A personal reflection on foundations laid.

Michigan Virtual Camp Meeting 2020: Forward to the Finish

<p>A personal reflection on foundations laid.</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>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Essential

Jeremy Hall

01 Realigned Just in Time

We're going to have prayer in a moment and I would ask you whether you're here or at home that you would pray that the Spirit of God would be with us this morning and that He would lead us to exactly what He wants to deliver, not me, because I'm a frail human being and it's only through the power of God that we can ever accomplish anything good.

Father in heaven, I need you to hide me behind the cross.

I'm a sinner, weak, and frail, yet your Word, Lord, promises that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us.

So Lord, I need a strengthening this morning, and I pray that you would bless the words that will be shared, that it will be only your Holy Spirit delivering them and not me.

The word essential has been used quite a bit over the last few months.

You've heard about it in the news, I'm sure, this concept of essential workers.

Because of the challenges that we've been facing with COVID, we have seen this word termed to define what is important to be continuing to be carried on, whether it be grocery stores or hospitals or law enforcement.

Any of those kinds of things have been deemed essential, meaning that without them, certain difficulties would arise.

As a matter of fact, the Economic Policy Institute in May of 2020 talked about some of the essential workers that exist.

There are over 55 million essential workers out of the 350 some million individuals in our country.

Some of the job descriptions that you would maybe be interested to know is food and agriculture, obviously, emergency services, transportation, warehouse delivery, industrial, commercial, residential facilities, healthcare, government, communication, IT, financial sector, energy sector, waste and water management, thankful for that, and so forth and so on.

The word essential means absolutely necessary, indispensable.

And being a teacher, I'll give you some examples.

An engine is essential to the movement of an automobile.

Have you ever had your engine go out in your car?

Water is essential to the experience of swimming.

You can't tell someone that you have gone swimming if there isn't any water.

A parachute is essential for the parachuter to land safely.

A brush is essential to the artist for painting.

A tongue is essential for the speaker to speak.

The heart is essential for the body to live.

A core message is essential to carrying forward a mission.

And friends, I would say to you, I would propose to you this morning that I believe the Seventh Theovenous Church is God's essential church to herald his end-time message to a dying world.

And in companionship with that, I would also propose to you that the mission of Adventist education is an essential and relevant part of the Seventh-day Adventist church's end-time work of spreading the 3 angels' message to a dying world.

If you look at the book Education, it is replete with reasons and rationale as to why Adventist education is an essential part of the church's mission in these last days.

What is the object of Adventist education?

To restore in man the image of his maker, to bring him back to the perfection in which he was created, to promote the development of body, mind, and soul that the divine purpose in his creation might be realized.

Isn't the mission of the church all about redemption?

So, if our stated blueprinted mission in the book Education is consistent with the church's mission, then Adventist education is a relevant part of the church's eschatological work.

If this, based upon what I've said, is true.

Why does Adventist education currently have approximately 30% of the church's children attending?

Why does the Adventist educational system currently only have approximately 30% of the church's children attending Adventist schools?

Now this 30% has stayed relatively consistent.

It has ebbed and flowed throughout the history of Adventist education.

I believe the highest percentage was in 1976, somewhere up in the 40 percentage point area.

But if Adventist education is truly connected and correlated with the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as it was ordained to be and stated in the book Education, why is there approximately 70% of our families that are not investing in that experience for their own children?

I'm going to share a little bit with you relative to that question because I think there are, there is rather a multifaceted explanation.

Turn with me in your Bibles if you would to 2 Kings, 2 Kings chapter 5.

I really appreciated the presentation that Dr.

Duane Kovrig here at Andrews University did, relative to this specific passage and story as it relates to Adventist education, and also a presentation I heard by Dr.

Baldwin from Andrews University relative to this story.

Incidentally, I just want to say last summer I had the opportunity of attending the Andrews University leadership orientation, and I was tremendously blessed by that.

I was tremendously impacted by the professors in that program and the spiritual focus that they brought to the point of leadership and what it means to be a Christian leader.

Kovrig actually is a professor in that department.

Now Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He was also a mighty man of valor, but, the Bible says, he was a leper.

And the Syrians had gone out on raids and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel.

Then she said to her mistress, if only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria, for he would heal him of his leprosy.

What an impact that little girl must have had on her family that she was serving in order for them to view her advice as so credible as to have Captain Naaman go to his own king who then forwarded him on to Israel.

And Naaman, verse 4, went in and told his master saying, thus and thus said the girl who is from the land of Israel.

Then the king of Syria said, Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.

So he departed and took with him 10 talents of silver, 6000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing.

Then he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, Now be advised when this letter comes to you, that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy." Can you imagine?

You know, when it comes to a crisis, We basically have 2 choices.

Then it happened, in verse 7, when the king of Israel read the letter that he tore his clothes and said, Am I God to kill and make alive, that this man sends a man to me to heal him of his leprosy?

Therefore, please consider and see how he seeks a quarrel with me.

So it was when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Why have you torn your clothes?

Please let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.' Then Naaman went with his horses and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house, and Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, "'Go and wash in the Jordan 7 times, and your flesh shall be restored to you and you shall be clean." But Naaman became furious and went away and said, "'Indeed, ' I said to myself, "'he will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and heal the leprosy." You see friends, the human heart tends to want to prescribe to God how God should heal us of our infirmities.

But any time we take that posture, we potentially risk a great catastrophe.

And that not only applies to us individually, it applies to us corporately as well, in whatever entity we're talking about.

Whenever we decide how God should reply and respond to our need, we have just become God and that, or tried to become God rather, which is incredibly dangerous.

No, the only thing we should do is follow the counsel that God has given us, Because we know that God cares for us, and He is seeking our greatest good.

And if we follow Him and set our own concepts aside, we will always come out healed.

And isn't that the thing that we desire the most in life, to be healed.

The Bible doesn't say he was just angry or frustrated.

Are not the Abana and the Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

You see, the comparison of these 2 rivers, if you were to look at them, was quite different from an external perspective.

The rivers of Damascus were clear and transparent and fresh and clean.

The Jordan River, even if you looked at some pictures today of the Jordan River, you would see that it's muddy, that it appears dirty, that there isn't any way if you bathe in the Jordan River you would end up becoming clean.

And yet God told Naaman to bathe in the Jordan River.

02 Bags with Holes

Well friends we have a very important topic today and as I said yesterday I Cannot think of a more important time For the existence of Adventist education than today.

There is nothing more important than I can think of for us to be doing than to be raising up our children to meet their soon-coming Savior.

And Adventist education, in conjunction with the home and the church plays a vital role in that process of bringing up our children.

Buckle up And let's ask the Lord to be with us.

Oh Father in heaven, you know that I don't have anything to offer, but you have everything to offer.

And so again Lord, I ask that you would hide me behind the cross, that you would cleanse me from sin, that you would make me a fit vessel to share the words that you have prepared.

Well the dictionary defines investment to mean the investing of money or capital in order to gain profitable returns as interest, income, or the appreciation in value.

Most people are quite interested in investments.

The NASDAQ, the Dow, is up this many points today, and it's in green.

The market's going down, and people watch this and are very interested because they have invested funds in the stock market and they want to see a return.

Some people invest in different things that are not necessarily monetary.

If you're familiar with the name Jay Leno, he has 169 cars that he views as an investment, a caretaker of these these valuable antique cars.

We have a dear friend of our family who invests and has antique clocks.

Some people invest in paintings, and so on, and so on.

The greatest challenge, however, is knowing whether or not an investment is going to bring a good return.

Is it something that when I put in this chunk of money, I'm going to see a greater return of money once I sell the item, the stock, or whatever it may be.

The million dollar question on the minds of most investors is that very thing.

Am I going to come out ahead, or Am I going to come out ahead, or am I going to come out behind?

Some individuals have stressed and worried so much about it that it has motivated them to try to set themselves up so that an investment can be profitable to them even if it means they have to do something illegal.

You've probably heard of the name Bernie Madoff and the Ponzi scheme that fraudulently was set up to bring money in and yet the money was not being invested legitimately and the returns given to the investors, no new investor money that was coming in was actually being used to pay dividends to other investors, and in the process, billions and billions of dollars were being stolen from individuals who were investing.

Prosecutors estimated the fraud to be worth $64.8 billion based on the amounts in the accounts of Madoff's portfolio.

Estimated cash losses were $17.5 billion.

Now, thankfully, about 76% of this 17.5 billion was recovered, however 25% of that, which you can do the calculation, is a lot of money.

I can imagine that people looking at the Madoff investment firm never would have imagined, based on his portfolio, based on his status, based on everything that was happening with his firm, that they were going to give their money and see it vanish and evaporate into thin air.

Chris Zane, however, is a different story.

Chris Zane, at a very, very young age, 12 as a matter of fact, began fixing bicycles in his parents' East Haven, Connecticut Garage.

And at 16 years of age, while he was working for a bike shop, the gentleman was going to close up his business, and Chris Zane, at 16 years of age, went to his parents and said, I want to take over that bike shop.

He borrowed $23, 000 from his grandfather.

That grandfather must have seen some real potential in that young man.

He saw something in his grandson that motivated him to believe that he would be able to make something of this business that had just failed.

So Chris took over this business, his mother tended the store while he was at school, and in his first year he racked up $56, 000 in sales.

And Now currently, Chris Zane, decades later, is expecting to bring in $21 million just a few years ago.

The growth rate of his business is seeing 23.5% increases over the last 30 years.

I'd like to invest in something like that, wouldn't you?

You know where I'm going with this, don't you?

I want to propose to you this morning that Adventist education is 1 of the greatest investments that you can ever make, the returns of which are far more valuable than the perishable dollars and cents of this life because you are investing in a life not only to see the dividends in this world but more importantly you are investing in a life that is going to have an impact throughout eternity.

Can you think of a better investment than that?

Ellen White knew the value of Adventist education, which is why she said this in Gospel Medical Messenger, December 3, 1913.

She said, in localities where there is a church, a school should be established.

If there are no more than 6 children to attend.

A teacher should be employed who will educate the children in the truths of the Word of God, which, " notice this, which are so essential in these last days.

And this was written in 1913, over a hundred years ago.

Ellen White was saying it was important because it was the last days then.

How about now as we near the coming of Jesus, even more so?

She said it is essential in these last days that these schools should be established.

And then she goes on to say in which it is so important for them, these students, to understand.

She also says in Child Guidance, page 307, wherever there are a few Sabbath keepers, the parents should unite in providing a place for a day school where their children and youth can be instructed.

They should employ a Christian teacher who as a consecrated missionary shall educate the children in such a way as to lead them to become missionaries.

Let teachers be employed who will give a thorough education in the common branches, the Bible being made the foundation and the life of all study." What textbook did she say?

The Bible being made the foundation of the life and the life of all study.

Over the years, since the inception of Adventist education, we have seen some tremendous investors.

People who have been called by God to use their means to enhance the work of training young people to know Jesus and to share Jesus with a dying world.

1 of those individuals is someone that I'm acquainted with and maybe many of you are.

Arthur Weaver, 13 years ago, had a burden on his heart to start the Christian Education Scholarship Endowment.

And for those of you in the Michigan Conference, you may be familiar with this endowment.

This endowment was set up to help support financially students that would have challenges being in our schools if this endowment did not exist.

And over the past 13 years, hundreds of thousands of dollars and many students have been able to attend both at the elementary, the secondary, and even the collegiate level Adventist educational institution.

You should hear the letters that I receive because once a year we get together with Dr.

His sons are also a part of it, we get together and we talk about the endowment, we put work into the endowment, and then applications are taken and reviewed and the funds are dispersed.

And at these meetings, we review some of the thank you letters that come in from individuals who have benefited their children or even the students themselves from the opportunity to have an Adventist education as an option.

Since the passing of my husband, it is only by God's grace that my daughter has been able to remain in an Adventist school.

Thank you for helping to answer our prayers.

Another 1, what an amazing opportunity you have given my children.

Now more than ever it is important for children to be trained up according to God's will.

My husband and I are so grateful for your generosity.

Without your support, we financially would not have been able to send them there.

God has answered our fervent prayers through your help.

Thank you for believing it is God's will to give our children this education and for making an eternal difference in their lives.

May the Lord richly bless all of you, this parent said.

And lastly, from a student who wrote a thank-you note, I would like to thank you again for caring about my situation and giving me the help I need.

It is always a pleasure to have God in our lives and to help people who are having troubles.

But you know, there's only so much funding available.

Even though this fund is able to give out approximately $100, 000 a year, we are still falling short in our ability to meet all of the needs.

You see, my secretary, Sherry, she will put the list together of all the applications, and then we will look at how much money is available, and we are never able to give funds to every single applicant.

We have to go down the list and have a cutoff, unfortunately, because there isn't enough funds to meet all of the needs.

In my almost 2 decades, friends, of working in Adventist education, it is hard for me to remember a time where there have not been financial challenges for our institutions.

I remember when I was principal of Indiana Academy, we experienced the same thing.

When my business manager, Lyle Litzenberger, and I sat down and he had done a study across a spectrum of a few years, looking at the financial situation, in even 1 year's difference, from 1 year to the next, Indiana Academy families went from 50% being able to pay tuition fully to 20% in 1 year.

And that trend is not isolated to 1 situation.

03 The Cross, The Quality, The Message

Well, today we're going to go a little more academic.

We're gonna go to the classroom a little bit more today.

As if you've been tuning in over this week, you know that the first day we talked about the priority of Adventist education, both from a familial standpoint in the choices that we make and avoiding the choices of the rivers of Damascus in the story of Naaman and the priority and the blessing that exists in the River Jordan.

Yesterday we talked about the priorities and the need that we have as a people to shed the Laodicean condition and make sure that all the resources that we have, all of the commitment that we have is going to support the work of the church before Jesus comes.

And today, we're going to go a little bit deeper into the philosophical picture that God has given and ordained for Adventist education in its inception in 1872 that carries itself all the way through to today.

Gracious Father, we just thank you so much for your blessings.

We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity that we have had this week to draw closer to you.

And though the devil has tried to challenge us with obstacles, you have overcome them.

And we're so grateful that we can still meet here together, physically, but Lord, also in utilizing technology to reach out across the globe.

And we pray that your Holy Spirit would fall heavily upon us, pray Lord that you would anoint my lips with a coal from the altar of heaven, and hide me, Lord, again behind the cross.

This presentation this morning serves as an operational vision for the Michigan Conference Education Department.

It is based on core principles found in the book, Education, And these philosophical principles have been translated into 3 basic practical objectives that we propose should undergird every program in our educational system.

You see, Adventist education has a very distinct philosophical approach.

Notice what Ellen White says in the book education.

Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range.

There is a need of a broader scope, a higher aim.

True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study.

It means more than a preparation for the life that now is.

It has to do with the whole being and with the whole period of existence possible to man.

And notice this, it is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers.

It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for higher joy of wider service in the world to come.

Additionally, Education page 14 says, in a knowledge of God, all true knowledge and real development have their source.

Wherever we turn in the physical, the mental, or the spiritual realm, in whatever we behold apart from the blight of sin, this knowledge is revealed.

Whatever line of investigation we pursue With a sincere purpose to arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty intelligence that is working in and through all.

The mind of man is brought into communion with the mind of God, the finite with the infinite.

The effect of such communion on body and mind and soul is beyond estimate.

We have a different focus in evidence education.

Notice again, Education page 15, Through sin the divine likeness was marred, and well nigh obliterated.

By infinite love and mercy, the plan of salvation had been devised, and a life of probation was granted.

Notice this, to restore in man the image of his maker, to bring him back to the perfection in which he was created, to promote the development of body, mind, and soul that the divine purpose in his creation might be realized, this was to be the work of redemption.

This is the object, the great object of education, the great object of life.

So a different aim, a different focus, and prayerfully a different outcome.

Such an education, Ellen White says, provides more than mental discipline.

It strengthens the character so that truth and uprightness are not sacrificed to selfish desire or worldly ambition.

Instead of some master passion becoming a power to destroy, every motive and desire are brought into conformity to the great principles of right.

As the perfection of his character is dwelt upon, The mind is renewed and the soul is recreated in the image of God.

Friends, I want to challenge you, if you've never read the book Education, I would challenge you to spend time reading that book.

And the first 4 chapters of that book really undergird the philosophical elements and basis for why Adventist education exists and what it should look like.

So To summarize, we have a different aim.

The harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers.

To restore in man the image of his maker.

And thirdly, we're looking for a different outcome.

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