ASI Southern Union 2024: His Capital Gains

<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>

ASI Southern Union

Kameron DeVasher

Plant-based Evangelism

For years now, I've joked with my colleague in ministry, Pastor Mark Howard.

We referenced it earlier in the Sabbath School panel about the Emanuel Institute that we run, and the Talking Points training videos.

By the way, if you go to YouTube and go to the Emanuel Institute, you can click like and subscribe to talking points, and you'll get those every week.

But we also run this Emanuel Institute training course for lay people to get involved with ministry, and we produce a manual of all the compilation of all the resources we recommend.

I keep begging him to put it online so we can literally have a downloadable PDF that we call the Emanuel E-manual.

But fortunately for our purposes today, I didn't call this morning's message plant-based evangelism just because it sounds trendy, though admittedly I'm glad that it does.

I titled that Because it is the very analogy that Bible authors and Jesus himself repeatedly used to describe the science of soul winning.

And to be clear, Labor for souls is a science to be diligently studied and improved through constant practice.

Sister White lamented the neglect of this study when in Fundamentals of Christian Education, page 217, she wrote, how few have qualified themselves in the science of saving souls.

How few understand the work that should be done in building up the church, in communicating light to those who sit in darkness.

She referred to it as a science that we need to understand.

There's a process, a method involved in the work of the Lord that we're called to do.

And as we've seen in our presentations this far to this point, God not only wants us to be born again and members of his kingdom, but he also expects us to be using our time, our talents, our creativity, our powers, our resources, our opportunities, everything we have, everything we are for His glory, He said, occupy till I come.

That God expects to get a return on His investment of Christ and that is not only us, but through us other souls, that we should be active in this business of our heavenly Father.

And I praise the Lord that the Lord has not left us in the dark about how best to do that work.

The same Bible that tells us what we are to share with the world also tells us how we can share it most effectively.

Thus our presentation this morning, plant-based evangelism.

But Before we get started, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this Sabbath day.

Thank you for any day, really, but particularly the Sabbath day where we can rest, fellowship, worship, and be about our Father's business.

Lord, as we spend a few moments of time in the study of your Word today, we would ask that you would fulfill the promise that you made, that you would lead us into all truth through the influence of your Holy Spirit.

Be our teacher today, for we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

I believe that Christ's method that is outlined in scripture is plant-based.

And by the way, when I invoked even the phrase Christ's method, already good Seventh-day Adventist ASI Southern Union members automatically go to 1 statement in the spirit of prophecy, that's Ministry of Healing page 143.

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

By the way, any time you have a qualifier true success, it implies there's such a thing as false success, but we want to have true success in reaching the people.

She goes on to explain, the Savior mingled with men as 1 who desired their good.

He showed sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence, and then He bade them follow Me.

Now, for as often as this particular passage is invoked when it comes to soul-winning work, I fear that some in the church have come to think that Christ's method is winning souls by just being nice and helpful to people.

Yeah, I think there's a belief that we should focus less on personal Bible study and certainly public evangelism, and instead simply practice, quote, Christ's method alone.

Which is interpreted to be being kind and beneficent, doing good for others.

But friends, I would challenge that simplistic reductionist view, and say that Christ's method alone does not mean just being nice, it means being strategic in our approach to soul winning.

Thus, in order to accomplish that, he needs to win their confidence.

He's going from this point to this point to get to that point.

The Bible outlines the details of the strategy by repeatedly comparing evangelism to agriculture.

As we will see, Christ's method is truly plant-based.

Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 61.

Isaiah chapter 61 is Jesus' personal mission statement.

He quoted it in Luke chapter 4 when he went to his hometown of Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and he found this particular passage in the scripture.

And he quoted from the first verses where it said, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

And you know he goes on to quote his ministry in a nutshell.

And we know that's what it is his personal mission statement because when he closed the book he sat back down he declared, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Now, as we mentioned the other night, however, Jesus Christ, though he is the gospel message, did not personally go around and give the gospel message to every creature.

He was the gospel, he is the gospel today, and he gave the gospel as a message to be given by the church.

The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of souls.

It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.

I believe Christ understood that so in all of his ministry he wasn't frenetically running around trying to meet every single person.

He was building a structure and a system so that when he left, the church could pick up the baton and go seamlessly into his labor.

Thus, we read in Isaiah 61, that same personal mission statement chapter that Jesus invoked in Luke 4, the closing verse compares how the gospel's gonna go to the world with agriculture.

Notice it says, for as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so.

Now whatever we're about to see here is based on that aggregate.

He's like, the same way the garden works, the same way the earth works, so something's gonna happen in like manner.

So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations.

Now I know we like to think well I just don't want it to be so, why do we have to talk about structure?

By the way there's another buzzword, plant based organic E something whatever they're all, but again we've come to the idea that plants and things grow, quote, organically, that means that it's untethered from any structure that's kind of wild and feral, and that's how things should work if they're truly spirit-led.

The key to organic growth is organization.

Plants grow because they're built for growth.

We're not evolutionists, we're creationists.

God designed them to work and it obeys, right?

They get the nutrients, they grow in an order.

Thus, every good farmer or even backyard gardener will only find true success in agriculture when they purposely and carefully follow an essential five-step process that involves preparing the soil, sowing seed, cultivating, then harvesting, and finally preserving the crop.

Any piece of that is missing, they have been unsuccessful.

They have not had true success in agriculture.

And like the cycle of agriculture, there is a parallel in the cycle of evangelism.

There are those essential steps that bring true success.

Soil Preparation, seed planting, the cultivation, harvest, and preservation of the crop are each essential for true success in reaching people.

In soil preparation, what does that mean in a spiritual sense to prepare the soil?

Well, it means to build friendships and trust.

Again, following Christ's method, that was his starting point.

Connecting with people in a personal way.

And this opens the heart for the reception of truth.

We draw, we do this by drawing close to people through being kind, intentionally social, and ministering to practical needs.

While we're slaying, you know, common misunderstandings, let's disabuse our mind of the random acts of kindness.

Can we please keep the acts of kindness and lose the random part and maybe make it purposeful, strategic, I'm aiming for something, I have a goal in mind.

Plant-based Evangelism

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

God’s ROI

51m

Plenary

Why is Jesus Always Talking About Plants

1h

The True Medical Missionary

56m

Seminars

Beholding Christ in the Least of These: Serving in Practical Ministry

43m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Evangelism

Bible Studies Made Easy

1h 22m

Going ABOVE and BEYOND

Daring to Ask for More - Part 5

53m

Personal Preparation

Personal Preparation- Part 3

1h 9m

GYC 2012 Seminar: Conversion - My Own, Around Me and On the Go

Sensitive Seekers

58m

Acts: First Generation Lessons for Last Generation Believers

6. Cutting Timothy

55m

The Remnant Responds

1h

Life of the Apostle Paul

Hold Nothing Back - Part 19

39m

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

02 The Central Issue: Love or Selfishness?

33m

Sound Doctrine