2019 Maryland Men of Faith: Not Bought or Sold

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Maryland Men of Faith

Jim Howard

Bible Studies 101

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Alright, well I don't want to waste any time because I have precisely 1 hour to share a lot of good stuff with you.

So before we begin, let's just pause and ask the Lord's blessing on our time.

Heavenly Father, we are grateful once more for this blessed Sabbath in this beautiful setting.

And as we look out at your beautiful creation, we're reminded that you love us and that that love is seen on each blade of grass, on every leaf.

We see that you have created all of this for our happiness.

And Father, we pray that you would Help us as your ambassadors to rightly present your great love to the world.

So please, Lord, give us a burden for souls.

Give us a burden to share light with those who have been trapped in darkness.

And may it be, Lord, that many souls will be wanted in the kingdom as a result of the principles conveyed in this seminar.

Alright, if you are looking for Giving Bible Studies 101, you are in the right place.

But this is what we are going to talk about in this room for the next hour.

I wonder, do we not, I need to turn this on is all.

Okay, so you'll have to look to the left for just a moment until that comes on.

Oh, it's going to, it's going to, It's going to take us on a journey.

But it got rid of my presenter screen so I'm going to see about that.

Yeah can you give me just a second you're all patient you're all no problem right right just just nod off there for a second I'll wake you up all right here we go this Looks like somebody may have bumped it.

Okay, so I want to give you some context here.

What you see here is a graphic representation of the disciple-making process.

And that's not the topic for this seminar.

I could do a whole seminar on that, but that's not what we're here to talk about.

But I want to give you a context of where Bible studies fits within it.

So you see that there are different phases that we take people through when we are making disciples.

And it follows the agricultural model that Jesus gave us, right?

Because Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful.

He talked about how the sower went out to sow his seed, and he sowed it on soil.

That seed represented the Word of God, all these symbols that Jesus used, we can equate to the soul winning process and what it means to grow the Kingdom of God.

This happens by making friends, by serving others, by building relationships.

Ultimately this is where we are aiming to bring down the defenses of the heart and show people that we desire their good and win their confidence.

As you prepare the soil, you've got to plant the seed.

The seed, according to Jesus, is the Word of God.

And so this is talking about sharing spiritual conversations, sharing our testimony, sharing literature, sharing media.

Anything that now is introducing them to spiritual truth is planting the seed.

If they are responsive to that spiritual truth, then we need to cultivate the spiritual interest.

This is done by Bible studies, giving Bible studies, giving spiritual guidance, coaching them along as they are learning the truth and growing in the truth Eventually that will lead to a point where they need to make decisions for Christ And this is what we refer to as the harvest.

They make decisions along the way, but ultimately they make that key decision to be baptized.

And so we make appeals for decisions through personal Bible studies, through public evangelistic meetings.

Appeals are important so that we can harvest decisions.

And then finally, We need to preserve the harvest.

So after someone is baptized, we need to make sure that we nurture new believers, that we train them, that we get them involved so that they will be strong and so that they will re-engage and multiply themselves and become disciples who make disciples.

Ellen White describes that this way, in Christian Service, page 121.

1 soul, 1 to the truth, will be instrumental in winning others, and there will be what?

An ever-increasing result of blessing and salvation.

So if we're baptizing people, but not training them to win souls, then we're working on the plan of addition.

What is going to finish the work will only be when we begin to work on the plan of multiplication.

When we talk about the problem we have in the church being a problem of retention and then our problem is that 4 out of 10 Seventh-day Adventists have left the church over the last 50 years.

It's not really retention per se that's our goal.

I mean, I remember I used to, in a former life, I was involved in corporate accounting, And we had retention was the word that we used when we were talking about record retention.

You know, and you would keep your financial records for a certain period of time and you would put it in a box and on the side of the box you would say, destroy date.

If it's such and such a type of document, then in 7 years, you can destroy it.

Okay, and then you put all these boxes up on a shelf and they just gather dust, but at least they're there in case you get audited, right?

And then after you get to a certain year, you go through and clear off all the boxes that have gone past the destroy date.

And so they just sit there and collect dust.

Sometimes I think that's our mentality of retention.

As long as you're sitting in that pew, We're happy.

Oh, we're just tickled as punch that you are still there in your spot this Sabbath morning, and we don't even think about the fact of whether or not they are making disciples.

Because we're still thinking that the goal is to make members and make sure those members are attending, and we're not thinking that the goal is to make members and make sure those members are attending.

And we're not thinking that the goal is to make disciples who are missionaries, who are helping to finish this work and be engaged in the work of making disciples.

So we've got to change that mentality and make sure that we're thinking about a process that is continuous sequential and continuous Sequential is important because it shows that you can't skip any steps And I don't want to go too far into this because I'll get on a preaching a different sermon here but sequential is important and continuous is important.

If you cut it off, then you're just working in addition and no longer multiplication.

Now, this is where Bible studies are primarily, but there are studies that happen all through this, this different, these different phases, okay?

In fact, the Word is involved in all 4 of these phases.

The Word is not necessarily involved here because the seed is the Word.

So this can just be friendship prior to spiritual This is just building friendship and building confidence but once you get to hear the word is introduced and once you get to hear these 3 phases all include Bible study of some kind and Somebody's got to do those Bible studies.

Now, let's talk about what are the 4 types of Bible studies First you have the original Bible studies that are given to someone in which they discover the truth This could be in a personal Bible study, could be something they do correspondence, they could get a hold of it somewhere, they could see it in an evangelistic campaign, whatever, but originally they've got to learn the truth through some systematic sharing of the end-time message, biblical message.

After that, when they make a decision to be baptized, they should be taken through, at least in brief, if they've already studied, a systematic baptismal preparation process, which is another type of study.

If they've already been thoroughly through everything then that may happen in just a couple of visits or something But if they're not then it may take a little more time if there are gaps to fill after that we should have systematic studies that happen after baptism to further ground them in the truth to review and affirm certain things that they've learned to help them understand the theology of the church and its organization.

There's a variety of things that they need after they are baptized separately.

And then once we're through that process, they should be reviewing our entire message, doctrinal message, only this time doing it with a little more depth and doing it in a manner in which they are planning to share it.

They are learning it again in order to share it.

So anyway, that's what we're working on in my department, General Conference of the Abyssal and Personal Ministries Department, is trying to develop resources that can help with these different types of Bible study.

Many people right now are using all kinds of Discover, It Is Written, This Is It Is Written, Amazing Facts, there's all kinds of Bible studies that can be used for that original Series that introduces somebody the truth for baptismal preparation.

We have just Published a baptismal preparation guide called Fundamentals of Faith.

If you don't have something that you're using, I'd encourage you to use this.

It covers all the 28 fundamental beliefs, but in a way that is more in an evangelistic order.

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the 28 fundamental beliefs are in a theological order, or theological categories.

So like when they cover the doctrine of the church, the remnant is covered, and then later they introduce the Sabbath.

Like if you look at the numbers, they're not in the order that we would share with somebody evangelistically.

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Bible Studies 101

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