Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

Chris Holland

01 What is the Church? How Do I Fit In?, Part 01

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.

Father in Heaven, we are grateful for the opportunity to be here.

We're thankful that we are a part of Your church.

And now as we have a discussion about how to prepare our churches for evangelism.

I just ask and I pray that you would give us wisdom and guidance in all of these matters and help us not to come to our own opinion, but let us come to counsel that is founded on your inspired Word and your inspired counsel.

So let me give you a little outline of what the next 6 days are gonna kind of look like.

First and most important, while each day will build upon the previous day, you can attend in isolation and you're going to get something out of it.

But what the goal is here is over the course of the next couple of days, and because I needed to submit titles today and part of tomorrow, we're going to ask the question, what is the church?

We often talk about evangelism, and I don't want this, I don't want this to sound sacrilegious, but for years I've taught about evangelism.

And just a couple of years ago, I was laying awake at night thinking about what I was teaching.

And then I said, you know, I don't think we ask probably the most fundamental question, why?

And I know this is hard to believe, but there are times in which you'll go to a church and you'll talk about evangelism, and people will say, well, Why should we do that?

We're just a happy family the way we are.

And more importantly, which that question is rooted on, is what is the church?

And so we're gonna take some time looking at the Bible and building a foundation of what is the church.

And then part of tomorrow and into, today's Sunday, right?

Part of tomorrow into Tuesday, possibly into Wednesday, we're gonna talk about some of the challenges we're facing.

And by the way, when I talk about the challenges we're facing, I'm not gonna be talking about the latest and greatest juicy gossip in the Adventist church.

I don't think those are the greatest challenges we're facing but what are the real challenges we're facing in the local church, in church growth?

And then hopefully by Wednesday and definitely Thursday and Friday, we'll be gonna talk about some practical solutions.

And when I say practical, my goal is for us to have solutions that we can go home with and actually use and implement in our local churches.

I am happy to have you interrupt me at any time if you have a question and what I will do for the sake of the recording is when you ask your question I will then in turn repeat that question for them and then do my best to answer it with of course the permission from all of you that you may ask a question that I don't know the answer to.

And if I don't, I may ask you, we'll come back tomorrow and I'll have an answer for you.

You know, even though, and I just noticed on my slide, I don't usually put my credentials on my slide, but it's a slide from a class that I used to teach for Southern Adventist University.

You know, they say something very interesting.

When you graduate high school, you think you know everything.

When you graduate with your bachelor's degree, you begin to understand there's a whole lot you need to learn.

When you get your master's degree you realize that there is a whole world of knowledge you don't have and when you get your doctorate, which I happen to have, you realize you know a whole lot about very little.

And so the point that I'm making there is, is feel free to ask questions and we'll seek to find an answer together.

And that question that I've asked myself has been spurned by the question, why evangelism?

And again, I don't mean to be irreligious in asking that question, because some people are saying, well, of course, because evangelism is what we do.

So let's begin at the very basic, the very basic, when we ask this question, what is the church?

In the New Testament, In the New Testament, the word for church is the Greek word, eklesia.

And this will not only be a lesson on church growth, but I'll teach you how to read Greek.

This is what we would call the letter E, KK, that's the letter A, excuse me, the letter L.

That is 1 of the letters for A, and it's the hard A rather than the ah from alpha, which looks like a fish swimming backwards.

That's an S, an I, and there's the alpha.

That word occurs 115 times in the New Testament, and 75 times in the Old Testament.

When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, That is called the Septuagint.

You will see that abbreviated by the letters LXX.

That simply represents the 70 individuals that went about translating that in the Hebrew into Greek.

Now, when we look at that word, it is actually a conjunction of 2 Greek words.

It is the prefix ek, which literally means out of, out of, and the verb calleo, which is to call.

And so literally when we use the word church, Ecclesia, for my Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters, Ecclesia, these are the Latin languages, it literally means the church is the called out ones.

And so when we talk about, and when, for example, we read Revelation 18, when we read the 3 angels' messages, the fall of Babylon, the coming out of Babylon, ekklesia, the church, is the gathering of those that have been called out.

Because maybe you were born an Adventist or you were born in the church.

At some point you made a decision and that decision that you made is a decision of understanding that I can't do this on my own and I don't just need help, I come to the realization that God's the 1 that's going to do it and he really doesn't need my help.

He needs my cooperation, but he doesn't need my help.

And that is a whole another seminar altogether.

The church is the ones who have been called out.

And when we talk about that and when we see in the New Testament how that word is used, it's used 1 of 2 ways.

As the whole body of believers, the church.

22 million, 23 million believers worldwide.

But then you have it used, the church, as the individual congregation, the Battle Creek Tabernacle, Cedar Lake Church, the Edmore Church, the Warren Church, the Pioneer Memorial Church, so on and so forth, as an individual congregation.

And so when we think about that, and when we think about the fact that that word occurs 115 times in the New Testament, and just as a reminder, there are 27 books in the New Testament, this is a word that is very, very important.

Now, something that I've left out, but for those of you that want to take a bit of a deeper dive, the word synagogue is from the Greek word sunagoga, which means the assembling of ourselves together.

And in New Testament times, the word synagogue and the word church began to be used interchangeably because it is talking about this assembly.

And I'll show you a little bit of that in just a moment.

But when we talk about the church and the importance of the church and the function of the church, Ellen White has a quote that appears in many different places, but in the Home Missionary, page 40, it says this, The Church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it may be, is the only object on earth on which he bestows his supreme regard.

Now I'm gonna pause there for a moment because this is important.

If you believe that Ellen White was more than inspiring but was inspired, which I do believe she was inspired.

And again, that's an entirely different seminar altogether.

Ellen White talks about the Church of Christ, and there are some very important words.

She assumes that the Church of Christ is enfeebled and defective.

So people will come and talk to me about the conference this, the conference that, or at the local church will say, well the leadership this and the leadership that.

Because the inspired writer Ellen White says that the Church of Christ is enfeebled and defective.

That is not an excuse to be enfeebled and defective.

It's just a reality that we are human beings, and when we put our hands in God's business, we enfeeble it and we defect it.

And I know that's kind of sad, but there'll be good news before the end of the day is out.

Ellen White then uses language that in the 21st century we really don't like, and that is exclusive language.

She says the Church of Christ, even though it's enfeebled, even though it's defective, is the only object on the earth on which He bestows His supreme regard.

In addressing the elephant in the room in 30 seconds or less, here in Michigan we've gone through some very difficult times, and in the World Church we've gone through some difficult times, and the cry of the inspired writer is, now's not the time to jump out of the boat.

The ark, when Noah built the ark, the time to jump out of that, well, there was never a time to jump out of that boat, but when the rain started, that's not the time to get out.

And so, now is not the time to abandon ship because the church is the only object in which he bestows his supreme regard, which means he's going to use the church while he extends, excuse me, while he extends to all the world his invitation to come to him and be saved, he commissions his angels to render divine help to every soul that cometh to him in repentance and contrition and he comes personally by his Holy Spirit into the midst of his Church.

Because the church is the great gathering of the called-out ones.

02 What is the Church? How Do I Fit In?, Part 02

Father in heaven, I just pray that you would be with us as we take some time to study your church and to understand your church and help our local churches be more effective.

Please guide us through this afternoon, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so we are picking up off of where we were yesterday.

Now, if you weren't here yesterday, yesterday's presentation will be available online shortly.

However, don't fret, I'm going to take about a minute and a half to review for those of you who were yesterday.

You're gonna wonder why did it take an hour if it's only gonna take you a minute and a half.

You won't get the foundation of yesterday, but you're not going to feel lost in the presentation.

The reason we start with this question, what is the church, is because when we talk about evangelism, we make an assumption, and that assumption is that we all want to do evangelism, or we all will do evangelism.

And for me, and like I said, this has been kind of a progression of thought for me a couple of years ago, I asked the question, why evangelism?

Well, I mean, Why do we have to or should we want to do evangelism?

Which led, I think, to the deeper question, and that is what is the church?

And I don't mean about the physical structure of the building.

We all know what the church is from that standpoint, but from the Bible, what is the church?

And if the church is simply a gathering place once a week for a few hours on a Sabbath morning, I would say to you that that is in fact not the church.

That is a part of the function of the church, but that is not the church.

But in our society, which has quote unquote advanced, we have advanced to a place where we have segmented our lives that church spirituality is not fully integrated into all of our lives and into who we are.

And so we began by asking the question, what is the church?

And yesterday, and we're looking, over the course of these 2 days, We're looking at 5 metaphors or analogies that the Bible uses for the church so we can understand the church.

And I think in understanding what the church is, that'll then answer the question, why evangelism and why it's important.

And the first of the 5 that we looked at yesterday, we looked at 2 of the 5, we'll get the other 3 today is the body metaphor.

And you know the passages that compare the church of God to the body.

And I wanna clarify something I said yesterday.

I started thinking about it and I said, wow, that's kind of strong what I said.

I did not say the church should be healthy.

And then my statement was, if it's not healthy, it's not a church.

If the church, The body of believers, and we looked at those definitions, there is the church, the worldwide church, and then there is the church, the individual congregation.

If the church is not healthy, it is a diseased organism that is not functioning as a church.

It would be the equivalent of if I have a diseased kidney, While it may look like a kidney, while it might have the parts of a kidney, because of its disease, it is not functioning properly as a kidney, which means you have to do...

My dear sister back there, I saw you mouth the words, because it is died.

And so we have a couple of options when death or necrosis occurs.

And again, analogies can only go so far, but what does that look like?

What that may look like is that the individual members, and remember in the body metaphor, all the members, everyone here is valuable in the church because you are a critical component of the body.

The hand is not more important than the foot.

The finger is not more important than the nose, the ears are not more important than the eyes.

And so when we talk about that transplant, the Bible talks about the transplant that is needed, and what is that transplant in the individual members?

And so 1 thing that I would invite all of us to do is not to leave this seminar saying, wow, pastor, this is what we need to do and we need to take a church board action.

Churches don't grow on the basis of church board actions.

And just to further that, churches don't grow on the basis of executive committee actions and Churches don't grow on the basis of union executive committee actions, nor does the church grow on the basis of general conference actions.

Now, all of those entities are responsible in creating an ideal environment and process and structure for growth, but a church becomes healthy as each of the individual cells become healthy.

And that's the key part is that revival doesn't begin out there or with the vote of a committee, and I'll talk about that more when we talk about practical application of that.

Revival is generated in the hearts of individuals who make a commitment and make some of the commitments that Pastor Bradshaw has talked about from evening to evening and Sabbath morning, in particular Sabbath morning, as Ola Iglalka has talked about in the sessions in the morning, and as Don McClafferty has been talking about, as I'm sure other seminar speakers have been talking about, that's how the church gets healthy, okay?

And then I wanted to say something else to clarify.

Yesterday I talked about if there's a problem, if my ankle swells up, I don't cut off my foot, okay?

That does not mean that there's not a place for church discipline because, for example, several years ago my brother had necrotic tissue in his GI system.

And We need to understand the process of church discipline.

And I know this is an odd conversation to have in the context of evangelism.

However, what is the whole purpose of church discipline?

Redemption and the regeneration of the heart that has caused that tissue, that organism, that cell of the church to go bad.

Now, that doesn't mean that we just go disciplining everybody.

In 25 years of ministry, I've disciplined 2 people.

When I say I, I have led a church through that process twice to its full conclusion.

I've begun the process a couple of times and praise the Lord that redemption happened.

So The church is attempting to achieve homeostasis.

Your body is always constantly trying to achieve abundant living.

Your body wants to be functioning at its ideal, your blood flowing properly, your cells regenerating properly, so on and so forth, and it's the same way in the church.

The church demonstrates that the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

How many of you were at last night's meeting?

And this is not a test that I'm taking notes on, okay?

And both of those, there were 2 different quartets that sang, it is a demonstration and I could, I wouldn't do that to them, but because I'm running sound in the back, I could have demonstrated this principle by muting all the microphones except for 1 and then unmuting them.

And the sound would be dramatically different.

And when the church, and we talked about this whole body metaphor, the underlying issue is oneness and unity.

When you have that oneness and unity, in particular with a quartet, I'm talking about it, we'll use another word, harmony.

Which is, by the way, and as a side note, but also an important note This is why I find that last paragraph of the great controversy So wonderful when Ellen White says that sentence and there beats throughout the universe 1 pulse of harmony Right now there's not 1 pulse of harmony Okay We don't know when missiles are going to land in Israel, when they're going to land in Iran.

We don't know if somebody's going to go shoot a lawmaker because they happen to disagree with them.

In the church, the church demonstrates harmony.

That harmony is, and I invited you to study Acts of the Apostles, pages 35-37.

That harmony that existed in the early church was based on surrender, submission, confession, where those disciples were finally at a place where they came to, He must increase and I must decrease.

When I become the most important in the church or in my life, this is when the body will not function properly.

It is in the same way if your hand decides that it doesn't need the heart and tries to operate on its own, your hand's not gonna function very well.

And probably most critically, and we talked about this yesterday, the connection to the brain, which in the body metaphor, who is the head?

Once I disconnect from that, The game is over.

And the church is growing, just as our body is always growing.

Last night when you went to sleep, your body was regenerating itself.

03 What are the Challenges?, Part 01

Father in heaven, thank you that we can spend some time here together talking about preparing our church to grow.

And I just pray that today we would each and every 1 of us learn something that would help us and help our churches in that path.

So just to give you a bit of a preview and why we are facing the challenges we are facing, which is technically what I'm gonna talk about is some of the challenges.

I'll finish off our discussion on the metaphors of the church here today, and then go into some of the challenges we're facing.

But it is of no accident, it is of no accident that the Adventist church, early in its history, but primarily you had 1888 where you had the crisis over righteousness by faith and Then soon thereafter you had Kellogg who began to develop the health work extensively after Ellen White had had her health vision, he develops the health work extensively, begins to develop what he called Christian help bands, what Ellen White often refers to in her writings as medical missionaries.

And by the way, just to clarify that term medical missionary, you study medical missionary, it is not what some have made it to be.

It is not someone who is coming to you with radical and strange therapies.

Medical missionaries were individuals that went, found the needs of people, and met those needs.

Whether that was they needed wood chopped for the preparation for their wood stoves.

They needed food, they needed clothing, they needed simple natural remedies, whatever it was.

But you had Christian help bands and medical missionary workers and the uniting of the work.

If you've been going to Oleg's morning plenary session, He's been talking a little bit about this.

And it was at that time and by no accident that the devil, talking about the church as an army, the devil wedged himself in.

You have a crisis over the issue of righteousness by faith.

And then you have Kellogg, who was bringing a pioneering work and a crisis there where Kellogg was, where Kellogg was let go, Kellogg was disfellowshipped from the church, and you have this erasure of the utilization of God's methods.

And so, and we've never recovered from that.

Even though we've grown we've never recovered from that and so we'll talk more about that.

But yesterday where we ended and I'm not going to review as much as I did before, but you'll remember we've been looking the last 2 days at the metaphors of the church.

The church as a body, the church as a building, the church as agriculture, the church as the bride, and now we're looking at the church as an army.

2nd Corinthians chapter 11 and verses 1 to 4.

I just started on 2 Corinthians 11, didn't I?

Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly, and indeed you do bear with me, for I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to 1 husband that I may present you as a chaste version." I'm sorry I did that in reverse order.

The church is an army, the church is a bride.

Now we're looking at the church as a bride.

And so Paul is talking about here in 2nd Corinthians the betrothing to 1 husband.

And so the church has 1 husband, and that 1 husband is Christ.

And when we divorce ourselves from Christ, we are no longer a church.

We might be a philanthropic organization, but we are no longer the church.

And this is why, and I said this yesterday, in order for ministry to truly be ministry, there needs to be acts of kindness and compassion and the proclamation.

1 without the other is overly therapeutic and without the compassion and acts of kindness it is a theological and philosophical discussion.

Then Ephesians 5 talks about the church in the context of relationships within the family.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands and everything.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word." And so I'm going to pause there.

There's a whole seminar on family dynamics here, but we're looking at the church as the bride.

Christ is the head, just as the husband is to be the head of the family.

He moves the church in the right direction.

Often when we talk about, because this seminar is preparing your church for evangelism, when we use the word evangelism, we often use it in a very narrow definition.

So I say the word evangelism and for many of us, it's not even an event necessarily that comes to mind but it's often people.

I say evangelism and we begin to think about Mark Finley, Sean Boonstra, John Bradshaw and fill in the blank.

Or I say evangelism and we think of 5 weeks, 5 nights a week at a hall or in the fellowship hall and a prophecy series.

Evangelism is the Greek word uangalion, which basically means the good news of the gospel.

Uangalion, before it was used in the New Testament, when it was used in classical Greek, Uangalion was used to describe when an individual was at the front lines or in the front lines of war, that individual when the war was won or almost won, would return to the city on a white horse, announcing the good news of victory.

What's the good news of victory in the New Testament?

Series

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

06 Practical Solutions for Church Growth, Part 02

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