Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Cure for the Common Sabbath School

Mark Howard

01 Whatever Happened to Sabbath School

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the privilege we have of knowing you and your son Jesus Christ.

You've told us that this is eternal life, that we may know you in Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

And we understand that our Sabbath schools not only are to help us to gain a better, clearer understanding of our relationship with you and our walk with you, but also to lead others to you, that the Sabbath School is a school to teach the truths of Scripture and to draw people closer to you.

So as we are gathered here for this class, we ask your Spirit would guide us, not just in an understanding of what we discuss here today, but in practical ways that we can help to keep your work moving forward in our local churches and in our world.

So bless us to this end we ask in Jesus name.

So Sabbath school is, you know, Cameron, for several years now, I don't know, at least the last 20 years, you know, 1 of the buzzwords, ideas in the Adventist Church has been small group ministry.

It's like, It's always, I've been in ministry long enough now, when I was new to the Adventist church, you know, and some of these new ideas sounded new, but then when you're in the church for a while and somebody comes out with a new idea, hey, there's this great new thing like small group ministry.

And I just wanna say, oh, you mean Sabbath school.

Because truth of the matter is, now I know that if you've had a situation where you've been involved in small group ministries and Sabbath school, they're probably not the same.

You know, small group ministries, they like to have, get together for fellowship.

If you've ever been part of a small group team, you know, they'll get together during the week.

They'll have a meal together, things like that.

It's not just a, well, Sabbath schools used to be that way.

It wasn't just Sabbath morning, but it was a group.

And that little group formed a small group ministry, if you will.

If you look at the handout I gave you, just starting out there, a couple of quotes from Sister White, 1 written in 1886.

She says, this is from the book Testimonies on Sabbath School.

She says the Sabbath school, notice, should be 1 of the greatest instrumentalities and the what?

The most effectual in bringing souls to Christ.

Now I will tell you that we are launching this year an evangelistic initiative called Keys to Revelation.

Periodically we have these big evangelistic pushes.

I've been involved in personal ministries, evangelism, my whole ministry.

But according to what we're reading right here, the most effectual means of bringing people into the church is what?

So but you're not going to hear, generally you're not going to hear, you'll hear people talking about keys to revelation here at this camp meeting, but I'd almost guarantee outside of Sabbath school class, Cameron and I are going to talk about it on Sabbath, but outside of Sabbath school class you're not going to have people say, hey y'all we need to really get together and focus on our Sabbath schools and attend our Sabbath schools, which is 1 of the reasons that we'll get into that we face challenges in Sabbath schools.

Sabbath school is more and more being treated as an optional part of the church service.

Like any more, in fact, if a new person gets baptized, right?

They've just come into an evangelistic meeting or something else and you're inviting them to church and it's like, what time does it start?

Now part of me wants to say, you should say it starts at 930 whenever Sabbath school starts.

But I will tell you from my experience in some of our Sabbath schools, there's no way I would tell them 9.30.

Okay, so I wanna tell them 9.30, but because we tend to treat Sabbath school as such an optional kind of separate whatever ministry, they oftentimes, there's not much oversight, they're poorly run.

Like I said, I've got people calling and saying, we love talking points.

Because in our Sabbath school, they just come in late.

And I'm going to say this, because I don't know any of you.

And if you've done this, I'm not saying what I'm about to say, because I know you've done it.

So don't admit to me you've done it after I tell you this.

A teacher gets up to start the Sabbath school, and this is how they do it.

And I'm not saying, let me explain it, because I'm not saying this is wrong initially.

But a teacher will get up, and the first thing he'll say is, so tell me what you got out of the lesson this week.

Now, it's not wrong to say that, but 9 times out of 10, that tells me right away, and the class confirms it, that that teacher didn't have time to study anything that week.

Has nothing prepared, has nothing to say, has no substance, but he knows if he asks questions, somebody in there is going to begin talking and they're going to take up the whole class time in conversation.

I know churches say that we don't do the quarter in class, we go over here.

Great, you come to church and you all share your opinions, you go away, you know nothing, you learned nothing scriptural.

So just because people even love it doesn't mean it's what needs to be happening.

It's not necessarily strengthening our churches.

It should be 1 of the greatest instrumentalities and most effectual in bringing souls to Christ.

So if that's not what our Sabbath schools are now, I want us to understand that that's a potential of our Sabbath schools.

The next statement there, written a few years later in 1889, Sister White says, the Sabbath school, when rightly managed.

That there is potential for the Sabbath school that may not be reached, because it doesn't just happen.

And the Lord says, there needs to be some level of management.

There needs to be some level of organization.

And when it's rightly managed, it possesses marvelous power and is adapted to doing a great work.

The influence growing out of Sabbath school work should improve and enlarge the church.

So the Sabbath, look at that, the Sabbath school becomes this key of spiritual prosperity in the church.

It can be, it has a potential when rightly managed.

And yet we are not seeing that so much today.

I'm not going to read through everything.

But we see, I think, in most places, in most places I go, the Sabbath schools are not thriving Sabbath schools.

They're not a lot of people attending and most of the church members and, you know, being promoted and that kind of thing.

And so let's look at a little bit of a history here.

In the first example, I give in history is, you know, just a small group aspect of our church.

Right after the disappointment, you probably recall the story of Hiram Edson, 1 of our pioneers, who, why the disappointment?

He gathered some friends from the area, and they came together and they prayed.

And you'll find often when reading of the Adventist pioneers that they would often come together and spend time in prayer and study.

So this small group element was very alive in the early Adventist Church.

And of course it was through that experience that the Lord opened to Crozier's understanding the reason for the, and I have some of that outlined in here, I'm not going to read through it, but the reason for the disappointment.

Kameron DeVasher

02 How to Get People to Show up to Sabbath School

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camping, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this new day of life.

Thank you for the opportunity to know you, to worship together, to fellowship, to enjoy each other's company, and to train and prepare for work in your cause.

Help us, Lord, to truly understand the potential of Sabbath school.

Open our minds to new ideas and help this ministry to be a means for growing and enlarging your church and by some way hastening the coming of Jesus.

If you didn't get the notes from yesterday, there's a couple of copies over here still.

There are a few copies over here, but I want to remind you of 1 of the statements or a couple of the statements this Pastor Howard opened up with yesterday.

How in 1886, Al White wrote, the Sabbath school should be 1 of the greatest instrumentalities and the most effectual in what activity?

Apparently Sabbath school is supposed to be not merely a social club or a spiritual club for those who are already in the club, but it's supposed to be a means of enlarging the club, expanding the kingdom of God, growing the church, right?

1 of the first things we often mistake about Sabbath school is that it's the part for us, and then we do outreach ministries for others, right?

So this is the in-house thing, and so our pool of people, and we're going to get all into this later, I'm just kind of priming the pump a little bit here, but that we need to have a new vision of what the mission and purpose of Sabbath school is.

Yes, it is spiritually edifying for all the members.

It grows us in our faith, it deepens our bonds of fellowship, all that kind of stuff, but, Not but, but because of that, it's an ideal thing to invite people to when done correctly.

And I know we had the remark yesterday, I wouldn't invite anybody to my Sabbath school.

Okay, we're going to talk about that a little bit today too.

She also wrote in 1889, just a few years later, the Sabbath school, when rightly managed, bold underlined star asterisk, when rightly managed, possesses marvelous power and is adapted to doing a great work.

Now notice this, the influence growing out of Sabbath school.

So it's not like the Sabbath school is on the receiving end of all the ministry, it is the engine that's making the industry.

The influence that's growing out of Sabbath school should what?

Yeah, so somehow, Sabbath school is expected to be, or can be, should be, an engine of church growth.

It should be the tip of the spear in the development and enlargement of the church.

Oftentimes, however, as we noted yesterday, Sabbath school is the tail end of the church thing.

If there's the 1 thing that people come to, it's the worship service, and then this Sabbath school is oftentimes viewed as merely a preliminary and optional, you know, almost kind of like insular for our own people, or maybe for the real dedicated people, you know, the people who still study their lesson, the old folks who just have nothing else to do, and they'll come, or the people who come early because they're waking up at 4 in the morning anyway.

We need to change our vision of Sabbath school.

All right, so we're gonna talk about that.

And yesterday was mostly a survey of, it was called What Happened to Sabbath School, and the intent of yesterday was not to get into all the solutions but to help us understand the scope of the challenge, the problems that lie with us, right?

And I'm guessing if we had another day we could go on and on and on and open the floor to all kinds of issues we have with Sabbath school.

I don't like that it's this and it should be more like this and there's 1 person did this and they always do it like this and I've never understood why.

Boy we could fill in the blanks and spend our whole hour doing that.

Problem with that is that doesn't actually accomplish anything.

It Might feel good to warm our hands over the, you know, the fires of bitterness.

Right, but it dies out and then we're done.

So what I'd like to transition to, by God's grace, is moving from the problems we all collectively agree that we recognize, to solutions we can practically implement, okay?

So let's, starting with attendance, number 1 question we get is, how can we get people to come to Sabbath school?

Now most people have the Sabbath school, most churches have the Sabbath school program first and then the church service second, the worship service second.

Is that true in most cases here in this room?

Now sometimes churches, especially if they're like a 2 or 3 or multiple church district, will flip those in 1 of the churches so that the pastor can go to the sermon, do preach the sermon.

I'm going to be talking from the, let's recognize, Howard, that's generally the exception and not the rule.

That generally the rule is about 9.30 is when Sabbath school starts, and the worship service usually goes to about 12.30, okay?

That means that on a typical Sabbath day, if you're gonna go to every service provided at the local church, you begin at 9.30, you go to 12.30, that's 3 hours.

Usually, the worship service starts at about 11.

So that means exactly half of that 3 hours is Sabbath school and the other hour and a half is church.

Now in the worship service you have a lot of other things going on And what ends up happening is the Sabbath school, I'm gonna get to, I'm borrowing for tomorrow, or for whenever I'm doing the next 1, okay?

Let me not get into that, but there are uniquenesses to the Sabbath school that we don't want to just morph into the worship service and lose.

We want to make Sabbath school distinctive and we'll come back to that later.

But let's talk about increase attendance.

The number 1 goal is like besides the quality of the program is how do we just get people there?

Ways to encourage church members to attend Sabbath school.

The first 1 is so obvious we might skip past it but it needs to be said and I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here because you're here.

But the number 1 thing that any church member can do to build up the church in any way with the, you don't have to have an office, you don't have to have a title, you don't have to have a certain responsibility set, you can build up the church every time by just showing up yourself.

I know it's so basic and elementary, but just showing up consistently, you know, faithfully, in a timely manner, right?

And by show up, that doesn't mean with the crowd.

In fact, you might be the 1 who starts the crowd showing up, right?

I want to, the quintessential passage for this, we're gonna look at some Bible texts today too, by the way, but they'll be on the screen.

Bible tells us in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, to let us consider, whom?

Now pause right there, we're gonna break this down.

You think about something, you focus on, you meditate on, you're like, concentrate on something.

For what purpose are we doing this consideration?

I love this analogy, and I love this passage for using that phrasing.

Now, in my experience, there are only 2 types of peanut butter.

First of all, creamy is not even peanut butter.

If you went down the supermarket aisle, they could take every label off of those clear little canisters and you could spot the healthy from the unhealthy.

The unhealthy, it could be fresh off the line or 10 years later, it's exactly the same.

It's the exact same stuff, which has got to be good for you.

03 How to Prepare an Engaging Sabbath School Study

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

Before we do anything, let's start with a word of prayer.

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

Thank you for these dear friends and for the church families they represent.

Please bless us now as we look at how to prepare an engaging Sabbath school study.

Help us to be not just going through the motions but be truly involved, passionate about what we're doing because we love you and we want to see your church grow.

Bless us to that end for we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're not gonna take the time to go through every 1, but I think most of you have been here before, but some we have some new faces.

Obviously all these were being recorded if you want to get the rest of it.

I know that at Camp Meeting there's 900 different seminars and it's like a smorgasbord.

You're gonna get 1 day of this, but all of these are gonna be released online soon and so you can download them and listen to them later, so that's helpful.

And before we, this is how to prepare an engaging Sabbath school study.

Tomorrow is the anticipated follow-up that how to present or how to lead an engaging Bible study, Sabbath school study.

Pastor Howard will be doing that so we're not gonna get into the nuts and bolts of how do I deal with a difficult person, what happened to, all of that I'll leave that to the expert Pastor Howard.

I don't know how to deal with difficult people.

So, but in all seriousness what we're looking at today is before you stand up on Sabbath morning, the ahead of time, the preparation work that goes into making that quality Sabbath school class experience.

So let me do what I haven't done yet as use the introductory time to plug a few important resources that you need to know about, okay?

First of all, if you haven't been here for it, the 1, we see the banner there, 1 Accord software and BibleStudyOffer.com is a tremendous, tremendous blessing and benefit.

It's an amazing resource that is very new.

It's only within the last year or so that OneAccord has even existed And it's hard to describe what it is.

We have an entire seminar for it this week at Camp Meeting in this very room at 215.

If you haven't been there yet, I would encourage you, give it a shot, come check out what the 1 Accord software is all about and it can be a genuine, I mean blessing is probably a too, too tame of a word in a religious context.

Everything's a blessing, oh blessing, blessing.

This is more than just like, ooh, a nice sunshiny day blessing.

This is like change your church for the, for permanently, for good blessing.

So please if you haven't checked that out, visit here, 215 for that.

Also, how many of you enjoy hearing testimonies?

Isn't it great to hear how the Lord works through a hundred different ways, through individual contacts, through church programs, through means we can't even think of yet.

And all across the Michigan Conference every single year there are some 4 to 600 on average baptisms in the Michigan Conference.

And every 1 of those is a story of how the Lord led to this place in their life, right?

I was this, now I'm this, and I've made a commitment to the Lord and His church, and now I'm on fire for Him, that kind of thing.

In my position as Personal Ministries leader in the conference, we had the privilege and responsibility of putting those together for camp meeting time.

And I can tell you I've had incredible frustration over the years when I hear a testimony, someone will tell me in the hall, oh, this amazing thing or some report or whatever.

And then it just, it flips away into the ether, never to be heard from again.

So we want to collect those stories and turn them into either podcasts or interviews or articles or social media posts or videos or some sort or live camp meeting interviews right?

So this is a single website that collects, currently all it does is collect these testimonies.

What we would like to see it developed into is not only a place to receive them, but also a place where you can see, like let me tune in and see if there's a new 1 here.

And that's kind of, I mean, think about it.

Technically we should have, we have 1, we have enough just every year to have a new testimony every single day.

Now that would be incredible if we got there, you know, but there's no reason we shouldn't have at least every week in every local church a new testimony from right here in Michigan of conversions where the Lord has changed someone's life, right?

So if you have a story or know of a story, especially in your local church ministry context, It may not be your personal testimony, but you know someone who just came to faith or just whatever.

If you know a story, a soul winning story that you would like to share, just go to this is MI story like the song, this is my story.

That was the whole, okay I don't know if we need to put musical notes, oh this is my story, but it's about sharing a testament.

And am I for Michigan, not just my personal testimony, but Michigan testimonies.

Maybe it's a little too layered, but you get the idea.

All right, if you have a story, just go there.

And the first question to ask you is this about you or is this about someone else?

You don't need to make like a whole written up thing.

This person invited me to take Bible studies.

I just got baptized and I'm on fire for the Lord.

Jot it down and then somebody from the communication department or all department can follow up and help turn that into a blessing for somebody else.

If you have never taken the opportunity to go to 1 of our Manual Institute training intensives, the next one's coming up August 24 to 30.

There are some seats still available and I cannot impress upon you enough the benefit that you will get personally and in your local church for attending 1 of these sessions, okay?

And there is something special about going, putting everything aside and focusing on that for a week at a time.

We get a lot of requests, well can't you do a weekend?

You go for a 1 afternoon, 2 hour thing, it's not the same as being immersed in it, going out door to door, you know, going through the week.

This is the best version of what we've got right now and I want to encourage you to do so.

I would love to just, I'll share my heart with you real quick, I would love to not have to advertise Emmanuel anymore.

I would love it to be so self-evidently beneficial that local churches say, hey we're gonna send 1 of our key leaders to Emmanuel every year.

It's at the Michigan Conference Office, yep, and registration, all the information about where and all the details are there at the registration page, no problem.

But my point is we have 30 people in each class, we do it twice a year, and out of a church with 27, 000 members in the Michigan Conference and 186 churches and companies, whether it's a board member, a helder, you know, a personal ministries leader, interest coordinator, some sort of, somebody in your local church who can have influence in that church can go and get the training to help them move that church in the right direction, and personal soul winning too.

Series

The Cure for the Common Sabbath School

04 How to Teach an Engaging Sabbath School Study

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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Stewarding God's Gifts: Faithful Planning for Life & Legacy

03 Making Sense of Savings and Investments

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Religious Liberty Under Pressure

When Churches Gain Control

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How to Be a Missionary Without Moving Anywhere

Reaching Specific People Groups in Michigan

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02 The Science of Soul Winning Appeals - How to Say It

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58m

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1h 11m

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

03 What are the Challenges?, Part 01

1h

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

04 Where to Preach Powerful Biblical Appeals

55m

Sound Doctrine