Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Closing the Back Door

Olan Thomas

Closing the Back Door - Part 1

Father God, we're here this afternoon to discuss how to make our churches stronger in the sense of keeping people once they join our church community.

We want the peace and the joy and the assurance that we are doing what we can to make the church what it needs to be so that people can remain therein.

Lord bless us as we discuss this afternoon we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Would this be applied to, let's say, you already have existing members for some reason, they've been members for a long time, and they're not coming with this?

Because I was thinking maybe like new members that come in and are missing.

So as you know it is written as an evangelism ministry right?

We love to see people join the Seventh-day Adventist Church But as we've gone around and done evangelism in different places, including other countries of the world, we've observed that people come in, but then if you come back in 3 to 5 years, they're what?

And so that's what we want to talk about a little this week is what can we do in our churches to try to keep that from happening?

And I'm sure that each of you, and I'll give you an opportunity in a few moments here to kind of share some story you may have.

We don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but maybe just a few things of what happens in your church, what you've observed, why do you think people leave your church?

And then of course, that's what we're gonna talk about today is why people leave the church.

That's what we're gonna talk about today.

Tomorrow we're gonna turn quite a bit more positive.

How do we create an environment within our church where people want to be part of it on an ongoing basis?

What are some of the ingredients that your church needs so that people want to continue to be part of it?

What do they need to be a continuing part of your church and so on.

So I'd like to start today with just a little story.

So today our title really is an honest look at what's happening and we're going to look at some Adventist statistics of church retention and so on.

And the question of course we wonder about is, have we left the back door open sometimes?

We bring people in, but then what happens that they slip away so quickly?

And I think most of us are aware that 1 of the groups of people that regularly slip away are our young people.

And those people often slip away fairly quickly.

So I'd like to share with you just a little bit about 1 story.

We're calling her Jane, it's not her real name.

She was a graduate of an Adventist college.

She'd been very active in outreach ministries at college and through her teen youth experience.

However, when she moved to a new area, she and her new husband struggled to find a church that they could meaningfully participate in.

They often found the sermons lacking in spirit and content and the outreach of the churches minimal.

When they finally found a church, they tried to launch a group of collegiate young adults, young people like themselves.

They then tried leading a ministry of Sabbath potlucks.

They would help coordinate the Sabbath potlucks.

Not only did people not support them and commit to helping them in that, but sometimes people would come behind them and fix the tables and organize things as they should be done, right?

And of course they realized that they weren't seen as doing it right.

Finally, when the pastor preached 1 Sabbath on the chiastic structure of the book of Ruth, they decided that they weren't going to keep trying any longer.

In other words, the chiastic structure of the book of Ruth didn't seem very edifying, right?

So they ended up in a non-denominational church.

In conclusion, she says, I probably will always have a soft spot in my heart for the SDA Church.

It gave me my foundation in Christ, provided many wonderful memories.

I know we are where we're supposed to be now though.

Ultimately everything goes back to my 2 must-haves.

So here's this young ex-Adventist saying what her 2 must-haves are.

An outward focus, in other words an evangelistic focus, a reason to be, and an outward focus and an environment in place to welcome unsaved people.

In my experience, that's very hard to find in the SDA Church.

And that story is online if you wish to find it.

So what are some of your stories and what do you think are some of the reasons that people may slip away and no longer be part of your church?

We had a new member that started coming in, so she was a greeter, and granted she wore more makeup than 1 person, and then somebody called her and said, you shouldn't be a greeter because you're wearing too much makeup.

So a greeter that wore a little too much makeup and a church member, very, very lovingly I'm sure, called and said, you know, really, that's not what you should be doing here.

This job doesn't belong to someone who appears like you do.

What I've noticed is the new believers struggle in how to take Adventist lifestyle into their busy life.

But it's like they face this challenge instantly and many times their families and everything are contrary and they end up getting sucked back in with their own group of friends.

So for the recording we'll say what you've said is that new converts struggle with the lifestyle changes and especially those outside influences, previous influences that tend to keep them where they were before.

If you add to that, there's many times lack of something to do.

And we're not quick to give them assignments, give them responsibilities, like the potluck part here.

Or we put them on the church board where they hear all of the whatever that...

This is the lack of friendship, loving death.

You know, you go where you're appreciated and loved.

How many times do you take time to spend time with the new or even existing church.

So we mentioned divorce as 1 reason, and the problem with divorce and the church is that church members sort of feel like they have to take a side, not that they're taking a side, but they tend to be friendly with 1 party more than the other, and so it kind of is interpreted that way.

And then you were saying that we, I missed it already, lack of friendship, lack of friendship.

We're not really, well, and we can be cliquish.

Closing the Back Door - Part 2

Our Father and our God, we're so grateful for camp meeting, a time when we can come together, and for a time we can think about you and how we can serve you better.

Lord, bless our devotional time, but also bless this time, which is more of a mechanical class, how we can be like you in our church relationships.

So I'm sorry again about this screen, but hopefully you can read it from time to time.

So the question we wanna look at today is what happens when a person joins the church?

Now, how many of you have ever lived, Let's start here.

How many of you have ever moved from 1 church to another?

How many of you have ever lived, not just visited, lived in a different culture?

So that's what we're going to try and talk about this morning.

When you go to a new place, even if you've never been here to camp meeting before, it's going to feel a little different.

I just came from Pennsylvania camp meeting.

I'd never been to Pennsylvania camp meeting.

Their tents and RV camping is across the street from the main part of the Academy campus.

The way they run their program, a little different, and so on.

So it took me a day or so to start to feel, if you would say comfortable, because the environment is different.

We often don't stop and think about that for the new convert.

So that's what we want to talk about today, is how is that new person who, for whatever reason, they've moved into the community, or usually we're thinking of new people in the sense of evangelism, new to the Adventist message, how do they feel when they walk into your church?

What have you, in your church, done or what do you do to deliberately make them feel welcome?

Very interesting questions, and questions we don't sit down and ask ourselves as a church very often, but it's critically important.

So yesterday I sat across the table from a pastor from another conference, another state, and he said that just recently he had a lady walk into his church, and fortunately he got to talking to her, and discovered that she, it was her first time in an Adventist church, she has watched some of our media things online, and that's what led her to come and visit.

So suppose, just suppose, if no 1 had interacted with her in any way other than maybe someone asked her to sign the guestbook.

My wife and I were moving, we worked for It Is Written, We were moving from Michigan to California and we ended up partway on Sabbath.

We had the moving truck, a Penske or whatever it was truck, pulling a car.

Anyway, we found a church, parked a little ways away.

We couldn't get in the church parking lot, didn't know if I could turn around, never been there before, so again, see, I'm a stranger.

And so we walked the block, whatever, to the church, went in, we were greeted, sat down, threw all the services, church is over, we deliberately went in the bathroom, we wandered around, stood around, we had no place to go.

We got back in the truck, we drove on just a little bit, had our lunch of course, took naps in the truck through the afternoon.

And I'm not saying I'm anybody, I'm just saying I was a stranger.

It may have been my first time in an Adventist church.

So that's what we want to talk about today.

What happens when a person joins the church?

So we've talked about how it's a whole new world to them.

They don't know that Sabbath school, as we usually call it, maybe Bible study would be a better term, is followed by a Divine Worship Hour.

Obviously, maybe before the evangelistic series was over, you had that transition where you brought them to church 1 Sabbath and the evangelist spoke who was visiting from wherever or the conference evangelist, whoever it was.

So they did have maybe 1 Sabbath where they experienced some sort of Bible study hour followed by the worship hour, but not very much exposure, maybe not much explained.

So she attended the series of meetings that came to her town and she realized she needed to start keeping the Sabbath.

By the way, would the church be happy to have somebody join their church?

Are we happy to have someone join our church?

We're pretty comfortable in our church, right?

And we bring in these new people like Mary, what might they do?

Are we willing to give up our, let's Call it authority in the church, if that should be the best thing.

You know that story, people being asked to move because they sat in someone else's pew.

Now, if you have your name on it, that might be fair, but unless you have your name on it, you shouldn't.

So Mary decides to keep the Sabbath and she wants to join the Adventist church, which we believe to be the Remnant Church, right?

She was the secretary of the local Catholic Church.

But she wanted to be an Adventist, and so she talked to the Catholic authorities, and they of course agreed that Mary could part ways, but that of course would leave her without a job.

Well, it just happened that the Adventist Church was needing a secretary and they apparently had a paid position, a large church it must have been, and so most of your churches don't have paid secretaries, right?

So Mary was invited to interview and she was accepted for the job.

She was baptized and soon started to work.

What Mary didn't know was how difficult things were going to become.

Because all of Mary's family is Catholic.

Most of her family obviously didn't understand her decision in changing churches.

I mean, if you're once Catholic, you're always Catholic.

If you're once Methodist, you're always Methodist, right?

Closing the Back Door - Part 3

And we just thank you that we have these few days that we can kind of come apart, slow down, fellowship, and also spend time in your word, and also learn some ideas, some techniques, some suggestions of how we can be even more effective in our witness in the very place where we live.

So we want to close the back door before there's even 1.

You will forgive us for leaving the window open.

There'll be a little distracting noise there, but the air outside's considerably cooler than inside.

So we talked a little bit about this previously, but why do you want people to join your church?

We all say we want to grow our church, right?

Some of us feel like our church is getting smaller rather than bigger.

What's the reason that you want your church to grow?

Is it just for the sake of having numbers?

You know, there are more people, more fun, more activities, more whatever.

Is it, yesterday I think we said it's not about members or numbers, it's about discipleship really, isn't it?

Or could it be as a way to increase our offering base?

So if we had more people, then of course our load might be a little less.

Is that reason enough to want to grow your church?

We're tired of carrying all the load, doing all the duties, all the cleaning up and setting up and tearing down and putting away.

And there's a lot that goes to running a program.

And it's true that sometimes if you added 50 people, it really wouldn't change the work much, right?

I mean, if you're setting for 30 people to set for 60, it's not that much more.

Have plates, you're ready to go, whatever.

So is that the reason that we want to grow the church?

So we have to think about this as we think about this.

So how do we Build a church with a guest and member friendly environment.

I said it was about relationships, so let's talk about that, right?

I'd like to tell you a quick story that I just heard over at the display.

1977, this lady had lost 4 children, 4 miscarriages.

And God led her to watch the It Is Written program in 1977.

Her husband was a police officer and so he was sleeping.

And so she said, literally, I was this close to the television.

Of course, they were smaller then and not as loud.

She said, I'm this close to the television and I'm watching this thing.

And at the end, She said, I'm trying to figure out what church this is.

She wanted to know how she could learn more about whatever this guy was talking about.

And she said, I could never find anything other than apparently she responded to the, remember there's always a book offer or something offered.

She said, I read every 1 of those things as they came, every 1 of them as they came.

And she said, I asked for somebody to come and meet with me and do Bible studies.

And she said, I never got my Bible studies.

She said, 1 day after several months, not an uncommon story by the way, after several months, this guy shows up at her house.

Now remember, this lady is not as tall as I.

You know, she's about this tall, like you.

And this guy shows up, he's 7 foot 1, that's what she told me, 7 foot 1.

And he says, I'm here with your Bible studies.

Believe it or not, she went ahead with whatever she did.

And since then, She's been rejoicing in the Lord and growing and has served in different capacities.

And she stood there and said, I'm still excited about what I've learned all those years ago and I love to share it with other people.

What do we do to build relationships with people?

By the way, especially for our church, we understand that nobody joins this church or becomes part of this church on a long-term basis without Bible study, right?

I was kind of surprised when I heard that the first time.

Either we study the Bible individually, we can study it in our closet, we can study it, you know, online, we can study it through some sort of public meetings, we can study, but it's Bible study that holds people ideologically together.

So today we're going to talk about relationships.

How do we build those kinds of relationships?

And as you have your notes, it's building lasting friendships, practical ways.

So there's 7 P's we want to look at today, 7 Ps.

And even the Apostle Paul, when he wrote to Philemon, He said, making mention of thee or you always in my prayers.

We heard David Chin there this morning talk about, they did a series of meetings and they spent 5 hours every other day praying specifically over the names they had registered of the people coming to those meetings.

5 hours it took because there were so many names and so on, but trying to be specific with each 1.

We hold up children, grandchildren, friends, relatives, interests.

It's amazing what prayer does to transform people's lives.

With your new friend, anyone you're trying to mentor, let's call it, we need to pray for them.

But if we pray for them, what does that do?

It bonds us together, it gives us a compassion, a concern, a sense of camaraderie, a feeling with them, and it makes a huge, huge difference.

Closing the Back Door - Part 4

Our Father and our God, this afternoon we want to talk about the gospel and how the gospel is really the glue as well as the motivation for us to be faithful and diligent and energetic and excited about what we do for you.

Hasten your coming we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

So we want to close the back door before there really is a back door right?

So how does that work in an Adventist Church?

So I was in Sabbath school just a few weeks ago, and the Sabbath school teacher unfortunately, for whatever reason, was delayed or didn't show up.

And so the pastor, no criticism there, the person teaching the class, said to the class, as I will say to you, so are we, Adventists, the only ones who will be saved in God's kingdom?

Because the subsequent or the follow-up question is, then why are we here?

So being brave a little bit, I said after they went on from that, I said, but then why are we here?

Because the Sunday church tomorrow morning is gonna say the very same thing.

God is love, we love God, we're all made in his image, he wants us to be his children, we can be eternally saved in his kingdom, therefore, so why are we here?

Why do you want to grow your church as a Seventh-day Adventist?

What is unique that holds us together as a people?

It's the gospel, but there's some specific aspects.

Now that's a word we don't use very often anymore, right?

So let's look at this, closing the back door.

Why do we want people to join our church?

Just so we can say we have the largest church in town or the medium-sized church in town or whatever it is?

No, we want our church to grow for much better reasons.

We want to grow our church just to increase our tithe base.

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Closing the Back Door

Closing the Back Door - Part 5

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