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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

2nd Quarter 2020: How to Interpret Scripture

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01- The Uniqueness of the Bible

Welcome to Sabbath School for April 4, 2020.

I'm Pastor Cameron DeBasior with the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department.

Well, this is the very first Sabbath of the new quarter and we have an exciting lesson study today all about the scripture, how to interpret it, how do we read and understand, and most importantly apply the Bible.

We have a very rich Bible study coming up, but before we dive into a study of God's Word, we want to remember that though the foundation of Sabbath school is Bible study and prayer, our focus should always be on mission.

We don't want to just receive God's Word, we want to give it to the world and this generation.

And the Seventh-day Adventist Church is a global denomination.

We have a mission through the whole globe.

And for our global mission focus, instead of turning to a pre-recorded mission spotlight, which are wonderful resources and you can find on our webpage at michiganssbm.org.

But today we have a special guest with us who knows something about global mission work, having been a missionary himself, and is now an administrator in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, so I wanna welcome Pastor Ted Wilson.

Thank you for being with us, Elder Wilson.

And we have a global mission specialist with us today.

And could you just tell us a little bit about your history with global missionary work and how you got there and how the Lord led in that.

And what a privilege it is to be able to connect with the Michigan Conference and all those who are studying God's word in these very, very unusual times when a lot of the people around the world are being affected so dramatically with this pandemic.

But what an opportunity to witness in appropriate ways to God's great, wonderful blessings on each of us.

And Michigan Conference is the first conference, predates even the General Conference.

So what an exciting thing in 1861, I think it was when Michigan Conference started.

From there, people went all over the world.

I mean, looking at Mark 16 and verse 15, Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

So from this humble beginning in Michigan Conference, And then in 1863, the General Conference, people have gone out.

Of course, 1874 was the first real missionary sent.

And many of us have followed in the Savior's wonderful footprints.

Personally, I had the privilege of growing up in the country of Egypt.

I love the people of the Middle East Still has a deep Resonating part in my heart and I've had the privilege of working in West and Central Africa Indian Ocean area that general area and then also in the Euro Asia division Which which covers essentially the former Soviet Union.

God has blessed us enormously as we've spent time in other cultures helping people to know the 3 angels' messages and Christ's soon coming and how church members can be involved personally in thinking globally but working locally.

Now, you bring up that interesting point because the Seventh-day Adventist church history is so rich with a missionary fervor, you know, and so many examples and wonderful stories are told.

But now we're kind of moving into a time, we've got a presence around the world, and praise the Lord for all the places he's planted us, but now we have this unique situation where people are told not to go out, not to do work.

And I think there's maybe some people saying, well, if we can't meet in church buildings, if we can't have large congregational programs, is the church just kind of on pause right now?

Or what's happening in mission work in these days?

God is blessing enormously, even in this very restrictive time during this coronavirus COVID-19 situation.

And I have to tell you, We need to pray earnestly for the people who have contracted it and also those who have lost loved ones.

And this is not the final crisis, but I'll tell you, it is a precursor to what is coming.

I believe that Jesus is coming very soon.

The signs in Matthew 24 and elsewhere are really showing us we're living just before Jesus coming.

So people need to use every method possible, using social media, even during this time, telephone calls, waving at people from a distance, sharing with them literature in some way that, you know, isn't going to transmit any germs or virus.

They need to think of innovative ways to do things.

In fact, it's interesting, we've just had some discussions through Zoom, which is a very good interactive conference calling, and we've had discussions about our strategic plan for 2020 to 2025, and we want to launch it this year because it was supposed to be launched at GC session, which is now postponed.

And so we were talking about this thing of, I will go.

That's the theme that's really going to be hitting hard.

No, we want people to go, but they're going to have to go in unique ways.

And I think that the Holy Spirit's going to help church members to know exactly how they can do that in a local setting, using telephones, using social media, increasing their connection with people in appropriate public health ways.

But God's going to open up all kinds of avenues.

And so this is a great opportunity to just check up on people.

I mean, as a local church elder in my local church, I've been given about 8 names of church members I need to call, just check on how they're doing.

I mean, you know, you can use it now for not just chatting about, you know, your personal things.

We also have telephone evangelism through what Adventist World Radio is doing, where you can actually use your telephone to then share Bible studies with people.

And I think it would be marvelous to check up on Adventist World Radio and telephone evangelism.

So what I hear you saying in a nutshell is that even from the general conference perspective, you're not looking at things and saying, now, oh, we won't go.

Now we're still urging people to go, but looking for ways to do it creatively, pray to the Lord, last the Holy Spirit to lead and use some of these technological tools that we have, whether it's radio or internet or telephone or text messaging, but there are still ways to give this precious message in these troublesome times.

I'm really proud of Michigan Conference and how you innovatively do things that are very creative to attract attention all across your territory, the state of Michigan.

I've been impressed in the past and I know God's going to bless you enormously.

And I want to thank you for being with us today.

It's so good to see that global perspective.

A lot of times people, especially now, they might be in their homes and thinking they're separate or isolated from their, but the body of Christ is still alive and well and active in this day in earth's history.

So thank you, Elder Wilson, for being with us today.

And we want to remind everyone that global mission work continues.

Please continue to pray for those missionaries on the front line.

Please continue to return tithes and offerings that can go to forward those works around the world and to be a personal missionary right where we are every day.

Thank you so much Elder Wilson for being with us.

Now as exciting and awesome as it is to hear about all the work that's going on around the world at this time, we still have a work to do right here in our territory of Michigan.

And for that we're so thankful that we have Shelly Ringstaff here with us, who is the Director of Adventist Community Services in the Michigan Conference.

Now, Shelly, community services is dormant right now or is it active and working even during this crisis?

We do have to be careful with the virus going around and being safe 6 feet apart.

Most of our community service centers are closed.

They if they have a clothing, but they usually have a number on the door.

So if people are in need of clothing, there's still a way to get that.

And there's an emergency number on the door.

Working together with the pastors and the deacon and deaconesses and checking on church members, we're still working hard.

But the biggest 1 that we're doing is the food pantries.

So to get this straight, clothing is still happening, but they're making some adjustments and in a lot of places either they're not doing it all or if they are doing it, there's like a you have to call ahead and certain, you know, things.

But food, what's happening with food right now?

People are being laid off, as you know, and they're making a decision, am I going to pay my rent or am I going to get food?

And if you've been to the stores, there's not a lot of food on the shelves at some times.

And so our community service centers are fully running.

We have around 20-ish centers all the time and about more than a dozen are still running and they are taking precautions having call-ins and then they a box of food and they put it outside the door or outside a parking lot and people are driving through and picking up their food.

So while the center itself might be closed you can't browse through things like you'd have that close contact it's nice to have but you can't have it now but the work still goes on.

So they're making these measures, like you said, putting boxes out or having pickup with the cars driving by.

Yeah, and they're also the center, the volunteers, of course, are staying that 6 feet apart, wearing masks at times and also gloves and sanitizing all the items that are going out to the community.

So the people are clean and the items are clean everything is doing everything up to the up to snuff for these regulations right now.

Vicki Griffin

Wes Peppers

02- The Origin and Nature of the Bible

Welcome to Sabbath School for April 11, 2020.

We have another exciting lesson study for you about how to interpret the scripture.

A lot of good information to get into there, but as our usual custom, before we get into the deep Bible study element of prayer and study of God's Word, we want to first begin with that laser-like focus on mission.

And today we have a special guest with us, Elder Wes Peppers is here from the Michigan Conference Evangelism Department.

And you've got a lot of things going on right now.

And in fact, why don't we talk first about Global Mission?

This is an interesting time to talk about global work when we're all kind of locked down.

But recently you had a pretty awesome experience.

We took a group of about 36 people from Michigan down to Cuba, and we actually got to witness the entire cycle of evangelism taking place in just a short time, about 10 days.

And so it was very exciting to see the people get excited about doing personal work, about sharing the gospel, and we're going to talk a little bit about that.

Okay, now tell me about this whole cycle of evangelism you got to see in a short order.

Sure, we had medical clinics, of course the 5 components being preparing the soil, planting the seed, cultivating, harvesting, and preserving.

And we did medical clinics there at several different churches in the area, 1 in each day of the week.

And we served over 2, 200 people with eye care and medical services that totaled almost a half a million dollars.

And so people could get eyeglasses, they could get their blood pressure checked, their glucose checked, a number of other things.

And it was just very exciting to see the people having their needs met.

We were working side by side with the church members and others there locally.

So it wasn't just us coming in to do a thing.

We were really assisting the local church in their work.

So you brought specialists with you in these fields, but you didn't just come in and do it in front of the local people.

You actually brought in their participation as well.

Yes, they were laboring right there beside us and they were making the connections with the people.

We gave out over 2000 pieces of literature that week.

And so people, every person that came to the clinic left with a book or a Bible or some kind of a spiritual component.

We were having prayer with them and we had on the form offering them Bible studies.

Now some people may not even believe this, but out of the 2, 200 plus people that we served, 989 people actually requested Bible studies.

Yes, it was very awesome, and the local people there are following up on those already, and the pastor and the members were just so excited.

1 thing I loved is that I would, the first day I handed the pastor the stack of requests and he said, uh-uh, hand them to the elders.

So I handed them to the elders and the elders began distributing them to the members and The members are the ones that follow up on those leads.

So you were meeting people's physical needs with the health and those kinds of ministries.

People were taking those Bible studies and following up with them, lay people doing that.

So what about the other, were there public evangelism involved or was that at a later time?

Each night We would have a public evangelistic series so we were inviting the people from the clinics to come to those and also the members beforehand had gone out inviting people and So we had you know, depending on the site, you know upwards of a hundred hundred 20 visitors per site Wow, And in some of the children's programs, we would have 150, upwards of 200 kids.

And maybe 10 or 15 of those would be Adventists.

The rest of them were non-Adventists from the village.

And, you know, people were making decisions all week.

And at the end of the week, we had 39 baptisms.

And we had 113 more decisions for baptism.

I mean, there may be hundreds of baptisms from those Bible study requests, and I'm just excited about how enthusiastic the members are in engaging in the work.

And of course, those members are now, you know, the baptisms.

They're going to get to see some of the results that you won't be there for.

They're continuing to train them and have those people then share with their friends.

Well, let's transition back here to Michigan a little bit because you had this opportunity to take a well it's only 90 miles off of Key West so it's foreign technically and it's a different language and whatnot but it's close to home relatively.

But then if I understand the timeline correctly as things were coming to a close at your work there, this whole pandemic scare was kind of washing over the world and hitting the United States, and it kind of led to some interesting exit from Cuba for you.

Yes, we actually had to leave just a few days early.

And so, but the window of time was perfect.

We came back to a totally different country.

And it was funny because our national president, our U.S.

President was calling people to come home and the Cuban government was saying everybody needs to get out.

So we were kind of in limbo there, 1 telling us to come, 1 telling us to go.

But nonetheless, you know, the Lord just had perfect timing there.

And we just saw hundreds of lives changed and transformed.

Then when we get back, this crisis is taking place in America.

And you know, as a conference, we don't want to just sit on our hands.

Our churches, they don't want to sit on their hands.

We want to be active and involved no matter what the situation in the world is.

And you know, at the general conference, there was supposed to be evangelistic meetings with It Is Written taking place all across Indianapolis.

Well, because there was the general conference session coming up this summer in Indianapolis and they wanted to have this big evangelistic push ahead of it.

But, you know, with the crisis and the COVID-19 and all that, those ended up getting canceled.

And we were deciding what we would do, but It Is Written went forward in faith and said, we're going to host an online evangelistic series.

And so they are going to broadcast this all across the United States, and they're inviting local churches to be involved.

Now, somebody might say, well, this sounds like 1 of the old Net series where they just flip on a switch and turn on 3ABN or whatever, and everybody just kind of sits and watches.

But this one's a little bit different in the sense that the local church is involved from the start to the finish.

The local churches that are involved have the opportunity to recruit Bible workers from their members, And the reality is that every member should be a Bible worker already.

And so we're going to put those to use in the virtual field on the Internet.

Chad Bernard

Mike Bernard

03- Jesus and the Apostles’ View of the Bible

Welcome to Sabbath School for April 18, 2020.

This is the third lesson in our second quarter all about how to interpret the scriptures.

We have a very exciting study today as we look at how Jesus and the early Christian leaders, the apostles, looked at scripture, how they used scripture and trusted scripture, and all of that's gonna be fantastic.

But before we get into that lesson study, we wanna go have our mission program.

And this week our mission spotlight is coming to us from Bulgaria in the Trans-European Division.

In the still, dark and early mornings, flour and water meet.

They rise with yeast and are shoved in an oven to be transformed by heat.

The aroma fills the air, sending an irresistible invitation to mouth-watering delights.

1 by 1, people come to order to socialize and laugh.

Every day, people of all ages and different ethnicities line up at this bakery, eager to savor delicious bread.

It takes loving hands to mix ingredients and press them together until the dough is ready to rise and grow.

It takes time and patience to cultivate trust and friendship, to warm their lives and invite them to follow Jesus.

At the Trapezia Global Mission Urban Center of Influence in Bulgaria.

Staff members offer visitors more than food.

Here, people find room to interact and participate in a variety of courses and activities.

As they make new friends, visitors are invited to become volunteers themselves.

This way, they can give back and help others too.

Dimitr is a regular volunteer who found purpose in Trapezia by tutoring math.

There are good people here and I developed good relationships with different people.

I feel a strong desire to learn more about God and the Bible.

I have this idea that I have to help, and if I can, I'm going to do it.

He Started as a customer, then he became a volunteer, and now he is a baptized Seventh-day Adventist.

Like Dimitri, many people who come to Trapezia find the bread of life.

The owners of Trapezia have seen how centers of influence like this can work as a platform to engage the community and form friendships.

God gave us this place to keep us close to people.

God showed us that we needed a place where people felt accepted and at home.

That's why we established a bakery because it smells like home.

The leaders at Trapezium invite you to pray for this growing group of new believers.

Please pray for this urban center of influence and many others around the world that find creative ways to introduce people to Jesus.

Thank you for supporting urban centers of influence through Global Mission.

All right, so we saw that inspiring mission spotlight from Bulgaria, some pretty creative stuff they're doing with that, you know, center of influence.

Maybe we can learn some lessons for that for our own territory.

But speaking of our own territory, the Lord has entrusted us with a mission work right here domestically in the Michigan Conference, and I'm so happy that we have Pastor Chad Bernard is with us today, the Youth Director of the Michigan Conference.

And, you know, typically, the Youth Department is off doing all kinds of busy things, I assume, right?

But what's, what is the Youth Department?

And then we'll transition to what are you doing now?

Well, I have a fantastic team, excited to work with Pastor Craig Harris, and his focus has and continues to be on Pathfinders.

And we are blessed, I think, with, no disrespect to anyone else, but 1 of the premier, if not the premier Pathfinder director in the division.

I was going to say, he's been telling stories lately too.

And my daughter like is, when's Pastor Craig's next story?

And whenever we talk on the phone, she interrupts and says, when's the next story?

And we have Kathy Oliver, who is our administrative assistant, and she just helps.

She's the engine that just, you know, makes it all happen.

So, and then I work with local church ministry.

There are events are important part of youth ministry, whether it's, you know, teen snow outing or field work or different types of initiatives and events.

Those are important, but really our goal is and our desire has always been to strengthen the local church, to help young people, that local church level, to work with intergenerational ministry, where they're working with people of all ages and just passionate about knowing more about Jesus, sharing that with their community and loving each other.

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Series

2nd Quarter 2020: How to Interpret Scripture

02- The Origin and Nature of the Bible

Transcript

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