The world has changed in many ways since the Adventist church sent out its first missionaries. We know the stories of the past, but what is effective today? How can we reach out in ways that work? Come learn what God is doing around the world and what you can do to be a part of it. 

Wildwood 75th Anniversary Celebration

<p>The world has changed in many ways since the Adventist church sent out its first missionaries. We know the stories of the past, but what is effective today? How can we reach out in ways that work? Come learn what God is doing around the world and what you can do to be a part of it. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Wildwood Lifestyle Center

Evangelism

James Hartley

Missions In the 21st Century- Part 1

Missions In the 21st Century- Part 2

Father, thank you for this day and this reunion and celebration of 75 years here at Wildwood.

I'm grateful to see how your hand has led us in the past, and we're talking about how your plan for the future and advancing this work and finishing the mission of the church in this generation.

Using the right arm of the gospel and following the blueprint you've given to us, following our commander.

Help us Lord to be unreservedly committed to following your will wherever you lead us and inspire us by the different testimonies we'll hear now.

And we just pray that you would help us to find our place in your work.

We pray for those missionaries that are in the field now overseas.

And we also pray that you help us to be revived in our local missions, reaching communities close by.

Help us Lord and we just pray for your blessing and your inspiration now in Jesus name, Amen.

Okay I want to introduce you folks to the Batista family.

This is an example of a family that were working in a, thank you, Working in Southern California in Loma Linda, working good jobs, they had a nice house, 2 kids, 2 young boys, and they just felt like their life was too easy, and they felt like they weren't doing enough for God's work.

So They left their jobs, they sold their house, they moved to Wildwood and they spent 2 years here training.

Then we called them to the mission field.

Their heritage is, Elaine's heritage is Filipino and Irene's is Indonesian, though they were born and raised in Southern California.

They felt called to go back to those countries and work.

So they moved to the Philippines in 2008.

And working with Light Ministry, Light is, for those that are listening, the Lay Institute for Global Health Training.

The headquarters is right here next to Wildwood Lifestyle, Wildwood's Lifestyle Center.

And we are supporting over 50 missionaries around the world that are setting up lay mission schools like this.

Here's a picture of Irene and Elaine and the boys when they're a little bit younger.

In 2008 we started a low mission school, very simple structure, okay, with open air, air conditioning and just a nice roof and a platform, and we started up a mission school, we had Actually the first course that we conducted there, we only had 6 students.

And some people wondered, should we continue?

And so we prayed and we said, well, it's the beginning.

If we do a good job with these 6, it'll grow.

The very next semester we had full capacity, over 30 students came.

They've run over 10, I think they're on their 10th or 12th batch, they call them, of students that have graduated.

And these students here are missionaries all throughout not only the Philippines, but Southeast Asia.

We have Filipino missionaries that we've trained that have gone to Indonesia, that have gone to Cambodia, have gone to Thailand.

Filipinos have been very useful and helpful because they know English well.

And so with English they can get around and they can help with a lot of different mission projects.

He was our light director in the Philippines for several years, and then he went to work in Thailand He's been in Thailand for the last 2 years training pastors with In the health message and also lay people you know The right arm of the gospel is so important to be foolish not to use it Sometimes we try to do evangelism with our right arm tied behind our back.

But the right arm is the right helping hand.

It is the gospel and illustration, right?

It is vital for the advancement of our message.

And especially you're working in Thailand with Buddhists, you're working in Indonesia with Muslims, we have to use health as an entering wedge.

And it's been so successful and it has grown very quickly.

This is just a couple pictures of our project there.

Pineapples, bananas, all kinds of fruit trees.

We have a little bakery there and we're building a lifestyle center.

This is up in northern Luzon in the Philippines.

It was started really by, the institution was started by Wildwood and Light came in and helped establish a school there.

This is another family also living in Southern California in an Adventist, this is not something I took time on in the first lecture, but we're not called to all live in Adventist cities and congregate and make big churches and everything.

We're supposed to spread ourselves like the salt of the earth.

And so this family as well felt like, you know, the life in Loma Linda in Southern California was just, they weren't growing spiritually, they didn't feel as involved as they could be.

So they left, they came to Wildwood, were trained as well, they had 2 young daughters instead of sons, just like the Batistas.

And so they moved to Indonesia and our challenge there and the experiences that we've been gaining that I want to share about is in using the health message for the Muslim world.

You know, there are more Muslims that live in Indonesia than anywhere else in the world, than in any other country.

It's the highest Muslim population of any country in the world, okay?

And so this school is designed to train lay people how to evangelize Muslims using the right arm of the Gospel.

And so we have used similar methods to what we that we use here.

We're just using health as their entering wedge.

So it's not theologically that's not complicated.

A product there is called the Healing Way.

We've we've we've we've run dozens of health expositions, getting all different kinds of Muslim, primarily Muslim women that have attended our expos.

They've gotten to know Christians on a different level.

Because you know, most Muslims, they think of the Christian world as very liberal and kind of apostates, you know, pork eating, smoking, drinking, cursing, you know, they don't have a good picture of it.

But when they meet our people and They see that they don't drink.

They take care of their health and of a higher maybe spiritual tone there's an impression that's really made and they and it's an amazement to them like oh I didn't know there's Christians like that and so the mind starts opening up but It's really the health message that kind of breaks that down.

You can just sit with a Muslim and talk about health for a while, the laws of health.

Well, we travel around the world, and we help people learn to eat better, not eating pork, for example.

I was like, you know what, that's something that you're really doing right.

But even all red meats, and meat in general is not a necessary, and even it's most healthy to just eat a vegetarian diet.

And just talking with them and chatting and making friends.

Talk about health, it's the entering wedge of the gospel.

It's an entering wedge to meet someone because gospel work and soul winning work is all about making friendships and connections with people.

Because they want to, Christ's method alone will give true success to the work.

He, he got, he, he gained their confidence first, gained their friendship and the confidence, and then he bade them to follow him.

So there's a process there and using the right arm to getting that friendship and the confidence to where they're like, you know what, this person kind of seems to have some balance in his life, seems to make sense about health, seems to really have something of value that I'm interested in, and then the ears are now suddenly more interested.

Series

Evangelism

Missions In the 21st Century- Part 2

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Waiting and Warning: Echoes from the Book of Ezekiel

1h 6m

Health Evangelism

02 Lighting the World

1h 5m

Breakout Session B

Building a Blood-Pressure-Lowering Environment

1h 1m

The Final Revival

36m

"Tell It Again"

God’s Love Language

56m

Experiencing Righteousness Through Faith in Christ

5. The Mind of Christ and the Impending Conflict

59m

Repair Broken Altars

48m

Evangelism and the Great Controversy

Empowered but Powerless

49m

My Redeemer is Faithful and True

1h

The Sabbath and Atheism

1h

Apologetics

1844 and the Great Disappointment

59m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the Demoniacs of the Gadarenes

47m

Sound Doctrine