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

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Effective Evangelism

Wes Peppers

Effective Evangelism - Part 1: Proper Preparation 1

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this privilege to be together.

We just ask that your Spirit would guide and direct us and that you would open up to us the important aspects that we need to understand and that you would draw us close to you and to each other.

We pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Alright, so some of the things that I want to cover with you is some things maybe you already...

How many of you came to the rally in April?

Some things might be repeated, so I don't want you to be frustrated with that but I do want this to kind of be a dialogue where I'm not just giving you a presentation but you're actually asking questions.

I want to make sure there are certain details that everybody understands in preparation for the series and you know if there's something that I'm not covering then please feel free to ask me okay.

So it's not more of a seminar it's more of just a dialogue to make sure everybody's on the right track.

So what I want to cover today in part is, I want to make sure that everybody's familiar with the website and the functions there and the features there.

And then I want to cover some of the things that, very briefly, that probably you've already done, or if you haven't, to make sure that you know you need to do them.

And then I want to cover today some of the things that are going to be leading up from here to Jesus, up to Jesus on prophecy.

Then tomorrow we'll probably, depending on how much we get done today, we will continue that tomorrow.

If we feel good about it today, then we'll move on to the next thing.

1 of the other things I wanna cover is some of the different aspects that go on during the series.

And then I'm gonna cover some elements on doing visitation.

So I think that that's probably an area that kind of falls by the wayside.

So, I'm going to talk about the different types of visitation that we do during the meetings.

I'm going to talk about what type of decisions you're wanting to ask people for at various times in the meeting, at various scenarios, and then how to continue to follow up with those interests after the meetings.

And we'll talk a little bit about phase 2 as well.

And then the last piece is the discipleship after the meetings, making sure that we're getting people connected where they need to be with mentors, that they're getting the resources with the Discipleship Handbook.

But what about even after the Discipleship Handbook?

I mean, the Discipleship Handbook is a wonderful resource, but there's more to discipleship than even just that.

So that's kind of the vision that I have for the week.

I want to know, are there any specific areas?

I mean, there's a lot more detail in those pillar points that I mentioned, but is there anything in specific that you can think of right now that you'd be interested in me covering either today or sometime throughout the rest of the week?

Not right now, but you'll have questions as we go along, as I don't cover certain things, right?

Well, let's go ahead and just talk a little bit about the website.

How many of you have been navigating on the website?

Okay, I want to make sure if you're the coordinator that you understand and know how to navigate through this because a lot of the stuff that people have been emailing me about and asking about is already there on the website.

So when you go to, yeah I would do that just as I kneel down to get on here.

When a guest goes to the website, they're going to see of course this page.

Now what we've done is we have actually set up some social media advertising that's actually starting this month.

And we actually have 5 videos I'm spending for social media and internet advertising.

I'm spending about $40, 000 across the state to advertise.

I've already recorded, I just recorded last week several ads for Strong Tower Radio and they're going to start playing those this month and they'll play them increasingly next month in August and September up through the series.

I have a little bit of, I may have a little bit of budget left, I may do some other advertising but that, between the social media and the billboards it kind of took up most of my advertising budget.

I had about a hundred and 70000 to spend on advertising and it takes up quite a bit.

So I want to show you guys 1 of the things before we actually get into the website that we are that we are doing in addition to the other promotional video.

What we did is we did 5 two-minute videos and I talked to a gentleman named Chris Matz who is the basically 1 of, he's a, he's become an expert on social media advertising And he said 1 of the most effective means of advertising now is actually where you do a series of short videos that lead people to whatever product or website you're trying to do.

And so what we did is we did 5 two-minute videos.

And you guys may want to do this on the local level as well.

But 5 two-minute videos that talk about a certain Bible subject.

And then it points them at the end of that to the website where they can go and think about pre-registering.

So I'm just going to show you 1 of these.

I don't know that we want to do all of them, but I want to see what's the 1.

This is fast internet so it's supposed to work.

Let me see if it makes a difference on my phone.

The problem is the cell phone service inside this building gets really bad so my phone's over by the window so I'm thinking maybe it'll, well anyway I guess I can't show those.

Well, anyway, Nonetheless, we did 5 videos, 2 minutes, on Daniel 2, signs of the times, why is there evil in the world, the second coming, and I forget what the other 1 was.

But we've already had people hitting on it and people are already pre-registering on the site because of those videos.

And then, I don't know if, how many of you were here on Saturday night, I showed the 2 minute video, Did anybody not see that?

But there's this two-minute video that really is very nice.

I don't know if it's going to play there either.

How are they finding the two-minute videos?

So I'm trying to get it set up so that we can have links that our members can share as well.

But I'm still having him get those for me.

But currently, they're being set on Facebook, Twitter, you know, Google.

So if people Google things, they type in Bible or whatever, they're just popping up as advertisements.

And I'm telling you, like $40, 000 for Facebook advertising goes a very long way.

I mean, because they only charge us like when they click on it and so forth.

Effective Evangelism - Part 2: Proper Preparation 2

Father, we just pray that You would be in our hearts this afternoon, and also, more importantly, in our midst here, that You wouldn't just be in the room, but that You would draw us close to You, help us to gain the tools that we need to be effective in our churches.

We thank You for Your kindness and Your goodness, Lord.

Alright, so yesterday we covered a number of things.

We went through the website, and we talked about how to navigate through that, making sure, is there anyone that has not logged on their site yet?

So if you have not been able to log on to your site, you need to come and see me after.

No, I just meant, like, have you been able to access the website with your username and password.

Well, if you need to get on, you haven't been able to get on, then come and see me, okay?

So there's some things that I wanted to mention here before we get into some other things.

On July 10th, I want to write this down, on July 10th from, I know it's in the middle of the day, but from 10am till 2pm, there is a young man from the Center for Online Evangelism.

I told you guys yesterday about the online advertising that we're doing, and then some of the speakers.

The speakers have been invited to actually do a personalized advertisement video for their local site here.

There's a young man that has a very good talent with that who's doing that.

But this young man, part of the, I remember I told you yesterday I paid for them to do the advertising for us.

They're gonna do a, how do we call it, Facebook advertising webinar.

So he's gonna tell you the most effective means of advertising through Facebook and social media.

Now if you miss it, he's going to record it and we'll be posting it on the website.

I know a lot of people are working at that time But that was the best time that he could do it and that we could fit that thing together.

So But if you can join live It's online so you can just do it right at your house and we are I will put the link on the website, but maybe I should see if I can see what it says now.

I might have said 10 to 2, I apologize if I did.

And it may even let out a little bit earlier before that.

If you want to write this down, you can, but I'll also post a link on the website.

It's www.centerforonlineevangelism.org for onlineevangelism.org forward slash Facebook dash, not slash, dash advertising dash webinar.

And that will take you to sign up, but as I said I'll also post it on there.

So if you're interested in doing your own local Facebook advertising or social media advertising, you can go on there and he's going to give a little course on what is actually the most effective way to do that.

Because a lot of people get on there and they spend money and they don't know what they're doing and it becomes a little bit cumbersome and it's not super effective, but this young man has really, I'm very impressed with him, he really has studied and researched the very best ways.

He's already doing 1 here, but he's going to do 1 specifically for us as well, So if you'd like to join that.

Did they know any information about Google advertising?

Yeah, he does, and he's going to cover some of that as well.

It is centerforonlineevangelism.org forward slash Facebook dash advertising dash webinar.

And I'll post it on the website as well, so you'll see it under updates.

I just want to mention, yesterday I didn't mention this, but we are striving to put a strong emphasis on prayer before the series.

And I mean, there's more to do than pray, but if we do all those other things without prayer...

So how many of you have seen or are familiar with the prayer plan card that we've had?

Okay, so the pastors were supposed to bring them back to the churches.

I just want to remind you to keep that prayer plan going.

I'm hoping that on the card there are 2 sides.

There's a church prayer plan, and then there's a personal prayer plan.

So at the bottom there, there are some suggestions for that.

Not that you had to do these, but you could do them.

They're just ideas for daily, weekly, and monthly prayer with your church.

And I'm not going to go through all of that, but I just want to remind you about that to keep pressing that even more so as we're now about 3 months out from the series, encouraging the church to come together.

I wouldn't encourage trying to schedule special times to do it, but put an emphasis on what you're already doing.

At prayer meeting, at Sabbath school, at church board meetings, after the worship service, spend some time together praying specifically for Jesus on Prophecy, for the interests, etc.

Then in September, there's some suggestions for a prayer chain and other things that you guys can organize locally.

The way that I would always do it is I would have a 36-hour or a 48-hour prayer chain and have 30-minute or 1-hour intervals so that people can sign up and then they're responsible to wake up if it's in the middle of the night and pray during that hour, and then they go back to bed.

But if you've got 4 or 5 members in your church, you may have to figure something else out.

But you just kind of coordinate it based upon the size of your church.

And also, that 23rd of every month, a day of prayer and fasting.

Not to say that people have to do without food or whatever.

Everybody can do that on a personal level.

Eat simply or do without or fast from TV or whatever, but some type of prayer and fasting where you're able to get rid of some ordinary thing in your life that you do daily so that you can take that extra time for prayer and thoughtfulness about the series.

Then on that personal side, you remember there's the 5 names that people are encouraging the members to write, and they should have been doing this way back in January or February, praying for those people every day.

And then beginning August-ish, we're going to be inviting those folks.

Now, the other thing I want to talk about now is the seven-point invitation plan.

And, for those of you that were at the rally, you heard me talk about this, but it's very good for you to hear me talk about it again.

So we're going to talk about it a second time because this is, I believe, a very strong, important piece of our advertisement, which is our members inviting people to attend.

So if our members are not doing this, then the meetings...

Elder Finley gave a devotional today to our staff, and he was telling us, which we already know, that public advertising is becoming less effective.

It's still effective, but it's becoming less effective.

In the 80's, and I wasn't even in the church then.

But in the 80's and 90's, you could send out 20, 000 handbills and get 200-300 guests on your opening night.

Now you send out 20, 000 handbills and you might get 15-20.

I mean, 25-30 would be an excellent result.

Sometimes you'll send out 20, 000 and get 10 or 12.

And so public advertising is becoming less effective.

Social media is relatively effective now, however, a lot of people, they don't want to come to stuff anymore, unless it's a beer fest.

They say, well Send me the link and I'll watch it online when I'm in my pajamas at 8 o'clock.

They don't want to be dressed up and come to the meeting and that kind of thing and have to drive every night.

They just want to watch it in the luxury of their own home.

But here's the thing, I was talking to someone about this earlier.

Let's say you have 50 people attending your church.

How many bidders are you going to get from that?

Effective Evangelism - Part 3: Visitation & Decision

Father in Heaven, we thank You for the great privilege of being here together.

And we just ask Your Spirit to guide and direct us today as we continue on this preparation process for the meetings coming up this fall.

We ask Your Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts now.

Alright, so we want to talk a little bit today about organizational meeting.

And this is a very important thing I think that a lot of people miss and don't do.

But all along the way, you've been meeting with your team members, you've been orchestrating things, you've been preparing things, you've been talking to people from the front, doing training.

But then you want to do kind of a final run-through, kind of a preparation of the preparation, so to speak, and you want to meet together about 1 week to 2, no I wouldn't even say 2 weeks, about 1 week to 10 days before the meetings begin.

And it's very important that you do this because this is where everybody kinda comes together and you walk through everything and you don't want to do it too far out from the meetings because you don't want people to forget what happened and whatnot but you don't want to do it really the night before the meetings either because if there's something you missed or something you have to change or address you want to have some time to be able to do that okay so I recommend typically about a week before the meetings is usually the best.

Sometimes the calendar doesn't allow, you may need to do 10 days or even if you can a week but you can do 3 or 4 days ahead of time, very important to do that.

So here are some of the things that I cover in that meeting.

It's very important that you don't get too detailed.

In other words, you don't want to go through every nuance of every department, such as registration.

You don't want to talk about every minute detail, but you want a broad stroke of that, okay?

So I usually go over some very general things first, and then I let the departments talk about what they're going to do.

So I will be posting this on the website as well.

So we'll typically have a prayer and welcome.

What you don't want to do is have a 25 minute devotional, because people are already waxing.

I just do a quick prayer and a welcome and we get started right away.

And so what I often like to share is a summary of the meeting and what's happened so far.

You know, I just kind of talk about what we've done for advertising, maybe, you know, you've got some testimonies of people who are already signed up, pre-registered, you know, maybe you went door to door and you met somebody who was super excited about the meeting and I'll tell a few of those just to kind of get the people pretty stirred up and excited about it.

I think it's always important to continue to share testimonies.

And then I'll talk a little bit about the volunteers and that we're all volunteers and how much we appreciate those, everybody basically who are church members, who are supporting and participating in that meeting.

And we want to thank them for their time and their service and their sacrifice.

We're not doing this because it's a sacrifice, we're doing it because we're compelled by the love of Christ to win our fellow man to Him.

Sometimes people say, well, we come to evangelistic meetings and we always hear the same sermons, the same topics.

And we have to remind people that these evangelistic meetings are not specifically like a week of prayer.

They're not specifically designed for church members.

Although church members are blessed, every time we hear the messages, we're revived and we're drawn closer to the Lord.

But the preacher is not crafting these sermons and designing them to reach the hearts of Adventists.

They're reaching the hearts of the visitors, right?

And we want to remind them that visitors will be coming to the meetings because we're advertising and inviting and so forth, and how they see us is how they'll see Jesus.

So we want to remind the members that this is not a time to get grouchy with people or to guard the seat you sat in for 30 years.

Well, we want to get grouchy at the devil, right?

But I remember a couple years ago, we had an Unlocked Revelation in the church I was pastoring, And this 1 lady said, you know, this 1 man came in on the very first night.

He sat in the seat of the church where I've always sat.

And she said, I almost went right up to him and asked him to move.

And you would be amazed what happened with that.

Because this lady began to attend and sit beside this man every night.

And this man began to make decisions for Christ.

And it took him over a year and a half to be ready for baptism.

But he came to church every week and he still sat in her chair, unknowingly, for a year and a half that he was in her chair.

And she began to invite him over for Sabbath lunch every week with her family that was there.

And her and her daughter began to give this man Bible studies as they went through and eventually he was baptized And then they went through the discipleship handbook together when they got through that They started going through the desire of ages together, and it was just a miraculous thing And so, you know, we want to just constantly encourage the people.

And make sure that we tell and remind the people of that.

And of course, we want to emphasize the importance of prayer.

So then I start getting into some of the nitty-gritty with people, and you'll see a number of these in the following questions.

You know, typically, whenever you're doing an evangelistic meeting, You're always going to have people showing up early for the first few nights.

And so I always recommend people to get there about at least an hour ahead of the starting time, at least an hour ahead of the starting time before the meetings begin for the first 3 nights.

After that, you can come about 30 minutes or so ahead of time.

So it's especially important that greeters and registration people arrive early.

Because if people come and there's just no 1 at the door, then that's obviously a problem.

That almost was a problem, but the Lord helped with that.

Let me plug this in on the other side here.

You know, we always recreate the wheel whenever we do a seminar.

So is there, do you have any sheets that you can use that say readers, name and phone number, many of the literature tables.

So we have different jobs we want people to be.

And I think I finally put 1 on the computer and left it there because it said we do a mission every time.

If the conference has anything like that.

What people are going to serve, what night, what the number is.

Because you get there and it's like 6.30 and nobody's there.

You're like, well, who's supposed to be here?

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Effective Evangelism

Effective Evangelism - Part 4: From Milk to Meat

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1h 2m

Sound Doctrine