A brief recap of the beginnings of much of what is now lay-led supporting ministry, often referred to as self-supporting ministry. By reviewing the nature of the earliest work and the characters of those who engaged in it, we can learn much of what will lend success to our current efforts to share Christ in the Marketplace.

ASI 2020: Three Angels' Messages - Our Urgent Calling

<p>A brief recap of the beginnings of much of what is now lay-led supporting ministry, often referred to as self-supporting ministry. By reviewing the nature of the earliest work and the characters of those who engaged in it, we can learn much of what will lend success to our current efforts to share Christ in the Marketplace.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

OCI Special Interest Track

Nicolae Dan

Sanitariums: Role & Connection with the Three Angels’ Messages

We want to welcome each of you to this seminar.

We're going to be talking about sanitariums and their role, especially in connection with the 3 Angels messages.

And I'm going to be here to moderate any of the questions that you might want to ask.

And we're going to go ahead and take care of that for you.

And we trust that you will be blessed as you listen to the presentation And I want to especially welcome Dr.

Nick Dan that is with us, that's going to do the presentation.

Actually, here in Romania, from where I'm speaking, it's afternoon.

But nonetheless, we just need to ask God to bless each 1 of us.

If you don't mind, maybe we should start with a prayer or you need to say anything?

It's a little bit strange, you know, that we're set up to have this seminar and see nobody in the face.

Yes, we're doing a little bit different than we normally do and yes, I think that a prayer would be perfectly appropriate so why don't we go ahead and start with a prayer would you like to pray?

Yes, our Heavenly Father we need your presence and we need your blessings not only as we speak and as we ponder about the role of sanitariums and the connection with the 3 angel messages But also we realize the task before us is so huge and we are so weak.

Please remind us that you are strong and this is not about us, it's about you.

And bless this movement and bless each 1 who would like to make a contribution, who loves you and want to see other people in your kingdom.

So just for those that are joining us, if you have any questions, feel free to type those in the chat box and we will take those throughout the presentation and try to answer them the best we can.

Well, when, you know, I did a couple of Zoom meetings, but, you know, like I said, it's a little bit different than with a live audience.

And so I didn't know who is the moderator, but when I heard that is Wine Atwood, so I felt at ease because, you know, I know you now for 30 some years.

Back in the early 90s, I was in Wildwood with my wife, and your father was the president.

So you grew up in this environment, so you know about what we talk about.

And both my wife and me were greatly blessed by interaction with your family.

So I praise the Lord for the opportunity we had to meet your family, your father.

For those who watch, my wife, we've been married for almost 30 years now.

And then we have 2 children, Michael and Krista.

And since we got married, we talked about the sanitarium.

We got involved in setting up and founding the Hergelia Lifestyle Center.

I guess it was the first sanitarium in the communistic world.

So we've been blessed working for a sanitarium.

So that's what I'm going to talk about now.

Of course, I'd like to bring greetings from our team at Hergelia.

Without the team and Without these people, I think much of our knowledge or whatever expertise we might have would amount to nothing.

I think we are indebted to each 1 of the workers, which brings a great contribution to what is happening at Hergelia.

We just finished a session today and another 1.

I think we'll have a full house starting Sunday.

He was born before the Second World War, and in 1936.

And then a few years after the end of the Second World War, he came in touch with an Adventist, with an Adventist family, and they gave him a book.

It was not the whole medical ministry, just some parts of this book.

But he was so impressed by what he read there.

He had some health issues because of some medical mistakes.

Somebody, a physician prescribed the wrong medication for whatever he had.

And so he had some health problems, and reading what he read in the medical ministry really helped him to get back on good health.

And so he was so impressed that from there, he began to study the Bible closer.

And finally he was baptized into the Adventist church.

Now being somebody who came from a main religion background, he really took very seriously whatever he read.

And because he was impressed with the medical aspect of the Atlantis, he really read the books and he came across this idea of sanitarium.

It's very difficult to say how dreams or how a calling is born in the human heart, but evidently the Holy Spirit, God, who knows everything, you know, we as human people, we human beings, we can hardly kind of control maybe 123 variables.

But God is infinite, and he can control all these variables, and he knows, and he calls certain people for certain ministries.

And so he kind of spoke to his heart and he developed this idea, this dream of a sanitarium.

But of course, it was impossible during communism, it was the iron carton and nothing of personal initiative or private fashion could be developed.

But over the And over the time, as the family, he established a family and then children came into the world.

He shared with us places and it was like a fabulous, like a special place, like Battle Creek or Loma Linda.

Of course, we didn't know much about it or even see it.

But anyway, he spoke about that and he used many natural treatments on us when we had a fever or a flu or something like that.

And everything went fine with the 3 children, but when my father was about 44 and my mother was 40, they had the last child, I guess you can see it in the picture, Christian, my little brother.

My older sister was 15 and Rodica was 13.

And out of the blue sky, this happy family was stricken by what probably our non-Atheist relatives thought that is a curse.

Namely, in the morning after my mother gave birth to Christian, she had a massive stroke.

And she was, you know, hemiparesis, half of the body became that, and she could not speak, she could not recognize anybody.

So overnight, our family got into the worst crisis.

Magdalena became overnight a mother, and Rodica had to help.

And there were difficult months because my mother after 2 weeks after she gave birth, the physician said, okay, You should go, she should go because you could not speak with her.

She should go to the rehab because rehab needs to be done early.

And you take the kid home and then, you know, just, you know, give him milk and so on.

But mother didn't want the little she could understand.

And so she came home and she could not move.

So she wanted somebody to be overnight with her because she was afraid.

Maybe some of you know that after you have a massive stroke, you develop depression, anxiety, and so on.

And so my father and the girls, they divided a night in 3, and they were there near my mother, and from 4 to 4 hours, they put Christian to her breast to feed.

So for the outside world, especially those—because my father and my mother were the only Adventists in the family.

But after 4 months or so, my mother, you know, Christian grew, my mother was able to go to the rehab and began a very slow process of rehab.

And over a few years, she recovered almost completely.

And part of this was diet, part of this was natural remedies, and of course, most of it was faith and God's blessing.

But then, in the same time when she got the stroke, not, you know, in the same time pretty much, my father lost his job because he wouldn't go to...

So he was managing a few restaurants in the city, several restaurants, and he was very faithful.

He was very, actually, those were the only ones who were open because the rest of them, you know, got in bankruptcy.

But anyway, somebody wanted his job, and during the Communists, if you wouldn't go to the job during the Sabbath, because we used to work 6 days, you could lose.

James Hartley

Practical Health Evangelism

We'd like to welcome each of you to this ASI seminar.

We're delighted to be with you and we're glad that you've joined us.

And we're talking about a very important topic, 1 of being able to have practical health evangelism.

I think that in our world today many people are very interested in health and in fact in a world where people are maybe less and less interested in spiritual things the right arm of the gospel is a wonderful method to be able to reach out to people.

And today we I'm delighted to welcome James Hartley, a friend and longtime acquaintance.

We're happy to be working together this afternoon.

We look forward to everything that you're going to present to us and I just want to let our viewers know that if you'd like to interact with us feel free to use the chat box.

It's there for you if you have questions you'd like to ask you can certainly do that and if you have comments feel free to post them there as well and before we start we're going to just have a prayer together if you'd like to bow your heads let's pray Father in heaven we thank you so much for the privilege of being together this afternoon.

And it might be other time zones in other parts of the world.

Thank you that we can be united together in this virtual world.

And yet, we are all longing for that very real world that you are creating for us, a better 1, 1 where we can live for eternity.

And during the time that we're here, Lord, we pray that you would guide us and direct us, help us to know how we can use health in evangelism to reach out to souls that need physical healing, but that also need spiritual healing.

Thank you so much for James and for his willingness to share with us this afternoon.

And I just pray that you would inspire him, that you would give him just the right words to say, that you would help us all to know how we can be more effective in soul winning through health evangelism.

We thank you and we pray these things in Jesus name.

So I'm speaking to you from the campus of Wildwood Lifestyle Center, that's where LIGHT headquarters is.

I'm serving right now as president for LIGHT.

LIGHT stands for the Lay Institute for Global Health Training.

And I'm also serving as vice president for Wildwood Lifestyle Center.

This has been a home of mine for the last 20 years.

And I'm very passionate about the health message and its use in evangelism, because I believe that's how I became a Seventh-day Adventist and joined the church.

Originally, I was raised in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Roman Catholic.

I went through 12 years of Catholic education.

To be very honest, I did not even know 1 Protestant.

I did not have 1 Protestant friend and I've never even met a Protestant until I was 20, 21 years old in some of my travels.

And I met me and my friend, met some Seventh Day Adventists while we were volunteering on an organic farm in Italy.

And I'll just kind of say this as introduction.

So you kind of see a little bit about myself and why I think health is so important and is so powerful.

So I actually have a picture here of the house and the farm that we volunteered at in central Italy, which is outside of This house here is located not too far from Bologna, and it's kind of up from Rimini, if you know where that is, or San Marino, which is a whole country of itself, kind of a city on a hill.

That house was built in the 13th century, and Nanadav and his family moved from the city and bought this old house in a kind of historic area.

Francis of Assisi's monastery is like just a short walk down the road.

And another picture here from that, this is a picture from the house.

So this is farmland, farm country, and this is an organic farm about, just above the pollution line.

I believe it was around 3000 feet elevation.

They tried to eat most of, mostly just from the food that they grew.

And I just had a life-changing experience there.

I was not into Christianity at the time at all.

I was really into more Eastern philosophies.

And I was hanging out with a lot of hippie groups and following the bands around and just kind of searching for truth.

They would read the Bible every morning with us before we'd go out to work on the farm.

They, we studied through, I remember the gospel of Mark and just, I just had a great experience.

They, they, they, they read from the desire of ages, I remember, and just talking about Christ, you know, while living such a good lifestyle, I, you know, I was smoking, drinking, terrible schedule.

I was living a pretty horrible lifestyle before going there.

But when I went there, I just quit everything.

And I said, look, I just wanna experiment with how you guys live.

And so, I'm not gonna smoke, drink, drugs, nothing here.

I wanna eat the food you eat, live how you live and just see what it's like.

And so, you know, I was really happy to do that was and it really changed my life.

So you know, I felt like my energy levels returning like I had never before.

I had smoked pot every day for like 4 years.

And I remember the thought came to me, I was like, man, I think I forgot how it felt to be healthy.

I don't know if I was ever healthy, but I was feeling really good on this farm.

I was just drinking water, lots of it, sleeping good, regular schedule, all of that.

So it's like I was a, kind of like I was a lifestyle guest on this farm property.

And you know that, you know, going there to learn country living, going there to learn a better way to eat, going there to learn, you know, how to live better and more healthy and more in what I kind of saw as more in tune with nature.

It definitely was, broke down barriers with me to, to, to Christianity.

I wasn't really too impressed with Christianity from what I could see, the Catholic circles that I hung out with, what I could see on TV with televangelists and all of that sort of stuff.

There wasn't anything in there that was, I was even open to, but somehow this family got through to us.

Me and my friend both ended up getting baptized.

The project there was kind of somewhat affiliated with Wildwood.

And when I came back to the US, it's kind of a long story, but I ended up coming down to kind of check Wildwood out and look into it a little bit more.

I was not a Seventh-day Adventist yet, though I did want to be a Christian.

And when I was down here in Wildwood, is when I got more Bible studies.

I was volunteering on a farm down here, but going to the Wildwood Church.

I surrendered my heart to God and I decided that I would serve him the rest of my life as a missionary.

That I just completely changed all my plans.

I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.

But as far as pursuing any other career, I was in an engineering program in college, but I had taken a year off to kind of figure out what I really wanted to do.

I wasn't that motivated about engineering.

It was just kind of my path, the path I was on, cause I was better at math classes, I guess.

But, you know, to have purpose and to believe that the Bible was inspired and that heaven was real and God was real.

I didn't know what else to live for except that.

So since then, that was 20 years ago, more than, I've been trying to serve faithfully.

I've always been willing to leave Wildwood, but the Lord just still has me here.

Steven Grabiner

Extraordinary Leadership Needed

We are so happy that you're here with us and we want to welcome you to this presentation.

I'm here with Stephen Grabner, who is the president of Outpost Centers International, and we're delighted that each of you have joined us here as well with the ASI for this ASI virtual convention.

We are so happy that even though we can't meet in person that we're able to meet over the internet and we're happy as well that we can hear wonderful presenters that can share with us some very important messages and seminars.

And today we're going to be, Stephen is going to be sharing with us the extraordinary leadership that is needed.

And I'm looking forward to what he's going to share with us.

And I just wanted to tell those that are watching us that if you want to chat with us, feel free right where you can watch this seminar, you'll see over on the sidebar there's a chat area and some people have already sent some messages, so feel free to to chat with us, ask your questions, and we'll be happy to take those at the end of the presentation.

Thank you so much, Stephen, for being with us.

Let's begin together with a word of prayer, asking for God's presence to give us wisdom and guidance.

Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity to meet, although not together personally, to meet virtually.

We do pray that your spirit would bless both the communications and the technology, that everything would go well, that each 1 of us might be encouraged and motivated to improve in our leadership.

So again, our title today is Extraordinary Leadership Needed, and it's part of the OCI track with the 3 angels messages.

And we do live in extraordinary times and unquestionably extraordinary leadership is necessary for today.

And we think we look at the world, we look at the political situation here in the United States, in other parts of the world, we can really see not only in the church, but just globally, this great lack and this great need for leaders of character, leaders of vision, leaders that are able to transcend the various difficulties that are confronting each 1 of us.

And that's really gonna be what we're gonna be looking at today.

Got a number of aims that I wanna try to reach through in our time together.

First of all, I want to spend some time discussing the importance of leadership and how leadership impacts all lines of our organizations.

And then we're going to spend a bit of time ferreting out what those qualities are that make for extraordinary leaders and try to really clarify what are some key aspects and what I'm gonna be sharing.

A lot of it's very research-based and so it will be some good information for you, good data for you, and then we're going to end on some tips for your own personal leadership development and then we'll take some questions and answers if there are any.

Let me just say, as part of OCI, strengthening leaders around the world is part of what we do.

I'm also a certified leadership coach and spending time with leaders over the years has really taught me the importance of focusing on leadership development.

And we see this again, as I've mentioned, across all spheres of the church, both in our local congregations, in our conferences, unions, everywhere there's a need for leaders to grow in their skillset.

And so let's kind of go through, I have a couple of quotations I want to start with.

This one's from volume 2 of the testimonies, page 645.

Ellen White writes here that, "'The people, ' speaking in a church setting, "'will seldom rise higher than their minister.

A world-loving spirit in him has a tremendous influence upon others.

So here's a very important principle, that the character of the leader, you know, sets a certain bar, sets a certain tone.

And it's very rare for people to rise higher than the tone or the bar that's set by the leader.

So again, that really is an impactful thought for each 1 of us.

Continuing, she writes that the people make his deficiencies an excuse to cover their own world-loving spirit.

So she's talking very particularly here about the minister who tends toward the world, but we can extrapolate from that, you know, this principle, move out from that and thinking that the strengths of a leader oftentimes impacts the organization.

So that becomes the ceiling of where team members grow to.

So this is a really important thought for those people that are in leadership.

You know, what am I doing individually to grow and how am I promoting growth among those that are part of my team?

And as I've already mentioned, leadership impacts all aspects of an organization.

I don't want to imply that leadership only exists at the top of an organization.

If we're kind of using that hierarchical model, you know, we might say, refer to a president of an organization or a pastor in a church or a conference president or a union administrator.

It'd be wrong for us to think, and I'm not trying to imply that leadership only resides in those key positions.

Leadership can be very diffuse in an organization.

There are plenty of individuals who exercise their influence and their leadership in a secondary or tertiary role in an organization.

However, our focus today really are on the main leaders of the organization and how they impact the strength and the growth of their organizations.

So another quotation, this is from volume 7 of the Testimonies, page 117.

Series

OCI Special Interest Track

Laity & the Three Angels’ Messages

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary Sessions

Learning From Work

1h 44m

Our Urgent Call: BUSINESS and the Three Angels' Messages

How Non-Profits Can Thrive in the Midst of Major World Crises

1h 14m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Evangelism

Gospel-Medical Evangelism: 1891-1900 and Today

1h 9m

Seminar: Management

Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy

58m

United

Breaking Barriers & Building Bridges

1h 18m

Our Urgent Call: SHARE the Three Angels' Messages

And I Saw….

1h 15m

Personal Ministries

Special Forces Training - Part 4: Community Service

37m

ASI 2014 Plenary Sessions

Living and Sharing the Three Angels’ Message

1h 58m

ASI 2011 Seminar: Finishing Strong

The Power of a Man

1h 13m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Business / Nonprofit

Growing a Sustainable Ministry

1h 14m

Transformed

Only by His Spirit

1h 17m

Practical

The Bible According to Little Red Riding Hood

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine