GYC West 2015: Saved to Serve

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GYC West

Community Health

Fred Hardinge

Living Longer, Better Lives

Father in heaven, we are grateful for this time we have to spend together in the next, this day and tomorrow.

We thank you for your blessings upon each of our lives and we only have to look at what you have given us to be grateful.

We thank you for His saving grace, the gift that He gave to us on the cross of Calvary.

And we ask now that you would be with us in this breakout session, be with the other sessions as well that are going on, and may we learn more and be drawn closer to you and have a clearer idea how we can bring honor and glory to your name is our prayer in Jesus' name.

Here's, well, I don't know if he's coming.

So, I'm going to do several things as we talk about community health over the next today and tomorrow.

God has given to us a wonderful message of health that needs to be shared with the community.

And I want to kind of give a mixture of philosophy on how to share it, some very practical things.

Just a very quick introduction to myself.

My, the passion in my life is to share the message of Jesus through the right arm that he has given to us.

Some of you, those of you who are a little bit older, may recognize the name Harding.

There are actually 4 Hardings with the E on the end of the name, and that you can distinguish from all the other Hardings, that have worked for the church or currently work for the church.

My dad and his brother Leslie, my dad was Mervin, My uncle was Leslie.

He taught for 48 years at Loma Linda on the faculty there.

He was the founding dean of the School of Public Health at Loma Linda.

And many people think that because of that connection, I genetically inherited my interest in health.

And that's probably a good time to disclose that.

During my college years, actually previous to going to college, I had felt a call and answered that call to ministry as a 13-year-old boy.

When I was in college, my dad would say to me, Fred, I think you ought to take some sciences, because it'll make you a better pastor.

I'm very grateful that my parents only told me that I should do what the Lord wanted me to do.

They never said you should be a physician, you should do this, you should do that.

My dad's, and I still hear it ringing in my ears, when I would ask him what I ought to do in life, He would say to me, Fred, the most important thing is to do what God calls you to do.

And if the Lord calls you to be a ditch digger, you dig the straightest ditches in the world.

And then he would kind of pause and he would say, But I think that he's given you more ability than digging ditches.

But he said, if you dig ditches, you dig straight ditches.

So that was the kind of advice and support that I got.

So I got full support, but I had no interest in taking any sciences.

And I would look at my dad and say, you know, that's your thing.

And I respected his call and what he was doing, but I didn't have any particular interest at all.

And it wasn't until I graduated and entered the ministry and the Oregon conference that the Lord gave me some experiences that we don't have time to talk about here that convinced me that to reach people in the community, I would be, I would have greater strengths if I had some knowledge of health.

And so that began a detour, not really a detour, it was part of my training, but I determined that I would go and get some training in health, which I did.

I had to make up a lot of science prerequisites along the way.

It opened a whole new world to me, a world of thinking, a world of how...

It just radically changed and enriched my ministry.

And I went to School of Health at Loma Linda, planning to take a Masters in public health in 1 year and then go back and do ministry, which the Lord had called me to do.

But along that way, the Lord offered me a scholarship to get my doctorate.

And my wife and I prayed about it and decided that we should take advantage of that.

And so I did that, got a master's in nutrition as well, and became a registered dietitian after I finished, which I had never thought I would ever do.

But it has all been very, very useful to me in my ministry.

Many people were shocked that when I graduated with my doctorate that I would go back and pastor.

But that's exactly what I did, because that's where God had called me.

Spent 7 years in a local church that was called to the conference as health ministries director.

And from there, we went to the Philippines.

And later, we went to what was then the Far Eastern Division in Singapore.

And then we came back to this country, and I pastored, which was a shock to everybody.

And from there, I was called to Upper Columbia Conference in Yakima, where at that time, the conference was running a lifestyle center as the director of the lifestyle center.

And I was there for 10 years in Yakima and had a wonderful time.

Was challenged, never worked so hard in my life, had many challenges that we faced.

The conference told me there was a small problem of finances when they gave me the call with the institution, and they thought it was around $35, 000 in debt.

And I said to myself, 35, 000, we can handle that with God's help.

When I got all the numbers together, and I didn't tell you this, but when I was in college, not only did my father encourage me to take science, which I didn't want to do.

He also said to me, all along he said, if you're going to be a pastor, you need to read a balance sheet.

So he said, you need to take some accounting.

So when I was in college, I actually got a double major in accounting and theology, which is a strange mixture.

I've never worked as an accountant, but I have been able to read balance sheets and financial statements.

Anyway, when I got there, I realized they had, their finances were, they didn't even know where they were when I got to this institution.

And when I pulled it all together, instead of being $35, 000, we were almost $400, 000 in debt.

We were in a building that was not really satisfactory for a lifestyle center, maybe in a previous era, but not in that era.

And I can illustrate that best by simply saying we had no private bathrooms.

And if you stopped along the highway to take a motel, and the guy at the desk said, by the way, you're going to share your bathroom, most likely you'd just turn around and go down the road, find another 1 today.

And that's the way most people responded when they asked if there were private bathrooms, and we had to be honest with them and say, I'm sorry, but you'll share a bathroom.

And there was almost no recovery from that in terms of marketing the program.

We had wonderful experiences, and the Lord used that opportunity to just confirm in my own mind and strengthen the value of lifestyle choices and how it can help people who are struggling with health problems.

And I had been doing that in community health education, but in a Lifestyle Center setting, it gave me a little different perspective.

And then after that, we were called to the conference office in Spokane, Upper Columbia Conference to be Health Ministries Director.

And I was there thinking that I would retire quietly in the Northwest when 5 years ago we received the call to the General Conference.

And I now went from being home almost every night of the year to being gone from home 230 days a year.

I've just been home for 5 days, having come back from India, was home 3 days from another 2 and a half week trip in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries.

So that kind of just gives you a little picture of the life that the Lord has called us to right now.

I could not have done this if I had children at home.

I would not have done it if I had children at home.

It's too long for a father to be away from home.

It's too long for husband to be away too, but I have a wonderful wife who says when The call came to us 5 years ago.

She said to me, Fred, I think the Lord has been preparing for you, you for this, for your entire career.

And she has, part of my ministry and part of that ministry is being supportive and understanding that right now I'm gone two-thirds of the year.

I'm very grateful that the Lord has called my son back to the General Conference.

Nutrition Evangelism

In fact, we are working on the Pacific Crest Trail.

And we're not probably the through hikers, and we probably will never take 5 months and do the whole thing at 1 time.

But we have most of the state of Washington done.

We have a bit of Oregon, and we actually have a small part of, relatively small part, but several hundred miles done in California.

And I grew up, Sierra Nevada was in my back door.

And that was where our family spent every vacation.

We backpacked as a family from the time I was 7 years old and climbed.

My dad and I climbed peaks and did rock climbing.

I'm not rock climbing anymore, but I just enjoy the outdoors.

So yeah, we think maybe we'll finish that, the Pacific Crest Trail, over several years.

We have done the Annapurna circuit, the trail around the Annapurna in Nepal.

We say, well, when we retire, maybe we'll go back and take a little more time and do it in the other direction than what we did and do some of the side trips that We didn't do because we didn't have time.

If we never do that, it won't make much difference in our lives.

Actually, what we'd like to do is take the grandchildren with us.

We are taking each of our grandchildren someplace in the world when they graduate from eighth grade.

Our eldest grandchild, last year we took to Africa and he went for 3 and a half weeks.

Got a little bored when grandpa was speaking, but In the process of that, and my wife came with me, and actually she brought him out after.

I spoke longer, but then she came with the grandson and joined me.

And then we took him on a 10-day trip to mission hospitals, and orphanages, and missions.

And I did some speaking there in some of those places.

But it was really good for him to see that.

And then we took him for 4 days to Big Game Park.

But when you ask him what he enjoyed most, he enjoyed the orphanages and the mission hospitals.

His sister is next in line, and that will probably come early next year.

And she wants to, she's very definitive on where she wants to go.

He said, wherever you want to take me is fine.

But that granddaughter said, I want to go to Thailand.

Well, I told her, it all depends on where I get invited.

And if she doesn't want to go, that's OK.

We took our young grandchildren, the younger ones, to Switzerland last year.

My son and I both had to be at a convention in Geneva.

And we spent a week afterwards in the Alps, hiked every day, had a wonderful time.

Really surprised at how tough those little young ones were in terms of their hiking.

But at the end of the day, their favorite hikes were the long ones.

You know, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration invested close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's anti-gravity machine, although it had failed every test and it would violate most of the fundamental laws of nature.

Yep, US government spent a whole bunch of bucks on it.

The Patent and Trademark Office issued patent number 6, 372, 718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which was supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum, but it doesn't even work according to principles of physics.

The world is filled with examples like that.

We spend, and health is no exception to that.

In the area of health we have all kinds of extremes.

And I'm very concerned as I travel the world, and as I interface with church administrators, president of the union, division presidents, and others, who say to me, we don't want anything to do with health.

And they say, because everywhere health is taught, it brings church fights and disunion.

We need to be balanced in our approach to health in a very, very unbalanced world.

As we begin this discussion, and this is a real case, Robert has cancer of the colon.

The doctor told him that it is probably small and that surgery would be the best possible treatment and would have the best possible outcome.

And Robert has many friends who have now come out of the closet and are recommending this, that, and the other thing.

And he learned that there was a clinic that treated cancer with magnets and enemas and special diets.

And there would be no need for surgery whatsoever.

Should he have surgery or the treatment with magnets and enemas and diet?

He's confused, like many people are confused.

So he investigated further and he found testimonies of many, many people who had seemingly had a cure from seemingly similar cancer, who had tried the enemas, the magnets, the special dyess, and they didn't have surgery, and now they're cured.

His friends and family advised him on what they thought he should do, and every 1 of them had a different opinion.

Should he have surgery, or should he go with the alternative, more natural treatments?

Finally, he decided to get a second medical opinion.

So he went to another doctor, unconnected with the other 1.

And he was told that he really, because it was very small, very early in its detection, should have surgery, and he would probably have no more problem for the rest of his life.

There was fear and uncertainty, but he did choose surgery.

And the good news is that the cancer was small.

The doctors would keep a close watch, but that No further treatment was necessary.

There's a voice crying out for everything in this world today.

You know, I've thought a lot about this business of balance.

I've come to conclusion that the only balanced person is me.

There are those who are ahead of me, and they're on the bleeding edge of conservatism.

And there are those behind me who are the bleeding heart liberals.

Wherever we are on the spectrum is where everybody else should be.

You know, there are 3 pillars for evaluating content.

SDA Dietary Philosophy

As bar heads, Father in Heaven, we have much to be thankful for in our own lives and in the many things that we can enjoy, the way of life that we have often taken for granted.

And so we just are grateful to you for Jesus and for his salvation through the gift of his life on the cross of Calvary.

Thank you for this message of health that you've given us to share with others as well as be blessed and we just ask that as we meet now this afternoon that you would be here in our midst as you have promised, and that you would guide us is our prayer in Jesus' name.

If I were to take a poll of each of you, in terms of your nutritional philosophy, how you felt about various important things.

Each 1 of you would answer a little bit differently.

Even though you are all Seventh-day Adventists and probably have been raised in the church, I would expect that most of you who are here at GYC West are here because it's part of the church that you've grown up in and you are interested and have been encouraged by your parents to learn more and to be here.

I realize there are some of you who are the parents also, but you're here because of your interest in what this organization stands for.

And so this afternoon I want to talk for the next little bit about a philosophy of nutrition that I think is part and parcel, is core of Seventh-day Adventist belief in this area.

I was giving a talk on the topic of nutrition, had actually had finished it.

And a man came up to me, and he had a question.

He said, what diet should I follow that I can live forever?

Now, what answer would you give to that question?

Well, the diet is not what makes us live forever, it's Jesus.

So there are people that are trying to do that.

You see, there is really no diet that will guarantee that you'll live forever.

I said, there's really no diet that will help you do that.

So then, quick as a wink, he came back and he asked me this question.

He said, what diet can I eat that will prevent all disease?

And I smiled at him and I said, there's really no diet that will prevent all disease.

You're welcome to come and sit in the front again if you'd like or to stay where you are.

And again, I had to say to him, there's really no diet that will help you do that.

But that opened a conversation that we had together that lasted for probably 25 minutes after the presentation.

Too often, we simplify or oversimplify very complex processes.

If I placed a sharp knife against my skin with sufficient pressure, it would cause a cut.

And that cut would bleed as long as I was alive.

Now, that's a simple explanation for a relatively complex process.

And of course, the process of clotting is even more complex.

But we're just simply talking about cutting.

If I were to take my cell phone, and if a cell phone had a personality, it would be offended.

This would be offended by calling it a cell phone.

It's really a computer that is also a cell phone.

They become ubiquitous in our society today.

And I mean, it's amazing to me the day and age in which we live.

I've lived long enough that I mean, I graduated from graduate school before there was a personal computer.

There were computers, but they were great big giant machines that were housed in the basements of large buildings.

And today we look at them and laugh in terms of their power.

Because this has more power than the mainframe that existed at Loma Linda or at Andrews University in its day.

And never did I dream that I would carry around with me in my pocket in a device, let alone in my pocket of any, of a device of any size, but a little device that slips in any pocket that I have, that has the complete published writings of Ellen White, that has the Bible, I have the Bible in about 14 versions.

And I have it in Greek, and I have it in Hebrew, and I have it in the Strong's.

I don't even have to be connected to access those things.

Plus, I don't know how many books that I'm currently reading or have read and I haven't taken off yet.

And then, of course, you have mapping software, GPS software that works anywhere in the world.

I was in Malmö, Sweden just recently, and I was walking, and I didn't know where I was.

And I saw this interesting building that looked really old.

So I turned on my Google Maps, and lo and behold, I could not only find out where I was, what building I was facing, but I got a history of that building all on my phone.

It's an amazing day and age that we live in.

Now, if I were to hold that up and let go of it, it would not hit the ceiling.

Now, I'm not going to let go of it because I value this, and I don't want to have to replace it.

Although it's getting older, so I might like to replace it.

And yet in biology, the complexity is far, far greater than that phone, Far greater.

I was just thinking, there was a time when I was younger than the gentleman at the back here, And I would record meetings.

Back to Menu

Series

Community Health

Nutrition Evangelism

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary

Is Balanced Health Ministry Possible?

35m

Is Balanced Health Ministry Possible?

1h

The Dilemma of Balance: Cling to the Word

34m

Life To It's Fullest

The Right Focus

24m

Maintaining Healthy Spirituality as Healthcare Professionals

26m

The Balanced Christian

57m

Riveted & Immovable

44m

Help the Oppressed

37m

Adventist Women, Inc.: Professional Women in God's Service

Recovery Plan: Balance and Rest

59m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2023: Adventist Heritage

09 The Gospel in Adventism

29m

Sound Doctrine