed up for this, there is nobody who's a harder critic than you.

Either you think you're the hottest thing since sliced bread or you are the ugly duckling. But whatever it is, you will be the loudest voice in your head. And what I've learned is if you want to get through life with that peace that surpasses understanding you've got to know where your value comes from. You have to have a clear destination in mind. That cancer, amputation, blindness, disease, broken relationships, and even some of the people you love most if they die, doesn't stop you from saying, that's what I'm called to do.

There was something that totally changed my life. It was a statement from Ellen White where she says religion, I think it's Christ's Object Lessons 349, says religion and business are not 2 separate things, they are 1. And there's this great war in Adventism where we think, I do business and I give to ministry. Or the other way around, if you go in the convention hall, I do ministry and you do business. And then the legend of give me some business money to do ministry.

And sometimes it can really cripple you because you think I'm doing ministry and ministry is built on donations. And I know there are places in life for a non-profit, but I am not a fan of a non-profit. Because in this society, it kind of, it clips you at the knees. You don't really know that you have to have a product or service that people value so much that, I mean, think about something you bought that you love to buy. Like for me, it's a strawberry vegan milkshake.

Like you take my $5, I want that. And it may be some gadget, maybe it's some shoes, maybe it's something in your life, but you had a pleasurable moment giving someone money and in exchange you got something you valued. And we can do that with services. So I think there are ministries that say, look, this is what we do and we do it best and we're efficient and you can audit us and you can look at everything we do. And we realize you can't do what we do all the time, but this is our product and service that we value and this is how we value it.

How could your business partner with us? There's companies that do that. But I believe we are all called to business. Even the physicians and the attorneys and the teachers, it's still a business. So if you're gonna not forget that point of religion and business, they are so intertwined.

The Hebrew word for, they have a Hebrew word for work and for business, avodah, It's actually the same word. But it's so intertwined in what you do that your work is your ministry. So I had the temptation presented to me a few years ago to work with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Now some people would say get behind me Satan to that type of temptation, but I said I want to see the world change. And as I have wrestled and pled with the Lord of how do we see something drastic happen on this planet?

I think it happens with the remnant church. But I'm gonna give you a teaser. I speak tonight that I hope everybody will come to my talk tonight. The church I want to belong to is terrible. That's the title.

07:00. We have to come to a moment where we have to get real. And we have to say, you know what? I got friends that aren't here. There are systems that are broken.

There are problems that we should acknowledge. There's a problem when we think ministry is preaching in a pulpit. And we've done that. Pastors aren't going around necessarily saying that. We've done that.

There's a problem when people feel, but I'm called to code. I'm so proud of my sister's here. She has a hair salon that is awesome. And there's ministry going on. Her and my mom do this.

And it's 1 of the top 20 salons in the country. I'm so proud of them. But it's just as much ministry as when I get to preach at our church each week. Because let's be real, there are people that are not going to come to our church, even if you paid them. But they will sit in that chair and have their hair done, They'll come to get their car fixed.

They'll come to buy your product. They'll come to buy your service. And they just need little bitty bits of your religion. Smile. Handshake.

How you doing? There's this, I'm in love with the spirit of prophecy. It's like a diamond mine. Every answer of life is sitting on our iPhones or in our book shelves with that app. But there's a statement, many profess faith in the truth, but if it does not make them sincere, kind, patient, forbearing, heavenly minded.

If it doesn't do that, it's a curse to its possessors. And through their influence, it is a curse to the world. And so that leads me to something that has been an epiphany in my life. I love the Seventh-day Adventist Church but when I get around Adventist, I'm gonna get real for a minute. When I'm in line with Adventists at, I don't know, a restaurant across the street here, And they are rude to the people serving them food.

If we just press pause, we went up to heaven, maybe we visited some of the unfallen worlds and we came back and we just said, okay, let's just get a glimpse of this moment. This is the remnant people. The glory of God is gonna go through these people to the whole earth and they're upset that you've run out of an impossible burger. And so that statement is just so true. If we can't be kind, please keep your Jesus, lock him up, I don't want to hear about it.

Because he's not even strong enough, powerful enough to put a smile on your face. And you want me to believe he's going to burst through the clouds and take people off a planet? And I'm particularly passionate about this as we interact with 1 another. Because something I've seen that is the most beautiful thing on the earth is if, and let me get real specific, is if 2 Seventh-day Adventists can sit down and totally disagree. I think this, and I totally disagree with you, and I think this.

Maybe it's on politics, maybe it's on racism, maybe it's on how we do this, Maybe it's on how we do this, maybe it's on how we do that. And I find that secular television at times can portray this better than we can. 2 people passionately arguing their points. And then at the end, love you. Bye.

Bye. And for us, we do it sometimes seditiously. All right, brother. And so we hold our real feelings. I'm going to tell you a quick story.

I've got 3 minutes. Here we go. There's an example of a corporation that was very successful, and they made a product that every time they made it, they made 200 to 800 million dollars. And this is a real story. Then Disney says, why is Pixar making films that are consistently good?

And why is Disney just failing miserably? So the CEO goes over to help Disney. And he can't figure it out, because he asked him, hey, so we're making this film, is this going to be good? Oh yeah, yeah, this is going to be good. Okay.

They make the film, it's a total flop. He talks about this in his book Creativity Inc. Ed Catmull. He says, trying to figure out what was going on at Pixar that was making us successful all the time. He said, well, we started to realize we had something called a brain trust.

The brain trust was people that cared about something. They didn't necessarily work for the company, but they loved storytelling. They loved the art of making a great product. And so these 10-20 people would come into a room and somebody would come in and say, I got an idea for Toy Story 19. And they would listen to this pitch and they would say, you know we care for you, right?

Oh yeah, I know you care for me. Because they'd done that. They'd done the work of caring. But then they'd say, that's a bad idea. That doesn't even make sense.

And they'd refine it. Sometimes they'd shelve it for a few years, keep working on it. But he realized, he said, here was our secret, candor. We were honest with people all the time. What if we did that with our new product?

A lot of times it's our food companies. Having been in Adventism and been an entrepreneur and worked with a lot of entrepreneurs, usually 1 of the things we go at quickly is food and boy if we should be in food It's right now while money is growing on trees. But with food, we often say, do you like my cookies? Do you like my bread? Do you like my fake cheese?

Do you like this? Do you like this? And we go to friends and they say, oh, this is amazing. And we're not honest. And we just say, you got a booger in your nose.

Your hair looks really silly. You should tuck your shirt in. But that idea of candor to me is so refreshing. So I've come to grips with something from Matthew 7 verse 12. This is where we get the idea of the golden rule.

This version says, therefore whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. And then the heaviest part, for This is the law and the prophets. This is what it's all about. So I have 2 things, as were mentioned, that to me are like the laws of life. In fact, if we sat down I could show you a study.

I think the law in heaven, here's a little controversy, sorry, was 1 law, none liveth to himself. Amen. Or translated, no one's selfish here. And so the 2 things that I try and live by now are very difficult. Be kind and be candid.

And this is how I remember it. Kindness is king. Candor is queen. The most important thing is to be kind. Now, I know this is hard for us to have in us.

The second most important thing is to be truthful and honest. But then here's here's the here's the delicacy of the matter. You can be kind and be a liar. You can be honest and be a jerk. But if you say, all right, my most important thing is I want to be kind and I'm going to be honest while being kind, while staying honest, while being kind.

If you can remember that, boy, we're going to see something happen in this movement. Just when people come around us, they'll be like, man, these people get along. They don't necessarily agree, but they like each other. They're kind to each other and they don't slip away from conversations and tell you what they really think. They lay it all on the line.

That's my prayer for this movement, those 2 things. And then the world's gonna catch that and things are gonna happen. So I'd love to talk to you more about that. Please come tonight, Pray for me. When you give a message called the church I want to belong to is terrible.

You aren't following a recipe necessarily to make friends. But I'm very convicted this is a moment we got to tell some truth. So thank you for letting me share. Www.asiministries.org. Or if you would like to listen to more free online sermons, please visit www.audioverse.org.

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Series

Young Professionals

Is Perception Reality?

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

The Reluctant Dissident

28m

The Neglected Class

19m

Mind Your Own Busyness: The Mental Health Crisis in the Professional World

22m

Is Perception Reality?

21m

Communicating and Contextualizing the Gospel

19m

What are you working on?

28m

Personal Finance on an Index Card

32m

God’s Got a Plan and You’re In It!

52m

Sound Doctrine