GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Extreme Makeover: Pathway to Health Style

Lela Lewis

Chris Lewis

Don Mackintosh

1. Pathway Makeover: God Uses Simple People

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

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

Okay, well, I'll go down just a little on the mic.

I am Lela Lewis and this is Extreme Makeover Pathway Style.

We are going to be talking about some unbelievable things that God is doing and He's been doing over the last few months.

If we can turn the volume down just a tiny bit, it's a little bit loud.

So, the seminar's topics, Again, the title is Extreme Makeover Pathway Style.

We are going to be looking at practical things.

If you are in your own hometown, basically the idea is, how many of you, first of all, how many of you have even heard of Pathway to Health?

How many of you have attended a Pathway to Health event?

We're gonna talk about what God is doing.

He is using free medical, dental, eye care, surgical services, medical and non-medical people to revolutionize and basically completely change the world by God's grace.

Chris Lewis, I'm an OBGYN, my husband Chris Lewis is here, 2 seconds ago, he's a general surgeon, and of course we have Don McIntosh, who is both a nurse and a pastor.

First of all, Pathway to Health will be talking about what it is, what it's done, and how you can do it in your own hometown if that is something that you're interested in.

On Friday morning, we're going to have a question and answer session.

We'll also have a short section of questions and answers at the end of each section, so please save your questions until then.

Write them down because we will be taking question and answer for Friday morning.

At this time, before I get started, I actually want to stop right now and have a word of prayer and ask the Lord to bless that he would be lifted up and that no 1 else will get credit for everything that he is doing.

Would you go ahead and bow your heads and for those who are able, would you feel comfortable kneeling with me?

Dear Father in heaven, I praise you and I thank you for this wonderful opportunity of joining you and these wonderful people here this morning to talk about all the goodness and amazing miracles that you have been doing through your people.

I ask that we would again lift you up and that you would receive all praise and glory.

Okay, So the ambassadorship program, we will be talking about that, but for those of you who come to all 6 lectures, you will receive this very nice ambassadorship manual.

It has basically everything in it that we have done from a logistics perspective, but we'll talk about that later.

So again, Pathway to Health is a service of Adventist layman services and industries.

We provide free medical, dental, eye care, surgical services to uninsured and underinsured populations.

But more important, I want to let you read something that's really exciting from the Spirit of Prophecy.

The awareness of doing what is right is the best medicine for diseased bodies and mind.

When we do that, a special blessing from God is upon the receiver.

A person whose mind is quiet and satisfied in God is in the pathway to health.

So you and I can be in the pathway to health, if you will, if we know we're doing what is right.

And I find that very interesting as that is our name, if you will, of this group of people that are doing your best pathway to help.

Again, seeking to provide physical, mental, and spiritual healing to the uninsured and underinsured.

Watch this video for those of you who do not know what has taken place recently in Pathway to Health.

If we can turn the lights down just a little bit, that would be great.

The dream began in California's Bay Area.

To serve, to heal, to love on a mass scale, 1 person at a time.

Free medical care, free dental care, free eye care, absolutely free, no strings attached.

Soon more and more were talking about what they had seen, what they had heard, and what they had experienced.

A question arose, how could we only do this once?

San Antonio, Texas was chosen as the next city whose residents would receive the love of Christ through the hands and feet of anyone willing to serve.

500 volunteers became a thousand, then 1, 500, then 1, 700.

They came from all parts of North America and beyond, and from all walks of life.

They came to register, to greet, to host, to organize, to sing, to teach, and to heal.

And as they came, so did the residents of San Antonio.

Services offered inside were more comprehensive than ever.

Eye care services included complete eye exams, consultations, retinal scans for glaucoma and retinal detachment, and fittings for glasses.

Dental care included cleanings, fillings, crowns, extractions, X-rays, digital scans, and more.

Medical care included primary care visits, women's health services, consultation by medical specialists including heart evaluation, as well as gastroenterology, neurology, rheumatology, infectious disease, podiatry services, immunizations, pharmacy, medical massage, physical therapy, x-rays, and laboratory services.

And for the first time, medical care included general surgery, including hernia repair, hysterectomies, vasectomies, mass and skin cancer removal, and gallbladder removal.

Other first-time services included haircuts and styling, nutrition and healthy cooking demonstrations, and men's suits offered free of charge.

And once again, while patients waited, volunteers sang, played, taught, and took the opportunity to meet those who had come.

Others reflected on their newly found hope.

And perhaps most importantly, hearts were touched and in some cases healed.

The event was without a doubt a tremendous success.

1, 700 Seventh-day Adventist Christians from around North America saturated the city of San Antonio with the tangible love of Christ and brought hope and healing to over 6, 000 of the city's residents.

In a matter of 18 months, by God's grace, this is what I'm so excited to say.

In a matter of 18 months, there's 12, 400 patients that have been serviced, more than $40 million in free healthcare.

And more important than that, much, much more important than that, hundreds and hundreds of people have come to know Jesus.

In fact, in San Antonio alone, as a direct result of Pathways San Antonio, 115 baptisms, people giving their heart to Christ.

I believe, brothers and sisters, I believe we are seeing the beginning of something very, very exciting that doesn't just stay right here in America, that can spread around the world, that can go to your hometown, wherever that may be.

But the question is, the question is, do you have to be?

2. Makeover Step 1: What is Required

Father in heaven, Lord, we're so thankful that we can come and we can learn at a place like this in freedom.

And we truly believe that time is short and we do ask your presence to be with us.

We don't know how to go out or come in without your leadership and your guidance, so please bless us in this time in Christ's name, amen.

Total commitment, the cost of true success.

I wanna talk, following up on Lila's talk, And if you missed that talk, make sure and listen to it on AudioVerse later.

And just to give you a couple pointers of what we're attempting to do, first of all, the overview that Dr.

Lewis gave in the last hour, now looking a little more closely at true commitment.

The next thing we have is a question and answer period, I believe, we have this afternoon, actually, a testimony of Dr.

Lewis, and then we have a question and answer period on Sabbath morning, or is it Friday morning?

So if you have questions, we kind of feed on questions.

So write those questions out, have them ready for us, and then we'll do that tomorrow.

And then we'll finish up by looking at how medical missionary work actually protects God's people in our last session together.

This session though, total commitment, the cost of true success.

You know, Jesus, when he came, of course, he was just 1 person, totally committed, amen, was Jesus committed.

And he drew 12 other ordinary people like the first hour.

He talked about ordinary people that came, that is his disciples.

Then 70 people, then 5, 000 people were baptized, then it went back down to 12 people, and then they said, you know, we'll begin to desert you when Christ was on the cross.

And it looked like everything had failed.

It looked like everything Christ had done in his extreme makeover himself and leading others was just a failure.

As he rose again, then eventually the 12 were recommitted, then the 120 in the upper room, and then thousands began to join, and multitudes were reached.

If you study the New Testament, Most of the major events, when Paul went especially, he would go to major cities.

Acts 19 says that he started the school of Tyrannus, and he reached everybody from that evangelism school, and he did teaching, preaching, and healing, just as Christ had done in reaching everybody as well when he was there.

And Acts 17, 6, they turned the world upside down.

They went from 1 city to the next, and they turned the world upside down.

And I believe that's what God wants to do today.

And certainly, over the last couple years, it's been amazing to see how God has turned the world upside down.

I mean, you go to a city like San Francisco and you think you're gonna get a hearing if you're anybody, much less a Christian group.

And Nobody really even thought that God was gonna do amazing things.

Well, maybe not nobody, but I mean, God thought that probably, but a lot of other people were just like, that's not gonna happen.

But God did amazing things in San Francisco.

I still remember in San Francisco, walking in this street and they were, you don't know what this street is, you're on the armory there.

And they said, this is a terrible street.

They get in fights about any kind of free giveaway.

And here you're giving free medical care?

These people are gonna just kill each other and they might kill you.

And so this 1 man said, he says, why are you here?

This is San Francisco, this is a terrible place.

And he came up and I don't know why he singled me out.

I mean, I wasn't responsible, but he kind of singled me out.

I just said to him, I said, look, you know, God has laid it out, he goes, God, God, God, God, and then he started cussing.

I said, well, didn't mean to start that little rap line that you went through here, but he was just, you know, and about 3 days later, he came back up to me, 2 days later, actually, in that situation, he came up to me, goes, I wanna talk to you.

This is 1 of the times, I have never seen anything like this in my whole life, in this city especially.

This place was a place of darkness, and now God has used you folks to turn it into a place of light.

And this was a pretty hardcore individual, at least at first there.

We had a little team, we kind of had a bird's eye view of the whole thing because we're in the lifestyle section right before people leave, Lifestyle and Chaplaincy.

And so you kind of are able to see what they really think about the event.

I've never really experienced anything like that except for when we went to San Antonio and then we went to Spokane.

Spokane was actually probably the best in terms of responses at my section.

And the reason is because we had so many volunteers.

Now, a volunteer doesn't have to be able to do anything except love people, right?

We don't want unloving volunteers, like, oh, great, you're another person, you know, we don't want that, but if you just can smile, or, you know, yeah, just smile and walk basically and breathe, God can use you.

Because as people went through, you know, they were talking with them as kind of the volunteer partners that went with them, and they got to witness the extreme makeovers happening in just several hours.

And it transformed not only the lives of the people coming through, but the people that were volunteering.

By the way, I'm not supposed to say this, but I'll tell you anyway.

George Barna did a study and he said the best way to reach your non-Adventist friends is take them on a mission trip with you.

And I saw some physicians who brought their staff with them, and those people made decisions to commit to Christ and join His church during that clinic time.

You know, we think, I have to go around the world to be a missionary.

No, you pretty much just have to go across the street.

But if you work together as a collective team, it is amazing to see what can happen.

Alamo Dome, man, this is an exciting picture right here.

Now, I gotta tell you something, I'm a pastor, right?

And I'm also a nurse, so I'm a purse, a pastor and a nurse.

But usually pastors are a little bit Generally, and I'm not trying to stereotype every pastor, there's many that are not like this, but many times they're kind of unaware of the medical aspect of things and whatnot, and so they're a little nervous.

And they were kind of nervous in this situation in the Alamo Dome, and they were begrudging the fact that they had to be even involved until they got there.

And once they got there and began to see what was happening, and they're the last people, you know, before people leave, people so filled with gratitude, yes, pray with me, Can I have some more of those books?

They gave away more literature than you normally would be able to get out even canvassing in this particular environment.

And this is a picture with all the pastors in my team, and they were just excited.

1 pastor said to me, he goes, why in the world have we not been doing this for 20 years?

This is the most exciting thing I've ever been involved in.

You know, and I said, you mean it's not your preaching?

He goes, this is much, anyway, so what a blessing, amen?

Now, we're supposed to do this in our schools and whatnot, and I run a little school, New Start Global, the health program, but notice this quote.

As religious teachers, we are under obligation to teach our students how to engage in medical missionary work.

So our schools, our churches, we're supposed to be teaching people how to do this.

And by the way, you know the best way to teach somebody?

I really don't know how to do anything, basically.

3. Makeover Step 2: The New You

Welcome to Extreme Makeover Pathway to Health style.

We've been talking about Pathway to Health.

Was anybody here for any of the morning meetings?

Well, today's, this afternoon's first topic is going to be called The New You.

And this is talking about Isaiah chapter 58, and specifically the changes that take place to the participant in a Pathway to Health event.

The volunteer themselves is impacted, and so is the patient.

And those impacts, those changes that take place are talked about in Isaiah chapter 58, so we'll have a little Bible study.

But I wanted to first just go over, has anyone actually been to a Pathway to Health event?

So let me just run through so you'll have a quick flavor of what in the world I'm talking about.

This is outside of the Alamo Dome at Pathway San Antonio.

You see that there are thousands of people lined up to get inside.

How many of you have had thousands of people lined up to get into your church at home?

How many of you would like to have thousands of people lined up to get into your church at home?

Just like it says in the Ministry of Healing, that there were no buildings large enough in Palestine to hold the crowds that thronged to Christ.

And so we want to have that kind of draw.

Some people that get in the front of the line to come to get into the event.

This is what it looked like inside of Pathway San Antonio.

This is inside the Alamo Dome in San Antonio.

And the different portions of the clinic are divided up.

You know, you might have dentistry or primary care, surgery or eye care, here's lifestyle counseling and so forth.

And we run the people through in a particular order.

And let's say they start at registration, so we need people to volunteer to help register people, help people stay in line in security department and there's all kinds of different ways that we can use people but we actually need about two-thirds of non-medical people and one-third medical and my wife has just so nicely reminded me that I should have started with prayer even though we had prayer before we started.

Heavenly Father, we want our minds to be under the influence of your Holy Spirit as we learn about the most effective way to win souls, which is the medical ministry work.

And so we want clearness of thought, want your Holy Spirit to impress each person sitting in the audience, so that they are thinking the thoughts that you want them to think.

And I ask also that the words that come flying out of my mouth would be inspired by your Holy Spirit as well.

Thank you for hearing our prayer, because we ask it in the name of Jesus.

So people come in, they get registered, and then they go through triage.

And while they're even though they're waiting in line, they're listening to sacred music.

You know in the scriptures it says that Elisha needed some inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

Who did he call for to bring the Holy Spirit to him so he could think about something and to do a miracle and so forth.

He called for a minstrel to come and play for him some sacred music.

So we have sacred music all around the facility where a pathway to health event is taking place.

A person may then be escorted over to women's health, they may get a well woman exam or they might go see a primary care doctor and take care of some issue or they might go have a surgical procedure.

We did about 365 surgical procedures in San Antonio in 2 and a half days.

They might get an eye exam for free glasses and they pick up the free glasses at 1 of your local churches.

So it just connects the people to the churches.

They might go see the dentist, have a cavity filled, or get some teeth cleaned, or might get a root canal they could never afford, or a crown, or something like that.

They might see the tailor and get a free suit or other free clothing, free haircut.

After they've finished all of their medical services, which might include massage or hydrotherapy or those kinds of things, then they'll go through lifestyle counseling and learn the 8 laws of health and so on and then they'll go through chaplaincy services.

I was going to throw some more slides in there but I didn't get a chance to.

So when they get through an event like this where they've been exposed to sacred music and they've been exposed to people that started off the day with prayer, that may have offered them prayer a few times during the event.

Certainly when they get to Chaplaincy Services, there's literature available to them.

In Pathway San Antonio, where just about 6, 200 patients were treated for free.

The people voluntarily picked up 23, 000 pieces of literature as they came through the area, and they were very receptive because of the impact that had been had on them.

But God promises that if we are doing this kind of ministry, that amazing things are going to take place.

And we're going to have a little Bible study on that in Isaiah 58 in just a second.

But not only is the patient transformed by the influence of a bunch of Seventh-day Adventists who are all getting together to sacrifice of their time and their means to offer these services for free.

But the patients, I should say the volunteers themselves are impacted.

I'll read you a few examples of the way some of the people were impacted at some of these events.

But the impact on the patient is only had if we take heed to this warning.

You might be able to read that, I'll read it to you, just in case you can't.

This is from manuscript 46, I think it's also in medical ministry.

I want to tell you that when the gospel ministers and the medical missionary workers are not united, there is placed on our churches the worst evil that can be placed there.

In other words, to separate the medical ministry work from the gospel, the giving of the gospel, places the worst evil on the church.

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Series

Extreme Makeover: Pathway to Health Style

1. Pathway Makeover: God Uses Simple People

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

1. Pathway Makeover: God Uses Simple People

52m

2. Makeover Step 1: What is Required

1h

3. Makeover Step 2: The New You

46m

4. Makeover Step 3: Prepare For Community Impact

1h

5. Makeover Step 4: Ambassadors Win Thousands for Christ

48m

6. Pathway Makeover: Protection in the Last Days

1h 13m

Sound Doctrine