ARME 7: Waialua, HI - Nov 2011

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ARME Bible Camp

Keala Thompson

Fully Known and Fully Loved

This evening I am just blessed to be here in Army and I'm just thankful to God for what Wonderful God He is.

Tonight, I'm going to be sharing from the Word.

I invite you, if you have your Bibles with you, to turn to Romans, Chapter 5.

I'll be looking through several texts here.

Romans, chapter 5, verse 8 is the opening text.

Presentation entitled tonight is called Fully Known and Yet Fully Loved.

As I begin, I want to share you a little bit of my story.

I believe, as a pastor here in the Hawaii Conference, I strongly believe in evangelism.

Evangelism brought life to me, to my churches, and let me give you a little background on 1 of the churches.

When I first started here about 12 years ago in the conference, there was a church that was given to me, and I decided that I was going to sneak up on this church, you know my first assignment sneak up on the church and see how they really are so I I snuck up, didn't tell anyone I was coming, my first assignment I went to the back door and I thought I could hide in a crowd but I walked to the back of the church and I realized something that including myself there was less than 10 people within that church.

They picked me up and came straight to me and said, Are you the new pastor?

I was so discouraged because Lord, I asked myself, and here was this church, you know, it wasn't a beautiful building, it wasn't really nice, and I sat, and I remember sitting like, God, Why did you call me to this church?

I said, you know what, we're going to do evangelism.

And you know before this time, 2 conference presidents had said that they wanted to shut down this church.

So here I am, I went to this church, God really moved in a powerful way and God blessed.

So the numbers of attendance and baptisms, baptism came and people became baptized and then the tide went up.

You know the conference loves those 2 numbers, don't they?

So those 2 numbers really and it skyrocketed and within the church I mean 150% in the first year and it's gone up higher and higher and more so.

We had Peter Gregory there for our first evangelistic meeting and then we had tent meetings on and on and on.

And then there was a woman named Yvette Takamine who happened to be baptized also.

And that woman happens to be my current wife.

So not only do I believe in evangelism, beloved, I love evangelism.

But I want to tell you something this morning, beloved, this evening, and that is that evangelism is not the only answer to our church.

And I know that the only thing that we hear a lot is pastors and church members that We must go out, we must save souls, we must do evangelism, we must bring them in.

That is what we need to do, as if that's the only thing we need to do.

And I came to this conclusion in my experience in ministry.

And God taught me some lessons along the way.

Look at the culture out there, even in Hawaii.

But they don't want to train these children up and that's why they're not raising up the children.

Where does all the thing all of a sudden, why are we calling grandpa, we're calling papa now?

They're raising up the children because they want to enjoy.

See, people today, they want to have the joy of having a baby and look at it.

But they don't want to take the time to mentor them, to train them up, right, in a way that they should go.

It's easy to have babies, but, and there's another thing to actually raise up a child, is it not?

And let me parallel that inside of God's church today.

We like to have, you know, when someone is born again, is that not a birth also?

We had 20 baptisms, we are excited for what we've seen.

Are we going, well, look at it, those people got baptized.

But my question is, as they come in, are we training up these children in the way that they should go, that when they are old, they will not depart from the truth and the word of God.

Are we allowed the culture to come into our church?

Are we more interested in bringing them into the church rather than they themselves and for who they really are?

You know I've also, another question I've asked, why are they running away?

Now I'm not somebody from the outside criticizing evangelism.

I'm somebody from the inside who's done evangelism, who God has blessed in a mighty way.

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Fully Known and Fully Loved

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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