Forward to Zion: Ohio Hometown Camp Meeting 2011

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Forward to Zion

Christ’s Way to Happy, Growing Churches

Don Eckenroth

You Must Be the Good News!

Let's have an added word of prayer, shall we, our Father God.

How important it is for us to seek your presence, your Holy Spirit, as we take a look at Scripture and spirit of prophecy today.

We pray that you will guide and direct our minds, unlocking them, so that we can understand more clearly your plan for us, that we might be more effective in our witness for you.

You may ask or may be asking, how did this seminar come about?

If I were to come to your church and present this over a weekend, it would be 5 sessions of about 2 hours apiece.

And I have 3 one-hour slots, and so in planning for this I had to condense, I had to decide what is it that you want these dear people to go away with?

What principles do you want them to go away with they can go home and use in an effective way in ministry to their communities?

So we're, You know, I've pared it down as much as I can.

We have a lot of ground to cover this afternoon.

We're going to have 3 sessions, 2 this afternoon, 1 tomorrow morning.

By the way, you know I've got a very challenging session.

It's not because of you, it's because of what you ate in the dining hall.

And I know that for the next hour, hour and a half, I've got to keep you awake.

Youngberg's meetings this week, and I was feeling sorry for him, because I'm sitting back here, I am just totally trying to stay awake.

Every energy, he probably saw me get up a couple of times, and walk back and forth across the back of the auditorium to clear my head.

So if I see you do that, you have my permission to do that.

If you get sleepy, drowsy, and the cobwebs begin to gather in your mind, you have my permission to get up, you won't offend me, you'll have my permission to get up and walk around if you need to.

In fact, he told us, and I remember his counsel.

Some of the best things you can do is exercise immediately after you eat, right?

The seminar came about because, as a pastor, I faced the challenge of getting my people out of the pews and into ministry.

I struggled with that for years, and finally, I came to the conclusion, well, it drove me to the scriptures and the writings of Ellen White And that's what I'd like to share with you today.

But in the course of that study, I came to the conclusion that my problem was not with my people in the pews.

I just hadn't offered them the opportunity to do so.

In fact, I was offering them such a narrow range of things that they could do that, and I was simply doing what my church had instructed me to do, okay?

That I had, and we had, screened out about 98% of the people who were sitting there.

And all I was doing was making them feel guilty.

I hope you go away from here, never looking at your church or your church family the same way again, because it changed my view of ministry and evangelism.

The only thing basically we were offering at that time was door-to-door ministry.

And I'm going to take a little bit of a survey this afternoon.

I just want you to raise your hands if you feel real comfortable with going door to door.

Now, we don't know each other, so I'm going to spend just a moment in trying to introduce where I have come from.

You know, the servant of God says that God will call men from the plow.

My family were builders and developers there.

By the age of 18, I was a journeyman carpenter and I was foreman of a construction crew.

Sometime after that I changed to another profession.

That just oozes out of this guy over here.

And I know I'm going to date myself when I tell you this.

I was a route salesman for a local dairy in the suburban Maryland area doing house-to-house delivery.

Started at doing house to house delivery.

And I started at Golden Rule and then went later to Hadley Dairy.

And so that gives you an idea of how far back that is, okay?

But eventually, I've been an innovator all my life and always looking for a better way of doing things and even though I'd never been to Dale Carnegie or never taken any sales courses or anything like that, I figured there must be a way to be successful.

The suburban Maryland area at that time was a fast-growing area.

I mean, houses were coming up out of the ground like mushrooms.

It has to be simple if it's going to work.

Automobiles had never been in front of that house before, okay?

And when I would see that, I'd drop off on my route momentarily, take a free quarter milk, pen a little note, leave it on the doorstep.

Because I started delivering at 6 o'clock in the morning.

I'd leave a little note and it says, don't you talk to anybody else till I get back.

I've got the best product, I've got the lowest prices, and we've got the only fully refrigerated fleet in the area.

We were in competition with about another 4 or 5 dairies, big ones.

I'm with a little independent dairy, non-union dairy.

And that simple little technique resulted in me getting better than 50% of the new business among the 4 or 5 dairies.

What I'm going to share with you today is very simple.

It comes straight from the word of God and from the writings of Ellen White.

In fact, I was a salesman for them when the new spun soy product first came on the market.

And we went from being second dog to top dog very quickly with that new product.

Then later, I went into the automotive repair business, had my own business for another Adventist fellow and myself in the Tacoma Park area for a number of years.

I knew I had the call to the ministry when I was 4 years old.

Had an uncle who was 1 of our leading evangelists at that time.

I rarely go any place, and I don't run into somebody who was not brought in in 1 of his evangelistic meetings.

Of course, they're getting a little older now, and so I don't see them as often as I used to.

Kept running, running, running, couldn't shake it.

Finally, I finally had to yield and say, God, if this is what you want me to do, I will do it.

That call this morning, I don't know how it moved you, but it really moved me.

Wasn't that a powerful message this morning?

Biblical Secrets of Church Growth

Father in heaven, thank you for being so gracious to us in giving Jesus your son to die.

May he be uplifted and exalted as we look at these parables that he gave to us.

Okay, we're gonna look at 3 parables in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.

I consider them to be Jesus' treatise on evangelism.

It is here that he tells us specifically how his kingdom grows.

By the way, Brother David, when should we close this session?

Okay, just a hair before 5, which means We are really going to have to move because I have a lot of material to share with you.

Why did he choose the method of telling stories as a means of illustrating how his kingdom grows?

First of all, parables were told are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.

And so as Jesus was telling the parables, oftentimes the people who were sitting in the, you know, in the audience could see the actually, the illustration being acted out in front of them, lived out in front of them.

In the case of the sower, the servant of God says that they actually were able to see people doing what Jesus was talking about.

And he told them parables because They provided familiar scenes with objects that were easily remembered, and every time they would see these things reenacted, they would think about the teachings of Jesus.

And the point of the parables is very interesting.

The servant of God says it was to clarify the nature of his kingdom.

They expected the Messiah to prove his claims by mighty deeds of conquest, to establish his empire on the ruins of earthly kingdoms.

This expectation Christ answered in the parable of the sower.

She continues by saying, Not by force of arms, not by violent interpositions was the kingdom of God to prevail, but by the implantation of a new principle in the hearts of men.

It is the kingdom growth takes place in men's hearts as a divine work of the Spirit of God.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah talked about the kingdom developing like a tender plant and a sprouting root.

In other words, the kingdom wasn't to come as a result of man's inventions and his methods.

It was to appear like a tender plant growing out of the ground.

That suggests the miraculous nature of the growth of God's kingdom.

That's why he says in the following parable that the farmer casts in the seed, he goes to bed at night, he gets up by day, and the seed grows.

That's God's realm, his miraculous realm.

So the kingdom was to come silently, unobtrusively, like a tender sprout, little shoot coming up through the ground and then growing to maturity.

The second illustration he uses here of the sprouting root is even more astounding because he says it's like a root that sprouts out of dry ground.

All of us know that a root that is in the ground that is going to sprout has to have some moisture.

But this root sprouts and comes out of the ground from dry soil.

Again, another illustration of the miraculous nature of the growth of God's kingdom.

It is beyond our ability to manage it or to conceive it.

But God's role is the miraculous working, the creative power that he exercises in the hearts of men.

Who do you suppose the drawing ground was?

He came up at a very low place in their history.

They were in deep apostasy at the time that Jesus was born.

But this route, this dry ground, from this dry ground, this root was to sprout and grow.

Again, you see, illustrating the miraculous nature of it.

Notice what the servant of God says, lift him up in that morning devotional book, page 66, his works, whose works?

God's, as seen in the natural world are not 1 half comprehended or appreciated.

These silent preachers, the growing plants, the sprouting root, These silent preachers will teach human beings their lessons if they will only be attentive hearers.

She goes on to explain, I'm sorry this comes from Isaiah, we'll come to her statement in a moment.

For as the earth, that is the natural realm, bringeth forth her bud, and the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth.

So the Lord will cause righteousness and praise, that's the spiritual realm, to spring forth before all nations.

So we have complementary laws in operation when it comes to the kingdom of God.

We have the natural world, his works, illustrating how his kingdom is to grow.

And when we become aware of that, we will be more effective in our work.

Here it is, Christ's Object Lessons, page 33.

He who gave the parable of the tiny seed is the sovereign of heaven, and the same laws that govern earthly seed sowing govern the sowing of seeds of truth." So here Spirit of Prophecy simply complements, supports what the Word of God says.

From the natural seed, Christ desires to lead our minds to the gospel seed.

"'Listen, ' Jesus said, "'Behold, a sower, ' that is Christ, "'went out to sow.

"'And it happened as he sowed "'that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it.

We must understand that most of the gardens in those days were outside of the cities.

They were communal gardens in which people who lived in the city kept a little section to themselves and between these sections was a little pathway so people could find their way to their section, okay?

And as they walked back and forth to their section, their feet compacted the earth, and it got hard.

And Jesus said, some of the seed fell on there, but it couldn't take root because it couldn't penetrate the soil.

And so the birds came along, who he later explained was the enemy, and picked up the seed and ate it.

May I liken this section, apply this section to the church that is hardened in a traditional rut?

These are churches that say, well, we've never done it that way before.

If you're in a church that's in a traditional rut, your chances of growing are because you're not keeping up with the society around you.

This seminar is not a seminar about compromising our faith.

But it is about lingering, mingling with the people around us and listening to them so that we can hear their heart cry and therefore we can tailor ministries to reach those needs.

Those needs do not do not determine the way we minister.

They do not take control of our ministry, but they give us something to focus on so that we can reach specific needs that are in our community.

And tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning's gonna be exciting.

You're not gonna have a lot of questions today, but tomorrow morning I expect a lot of questions because we're going to talk about how you translate these principles into practical, simple ways to bridge to the people in your community.

Creative Outreach Ministries That Work

This is the top of the morning to each of you.

We're going to have a good time this morning as we open up our subject today, which is Creative Outreach Ministries that Work.

And we're all looking for, you know, we're all looking for those things.

I have a few slides I want to go through to begin with, sort of set the table, and then I hope that we can spend most of our time in me sharing with you some of the things that we've done and how we've done it, and then giving you opportunity to ask questions and make comments and so on and so forth.

Okay, so this is gonna be an interactive time.

And brother, I'm gonna need 1 of those sheets as well.

I have it on my computer, but it's up there and I can't get to it from here.

Number of years ago, the Reader's Digest did a survey on Seventh-day Adventists.

They asked their readership what they knew about Seventh-day Adventists.

I know this is old and other surveys, many surveys have been done since this.

But this sort of encapsulates the whole thing.

I mean, this is what we meet in our communities.

The misinformation about Seventh-day Adventists, okay?

Adventists live on fruits and vegetables.

This is 1 of the things that came out of that survey.

Adventists are old-fashioned in dress, and they do not play musical instruments.

They need to come to camp meeting, right?

Oh my, who do they have us confused with?

They have us confused with Mennonites and Amish and, you know, they're good people, but they have us confused with them.

And who do they have us confused with about musical instruments?

Some branches, the more conservative branches, Church of Christ.

Adventists are ignorant of the real world, especially the exclusion of medical help.

Do they have any idea that Adventists operate the largest Protestant health system in the world?

Wow, how do people get these ideas about us?

Adventists are associated with the watchtower.

Well, when it comes to medical help, who do they have us confused with?

Of course, you meet this misinformation about us relative to Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

It means if we are going to be effective in reaching these people, we've got a mountain to climb.

What these people see about us, if a survey, if Gallup had taken a survey in 31 AD, what do you suppose they'd have found?

All you have to do is glean the Gospels to find this stuff, see?

Well, how did he go about breaking down all of these, all of this misinformation, all of this prejudice against him.

Christ's method alone will bring true success in reaching the people.

That is why, if we want to be successful, we need to spend our time focusing on how Jesus did evangelism, how he broke down the prejudice, all of these things that people were saying about him.

In Acts 10, 38, we find these words, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing what?

He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with him.

You see, what argument would not accomplish, loving ministry, helping people with their felt needs, 1 their hearts, open doors, as we saw yesterday from that statement from the servant of God.

This has a way of opening doors to human hearts, and that's what we've got to find a way to do.

And so we think our mountain is big, Jesus' mountain was bigger, see.

But he went around, instead of combating it, you know, talking against it, creating, you know, all kinds of animosity in the community, He just went around doing good.

I've looked for it as I was putting these slides together.

I looked for it, and I need to get on the internet and see if I can find it.

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying, when other people say bad things about you, live in such a way nobody will believe it.

Live in such a way that nobody's going to believe what they're saying about you.

And you've heard Rick talk about, you know, all of the angst that has developed because of the book he's written, see?

What did Jesus say about loving your enemies?

Franklin says, live in such a way that nobody believe it anyway, see?

Okay, I'm gonna try to move through this.

That's why we need bridging ministries, because Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people.

When people said bad things about him, Jesus, as Peter said later, he did not revile again.

When he was reviled, did he revile again?

And if you do good in your communities, as you begin to reach people in your communities and interact with them, and they find, they're going to find out you're totally different than what they've thought.

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Series

Christ’s Way to Happy, Growing Churches

Biblical Secrets of Church Growth

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Just Do It

27m

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

04 Parables

29m

The Joy of Giving

05 Delivering the Message

38m

Sabbath School and Personal Ministries: Getting the Most Out of BSO

05 From Click to Christ: Winning Souls with BSO

1h 9m

Hope in the Seed Grower

42m

Life Lessons from a Seed

50m

Plenary

Why Was Jesus Always Talking About Plants?

48m

Can Christ’s Coming Be Hastened?

1h 6m

Breakout Session 1

God’s Farm

1h

Good Ground, Good Growth

37m

Starting a Market Garden

Growing Healthy Transplants for Efficiency and Profitability

1h 2m

Sound Doctrine