GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Training Center Churches

Kameron DeVasher

1. Who Fed the 5,000?

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at the Cross in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

What we're discussing the entire seminar series is training-centered churches.

And you might have heard that phrase before, perhaps somewhere in your...

Going through Adventism, you've heard that phrase pop up.

But today we want to start off with a, in fact the entire seminar is gonna have a track to it, it's gonna have an arc, okay?

We're gonna develop from the more philosophical, theological framework to the practical nuts and bolts, how do I take this home?

Okay, because we're going to start wide and go down the funnel until we land it at home and say, ah, that makes sense.

I can help on the ground in my local church.

So, before we get started, of course, with any study of God's Word, let's begin with the Word of Prayer, and then we're gonna be off to the races, okay?

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for this opportunity that you give us to come together as your people to study your Word and to understand better why you want us to do what you want us to do, and how, more importantly, to do it faithfully.

Bless us in this time, we pray in Jesus' name.

All right, the very first thing, this particular session is entitled, Who Fed the 5, 000?

That's a reference to something we're going to get to in the middle of our discourse today.

Revelation chapter 5, I'm assuming a relative familiarity with the Bible, the books of the Bible and some of the themes within each book.

So when I say, when you go to Revelation 4 and 5, you should have a picture in your mind of what's already there.

So I don't have to explain everything from the grassroots, right?

But just a quick overview, Revelation 4, John is told to come up into heaven and he would be shown things, right?

And he sees the throne of God, you see the 7 spirits of God, you see the 4 living creatures, you see the 24 elders, and basically this is God's command center of heaven, and there is God himself enthroned in the middle, and all the other beings around him in his throne room.

And all the attention in most of the discourses that we find on Revelation 4 and 5 are on those very entities.

You have God the Father on the throne, the Holy Spirit as the 7 lamps, you know, the 7 spirits of God.

You have the 4 living creatures, the 24 elders, and You've probably heard sermons on each of those entities.

Each of those beings has had seminars and lectures, workshops, they're the main focus.

But I want to pan the picture out, because all of that is centrally focused right around the throne.

But what I want to show is right there in Revelation 5, there's a reference to another group of beings that we often lose track of when we're looking so closely at the 24 elders and 4 living creatures, and of course the 3 members of the Godhead.

After Christ comes into the picture in Revelation chapter 5, everything focuses around him as well, and songs are sung, and we go to verse 11.

This is what I want to draw your attention to today.

Then I looked and heard the voice of many, what?

Now, so far we know that there's the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, there's the 3 members of the Godhead.

Then you have the 4 living creatures, the 24 elders.

And then it gets to the angels and it just says there are many.

I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was what?

10000 times, does anyone know what 10000 times 10000 is?

There's 3 members of the Godhead, 4 living creatures, 24 elders, we get all the focus on them, but apparently those, that small group of individuals is completely surrounded by this enormous sea of unnamed angels.

A hundred, I mean if we're gonna take that literally, which I don't know if it's literal, but it's a whole lot, even if it's not a literal hundred plus million, it's big enough that it was represented by a number of 10, 000 times 10, 000 plus 1, 000 times 1, 000.

The vast majority of heaven's population is not constituted by the members of the Godhead, the 4 living creatures, and the 24 elders.

Now, what is the job description of an angel?

Hebrews chapter 1, in discussing the supremacy of Christ over created beings, Paul here, I believe, in Hebrews chapter 1, talks about his relation to the angels and how he's higher than the angels.

But in describing Christ's supremacy over the angels, he mentions the job description of angels.

He asks rhetorically about the angels, are they not all, what?

Ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation.

So there's a hundred million, let's just say, plus angels in heaven, and apparently, according to scripture, how many of them are ministering for the lost?

And this is not to take anything away from the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

But there's a particular role that the angel hosts in heaven are supposed to play in God's government.

Not that the other ones aren't, but they have a specific task in the plan of salvation.

This is the dream that Jacob has as he lays his head down on that stone and What does he see in verse 12?

As he laid his head on the stone in verse 11, to lay down to sleep in that place we find in verse 12, then he dreamed and behold a what?

Ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached to where?

Angels of God were ascending, that means going up, and descending, that means coming down on it.

So he saw this vision with this ladder and the angels are up, angels are down, angels are up.

And if I'm not mistaken, that's the last reference we see to this ladder almost in the entire Bible until we go to the Gospel of John.

In John chapter 1, Jesus is beginning his ministry and collecting his very first disciples.

And we're going to spend a little bit more time here than the other text.

We're gonna have a little bit more context just because it's fascinating.

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote.

And Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

2. The Real Emerging Church

The Apostle Paul talked about how he, I believe it's through the church in Corinth, and reviewing his work there, he said, I caught you with guile.

That's what I was going for with the title of this seminar, The Real Emerging Church.

Now I know when you hear that language, emerging church, already you have a picture coming to mind.

Oh, man, I'm going to hear about contemplative prayer, breath prayer, some other prayer thing.

I'm going to hear about candles and incense and labyrinths and spirituality and mysticism.

All of that, by the way, I'm not saying that that's not a problem.

But that's not the emerging church we're talking about here.

Now, that might be, and I'll say this, there are people who address that issue, study it out for yourself, be an informed person, that's no problem.

But The real emerging church that I'm discussing here is the 1 that has already emerged in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

It's not a danger out on the horizon, it's the 1 that's already here, and we need to be aware of, and many of us are completely numb to the fact that it's occurring.

The real emerging church is the 1 we're gonna address today.

Now, out of curiosity, raise your hand if you were not here at the last session.

But we're going to build on some of the principles that we had last time.

So if it's confusing, you're like, how dare you say that?

Well, you gotta go listen to the other 1, get the other stuff.

They have been promised that handouts are still coming.

At the end of this session, they should be available.

So please take out your Bibles, you'll need your own paper, I wish I could provide some for you now, take out pens or whatever, but we're going to be studying the Word of God and we're going to be doing a bit of sampling of Adventist Church history, the Spirit of the Prophets, we're going to be all over the place.

But before we do any study, of course, What's the first thing we need to do?

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for giving us instruction in your word, and Lord, now we ask for understanding of that word and application of its principles and practices in our own life.

Help us to be faithful and useful for you.

In Seventh-day Adventist evangelism, when you're talking about the state of the dead, I don't care where you've been, if it's a small group, Bible study, one-on-one, or a big public campaign, Everywhere you go, every evangelist, if he's worth his salt, is going to have to explain the misplaced comma in Jesus' conversation with a thief on the cross, correct?

If you change that 1 comma, which of course commas were not there, punctuation wasn't there in the original, but you have to, that's there, you've got to deal with it, right?

The Bible writers, I mean the Bible translators put that in there, so now we're stuck with it.

And of course 1 version says, today you will be with me in paradise.

And the other 1 says, when I come in paradise, I'll bring you with me.

The sense of the sentence changes with that 1 comma.

It's the difference between, it's time to eat, grandpa, versus, it's time to eat, grandpa.

Same exact words in the exact same order, but that little comma, that emphasis, changes the meaning, yes?

We're all very aware of that misplaced comma.

But there's another 1 that I want to make you aware of, probably in your Bibles today.

Starting with verse 11, hopefully a very familiar passage to all of us here.

It begins with, and he himself, and of course the he that we're talking about here is Christ and his establishment of the church, which was a big part of our talk last time, right?

And he Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.

Clearly, he's defining different job descriptions, different titles of positions of leadership in the church, and Not everybody is all of those things, but we have some apostles, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers, you get the picture.

Now, I'm going to read this to you from the King James.

How many of you have a King James here today?

It's a great translation of the Bible, but please understand, punctuation is not inspired.

For what purpose does he have all these different jobs in the church?

For the perfecting of the saints, comma, for the work of ministry, comma, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

Their first job is to perfect the saints.

Then, either when they're done with that or at the same time, they should also be working on another project, doing the work of ministry.

And in their spare time, they should be edifying the body of Christ.

Do you see that in the sense of the thing?

You have these people do these things for this purpose, for the perfecting of the saints, for the...

And it lists out 3 different jobs, the work of ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ.

How many New King James do we have in here?

Not that your allegiance is there, you just happen to have a Bible in your hand, there's New King James, right?

Same verse, verse 12 now from the New King James.

For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, comma, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

For the edifying of the, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

Now I know this is going to be heresy, but I think that's even still slightly incorrect, even though we're getting better.

I think the new international version sums up the meaning most accurately.

To equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

To equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built.

The building up of the body of Christ is simply the result of everybody working, which is what the job of the leadership is, is to get them working so that the body is built up.

Now how do I have the audacity to stand here and say that King James, in this particular instance, not in the wording, I'm not getting into that, but in the punctuation, has given us improper reading of the text.

As we talked about in the last, most of the Bible problems that we have would be solved if you have this 1 simple principle, just keep reading.

So let's go back, and I'm reading from the New King James with the same wording as basically in the King James as well.

But if you go back to the context of this passage, we'll just start with verse 12 again.

For the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure, the stature, the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom, " and remember the whole thing started how it was he himself who gave these.

We're still talking about our headship of Christ in the church, no problem with that, but watch this.

From whom the whole body joined and knit together by what?

By what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

The way that the Church grows and stays healthy, both doctrinally and evangelistically, and all the things that we're tasked with doing is not by having people do it for us, but by having those people train us so we can be workers.

3. Soul-Winning DNA, Part 1

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at La Crosse in Phoenix, Arizona.

♪♪ Now, just to briefly recap, the previous material, is everyone who's here now was at least The last 1 or the 1 before that?

In the last couple of sessions, we were looking at the big picture philosophy of why we need training center churches.

And we looked at the ministry of Christ, first of all, as the leader of the heavenly host.

He delegated many of his duties, especially ministering to other people, and we don't have time to go into that, but we saw that.

We also saw that when he was here on earth, he brought that same model of ministry to the New Testament church.

And I should say, I don't remember where it is in here or if we get into it.

Either way, If we haven't gotten to it, it is in here, I'll spoil the thing right now, but this was the Old Testament.

They've already been passed out, so just any newcomers can get 1, that would be great.

God has always operated through organization with the goal to bid every member to be a missionary, everyone being a disciple maker, not just a follower, but a doer, a worker, not a watcher.

So now we saw in Adventist church history in our last episode how that was the original building block model and help our church to grow faster, but a church has emerged, thus the real emerging church, that is pastor-centered.

Instead of lay member doing the ministry, it's everything is about the pastor.

So what would it look like, as we transition now to more practical things, what would it look like for a church to operate under some of these training center church principles, where the minister's primary job is education, equipping, and training, and organizing the work, and the member's job is to fill those roles we typically think is pastoral.

And that's kind of where we're headed now in the first of 2 sessions called Soul Winning DNA, how to take these concepts of soul winning and infuse them into the very fiber of who we are in a local church and as individuals.

But as other people come in, I want to let you know we do have, come up wherever you are, we do have handouts ready to go, but we're going to be, or maybe they're in the back, something here.

Okay, there's some here, there's some there, but there's handouts available for everyone.

And we're going to start with a word of prayer and then after our just brief review we just did, we're going to be off to the races.

So if you would, let's just bow our heads.

Heavenly Father, thank you again so much for the opportunity to visit together.

Thank you for this GYC occasion that brings us here.

And now as we continue to study your word and the principles and practices that you've instructed for us, Help us to truly, truly follow your instruction and see the results that only your spirit can lead to.

As we should with everything, start with a Bible study.

I don't just list the text, I give some of those things, but oftentimes we'll give more context than what I have room to put in there.

So these are just the notes that you have in your hand are good for helping you follow along the flow of thought to take them home and to remember.

But when we look at something or any other thought, please have your own Bible out and you have your own pencils and papers ready to go.

Luke chapter 4, Jesus begins his earthly ministry by going to the home church of Nazareth.

Luke chapter 4, and we find the story of that Sabbath morning when Jesus came home.

And we'll start with the verse 16, again that's not in your notes, but we're just broadening it out a little bit.

So he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

Now, the way that's written is interesting to me in the fact that he, it was his custom to go to church on Sabbath, but it also says that he stood up to read.

That he was involved with church even before he was the, you know, the public Messiah figure?

He always went to church and always had something to do, so he was coming to read.

And it says in verse 17, and he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.

And when he had opened the book, and of course this book is not codex like we understand it, it was a scroll, yes?

When he had opened the book, so, not to get too nitpicky, was the book open when it was handed to him?

No, he was simply handed the scroll in its entirety, And he opened the book.

Now, I don't know if there is an assigned reading for the day, but look what happens here.

And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written.

It certainly gives you the sense that he's looking for a very specific passage.

He finds the thing and he says, ah, wait a minute.

You don't have chapter and verse and stuff.

Verse 18, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

So clearly Christ has identified himself with this prophecy.

He was the 1 who looked for it, he's the 1 who found it, he read it, and then when he was done, he said, this is me right here today.

So this is where Christ understood from the Bible his mission statement to be for his work on the earth.

You guys felt guilty about being late and you did the color thing.

If you want, we have some of the ones with the color chart.

If you'd like to, you know, I should say, here they are.

Let's go back to the Old Testament now to the book of Isaiah, chapter 61.

And let's find in our Bibles what Christ found in his.

And you see right off the bat, he started with verse 1.

The Spirit of the Lord has abounded me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison, blah, blah, blah.

Now, and it goes on to say, to comfort all who mourn, to console those, and it gives a more, this is where you have that, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for a more, it says, we're very familiar with this, but I want you to draw your attention to the last closing line of Isaiah 61, verse 11.

The last verse, as we would have it in our Bibles.

For as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." So how is the Lord God going to cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations?

As the seed goes in, it will be growing and planting.

And this garden harvest metaphor is right there in Christ's mission statement that he himself said, I am doing this in front of you today.

So it's little wonder that Christ repeatedly compared the spreading of the gospel to the world, the work of soul winning, to agriculture.

It's right there in his mission statement as he understood it.

4. Soul-Winning DNA, Part 2

According to my clock, it's 3.08, and that's plenty of time to start a 03:00 meeting.

This 1, if I'm not mistaken, is the 1 with the color chart on the front of it, okay?

That's Session 4 in our Training Center Church curriculum here.

I'm sorry, these shorter time blocks are really throwing me off a little bit, so I just get going, and the time was up 5 minutes ago and I just want to, you know, hit myself with a hammer.

But we're just going to get started and we're going to try to take all these principles and put them, all right, what would the cycle of evangelism look like in the local church?

And how was your church supposed to operate?

Series

Training Center Churches

6. May I Have Your Attention, Please?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Our Soul-Winning Bottleneck

1h

A Call To Arms: How to Fully Engage In God's Church

5. Commission Possible: Giving Christ-centered and Dynamic Bible Studies!

54m

Plenary

Counting the Cost

1h 56m

Amazing Disciples

5. As a Witness

31m

Training Center Churches

2. The Real Emerging Church

54m

Soulwinning 201: The Next Level

2. How to Get a Bible Study

1h

Morning Devotional: It's War Time

It’s Wartime - Part 8: Marching Orders

53m

GYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Resurrecting the Church

52m

Ignite Your Local Church for Mission

Q and A and Final Charge

1h

Leading Souls into the Truth

1h 5m

Living Dangerously: God’s Call to Mission Service and How to Get Involved!

5. Starting Missionary Small Groups

1h 9m

Evangelism in a Disconnected World

54m

Sound Doctrine