iShare 2016: iShare Every Time

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Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Evangelism

Scott Ward

Living It: Public High School Outreach

My angel is here right now, let me tell you what.

He lost my voice about 3 weeks ago, laryngitis, up at Leone Meadows summer camp.

I was camp pastor for the week, and I was out riding mountain bikes up in the mountains every day, trying to get some exercise.

And you know, the hills around here are pretty dusty.

And I don't know if it's the time of year for pollen in the trees, but there is all kinds of stuff.

So I was coughing a lot and speaking a lot and then camp meeting.

And so A lot of people have been praying that this will come back and that you'll be able to hear me.

Now we'll pray for it to last 3 hours because we've got a lot to talk about.

Let me check, see if these doors are unlocked, if we can actually close that, if people can get in and out.

All right, I usually like to have a circle, but where's too many of us for a circle, praise God, but we still want to spend some time talking.

I'll first of all let you know who I am, but you probably already heard that this morning, didn't you?

So my name is Scott Ward and I'm youth pastor at the Lodi English Oaks Church in Lodi, California, just north of Stockton, a little south of Sacramento.

Before that, I spent 6 years in Fresno at the Fresno Central Church.

Pastor Steve Boer, I heard he's retired now.

So that is where I got my feet wet with campus ministry.

I used to run a club at Fresno City College and started out with the higher education and now God has assigned me to secondary.

I hang out with the ACF people a lot, the Adventist Christian Fellowship, and they always, you know, they are higher education and the rest of us are somewhere lower.

So but that is where God is called and where he's blessing.

And so about 11 years ago, right when I moved to Lodi, God opened the doors for me to start a campus ministry at Lodi or Tauke High School right across the street from my church.

I was starting to get involved at McLean High School before I moved to Lodi.

The local youth pastor, not youth pastor, but just pastor network met at the church right across the street from McLean High School.

And the principal connected with those pastors and they needed help at the high school and they wanted to see what the pastor network could bring to the high school.

And so we started getting into conversations and since I was a youth pastor and I had a student from my church attending McLean, we were getting ready to start a Bible study and we picked out a room the principal said okay as long as you're not out proselytizing just meet with the kids that want to get to know you and you'll be a part of your group and then that student transferred and then I transferred and God has continued to look out for McLean High School And so how many of you are affiliated with McLean that are here today?

Did any of you get 1 of the living it shirts a year or so ago from Pastor Rob?

I've been talking to him over the last few years.

He told me it's going on and so I mailed down some t-shirts and some things to help support the ministry.

So this is all new and all different and we will talk about that some.

So I did not put this on the mode to not go to sleep so I'll try and keep it awake.

So starting about 11 years ago the North American Division asked me to start training on public high school ministry for the NAD youth ministry events.

You may have heard of JCI, just claim it.

The first was in Dallas and that's where I first started doing my training there.

And then I was asked to officially be the coordinator for the North American Division for Public High School Ministry.

And then the Pacific Union assigned me that role here.

And so what a coordinator is, is a volunteer who has a specialty.

So they recognize a specialty that you have at your home ministry And then they ask you to teach and train across the division and so my church has been very patient with me I'm gone a lot places like this and not long ago.

I was at with the GC youth department all the world division youth leaders from around the world talking about the Angel 1 project.

And so God has opened a lot of doors and He has apparently said it is time to reach out to our public school students.

More than 70% of Adventist teenagers attend public schools.

Those are the most acceptable numbers because Adventist education, you know, they're trying to, to, you know, they don't want the picture to be painted too dire.

How many of you are public school students here currently?

You know, there's a lot I can say and I'm going to be trying to be careful, but I work, I've taught Art at Lodi Academy for many years.

And so I'm present on academy campuses and public high school campuses.

And the trend, the most common attitude at an academy campus, any academy students here?

Tends to be, I've heard this all my life.

At public school, they're either partying or they're on fire witnessing.

It's hot and cold versus lukewarm is what I found for the most part to be make a very generalization.

So when I moved to Lodi there was a girl named Carrie and she was just graduating from our elementary school, the Adventist school, and she was going to go to Tokay High School to take honors classes, and she said, I know I'm gonna miss Bible class, would you come and start a Bible study at my school?

And so I was invited to come on campus, then you go through all the different processes, you get volunteer screening, go through the background check, all those things.

And so I've been on campus at Tokay High School now for 13 years.

Sometimes when I do go by the office, the secretaries have prayer requests.

They say, hey, someone down here has got cancer.

And so it's not only a ministry to students, but to staff and everybody else.

And whenever there's a tragedy on campus or if a student is killed, sometimes, you know, driving to parties and stuff, kids get into accidents.

And we've had that happen where kids have died.

And so they have the pastors, the chaplains come and be there to pray with students and so God has opened an amazing path for me and after I had a club at Tokay high school also started 1 at Lodi High School and I'm gonna get distracted and go here and there probably but you know as I was doing that the kids at the Academy heard me talk about that all the time and so every fall we take our senior class up to Yosemite for this senior Yosemite experience And I do an activity with the kids where they develop a concept for a company.

And then they look at the people within their group, what skills, what talents they have, and they assign everybody to the jobs in the company.

So it's identifying your talents and skills.

And so I have them, you know, talk all about their companies and what their roles are and their education, how much they're gonna make.

And then the next phase is to now, once you are successful in this, you'll hypothetically, how are you gonna give back to God with those same talents?

And so they start having all these ideas of how they could, you know, if they've got some hospital, how they can start doing community outreach, things like that.

And then the last phase, I asked them, okay, now you've identified the talents of your classmates and where you want to go in the future.

Seniors, this year you are the leaders on your campus.

What are you going to do with your talents to be leaders on your campus this year?

And 1 year, the kids said, we want to start a Christian club like you do at the public schools.

You have all kinds of spiritual activities.

So not only is the model important of meeting kids in the middle of their world?

Not only is that model important, but what you do in that model is critically important.

So we have the model, which means instead of just trying to entice kids to my campus, to my church, I go and meet them in their world.

Well, what do you do in the middle of that?

I started out trying to do a Bible study, and a lot of the kids are saying, we don't want to study during lunch, we're studying all day long.

And so our focus has gone more to the devotional life, and how to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and how to live your faith on campus.

And so we've shifted into that direction.

And so the academy kids said, we don't have that focus on devotional life.

Devotional Life as Fuel for Evangelism

This section is on devotional life as fuel for evangelism.

You have been successful in finding your spot.

My voice is still sounding about the same, I think.

Those of you who were here over the last hour, has it gotten worse or is it about the same?

So a lot of people praying that it would function and work.

So let's bow our heads and we'll get started.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for the opportunity to be here.

I thank you for the Sabbath that you have set aside for us to spend with you and spend time working on our relationship with you and spend time praising you and just enjoying you.

And I ask that you would send your Holy Spirit right now to guide and direct us, to teach us, fill us and guide us, I pray in Jesus name, amen.

That reminded me, finished a couple years ago my doctorate of ministry degree through Andrews University and my emphasis was on biblical spirituality, discipleship and biblical spirituality so it's about devotional life and how to follow Jesus, those kind of things.

And after graduation, we had a little retreat at the Adventist Frontier Missions compound just outside of Berrien Springs, AFM.

And the parting words from our professor after this four-year journey, He quoted 1 of his friends, a fellow professor at the seminary, and he said at the end of the day when it's all over, he says the bottom line, the point of being a Christian is to love God and enjoy him forever.

Have you ever thought about enjoying God?

Enjoying his presence, enjoying life in him?

Yeah, this is the best life that we can possibly live, is to spend our lives with Jesus.

So as I was working on my doctorate in this area, I mean, devotional life has been a passion of mine, something I felt called to for many, many years as a Christian.

Growing up Adventist, I never related to what George Knight calls the beastly preaching.

I never really was that enthralled with revelation prophecies.

I was always more drawn to John and to try and have a personal connection with Jesus.

And So what I told myself in college was, in the back of my mind, says, well, if I don't know the exact day that Jesus is coming, if I know him personally, I'll recognize him when he shows up.

So I thought I want to learn to recognize him and then I'll start trying to work out the details of the things that are harder for me to understand.

And so as I've gone through life, I've, I've found out that I'm more of a, and I always get this wrong, is right brain, the more creative side and left brain is the rational side.

It is very rational, it is very reasonable, and it's logical, it makes complete sense.

But if you are a right brain person, I think we lose most of them.

We're so geared, we're so specialized at the left reign that we don't know how to relate to people who think on the other side.

And so I went from a biology and math major to an art major, my bachelor's is in fine arts, and I'm just kind of the artist side and so when I read the Bible some people are really excited and they with a study of Revelation can be incredibly spiritually nurturing for a lot of people but not for everybody I believe that God can speak to all of us in the way that we need to hear him throughout Scripture and we need to have a balance.

I love reading Revelation, but I get something completely different than timelines and all that kind of stuff out of it.

I actually see a more fuel for a relationship with Jesus.

I think we need to learn how to feed ourselves spiritually.

And once we can learn to feed ourselves spiritually, then evangelism will start to naturally flow out.

So that's just kind of a little bit of my personal walk in finding that devotional life is really what helped me to become on fire for Jesus.

When I was just growing up in the do's and the don'ts, the rules and the studies, it all just kind of went over my head and my faith was very separate from my life.

But once I learned to talk to Jesus personally and have a relationship with him, that's when things took off for me and that's when I became a lot more evangelistic is when I started to have that personal connection.

So I want to go through, as I was doing my research for my doctorate on the spiritual growth in the kids that were attending my campus clubs, I kept track of the things I was teaching.

And so I was teaching on the devotional life.

And so as I was teaching it, I was writing it up, and kids were responding tremendously.

And so I wrote it up into book format, and Review and Herald ended up publishing it.

And so this is, you know, with my campus ministry, the concept is to get out of the church, go meet people in the middle of their world to try and help them live their faith there.

So my model is to get on campus and meet with kids.

What I teach in that setting is all in here.

So you need to have the concept of going out and meeting people, but you also need to, I've found that for kids in the middle of their day at school rather than another Bible study because they're studying all day they want to break they want to do something different so I found that devotional life was a key thing there because when things are happening around them on a public school campus learning how to respond to that how to help friends a devotional life is where that comes in.

It's knowing how to be connected to Jesus in a tough situation and having something from your heart to share with the people that are around you.

So the structure of the book is on the Gospel Commission.

Who can tell me what the gospel commission is okay I heard Matthew 28 go ye therefore in all the world teaching all nations that's what I was told when I was young as well What else is the Gospel Commission about?

Okay, but specifically just the gospel commission, Jesus parting words to his disciples and 7, every 1 of the gospels.

And so as I was studying, as I was researching, and of course my favorite book of the Bible is John, now it's getting in competition with Ephesians.

Ephesians is really good, Have you guys read that lately?

How many of you, do we have any Pathfinders here?

Okay, any of you do the Pathfinder Bible Experience?

Okay, a few years ago, since my ministry is living it, How to Live Your Faith in the Real World, I was asked a few years ago to start writing some Bible studies for the Pathfinder Bible Experience because I found that kids were memorizing the books of the Bible for Bible trivia competition, but they weren't necessarily getting anything out of it personally.

And so I started writing instead of study guides, application guides.

And so I used my personal method of study and I started writing those for the books the Bible the kids memorizing and so this year I'm just finished writing Ephesians a few days ago it's due Monday I've got a few more to go but anyway it's like Ephesians man this is such cool stuff so anyway we'll get into that more later but so anyway that the Gospel Commission it's in all 4 of the Gospels, and it's different in every single 1 of them, okay?

So the place I like to start, because I was raised that the Gospel Commission was go and teach all nations.

And so we had evangelists come to our church and they would preach and they would teach.

Then the evangelists would leave in a short time later.

So that is a very unbalanced view of evangelism.

In Matthew itself it says, Go ye therefore and make disciples.

Can you stand up and preach at someone and is that making a disciple?

Making a disciple means instead of just mailing out flyers only, we should be inviting people personally.

We should be in our neighborhoods getting to know people, people from work, people from school.

We should be personally invited, because that is the disciple making process, is to actually make friends with people, invite them into your life, and then you have a lot more authority to teach.

And so we don't even have the full Gospel Commission from Matthew, but the place I like to start is in John.

And so who knows what the Gospel Commission is according to John?

This is the 1 you might have to search for just a little bit, but it's right before Jesus goes back to heaven.

And you know you can find the Gospel Commission in the last chapter of each of the Gospels.

So if you want to take out your Bibles and look, the last chapter of John, there's a conversation between Jesus and who?

Then go into all the world and feed my sheep, right?

And what is the Gospel Commission founded on?

A personal, loving relationship with Jesus.

It took Peter 3 and a half years to try and sort through that and figure out what it was.

Angel 1 Project

So, this part is specifically on the Angel 1 project.

We have been very focused, traditionally as Adventists, on the third angel.

Do you know the message of the first angel?

The everlasting gospel and yeah, it's it's fascinating to me that even when I have heard an Adventist preacher Excuse me.

Talk about the first angels message They always focus on the last part of it, which is what?

Yeah, they always focus on the rough part.

Oh, I can read it on the cover of my box.

Then I saw another angel flying in the midair and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every tribe, nation, language, and people." And then after that it says, fear God and keep his commandments, right?

So that's the part I always hear Adventist preachers talking about.

It's amazing because I've seen titles, or somebody's gonna talk about the first angel's message, and then it turns out to be the last part of it, but people for some reason don't focus on the gospel very much.

And so I am completely focused on the gospel part of that because what is the gospel?

The gospel is the good news about Jesus, right?

And so that is the only thing that can prepare us to be ready for the time of trouble at the end.

And so like I said in the first seminar, I found that high school students, especially public high school students, the struggle is not over what doctrine to believe, it's whether or not to be Christian.

And so My focus is very much on the gospel, who Jesus is, how to have a relationship with him, how to give him a try, and then once you've made that commitment, then we can build upon that foundation with a better understanding of who he is, which is what the doctrines do, is help us to have a better understanding.

And so this is Angel 1, so this is gospel evangelism.

We have a lot of materials out there for doctrinal evangelism, things like Amazing Facts, all those different organizations.

There's a lot of Bible studies out there, but there's very little on just the basic gospel and what that is.

So I'm going to open up this Angel 1 kit.

So the way this started is 1 of our weeks of spiritual emphasis we were partnering with California School Project.

They are a non-profit evangelical organization next to Biola University in Southern California And they are committed to evangelizing every public high school in the state of California.

And now they have Illinois School Project, Florida School Project, I think they've gone nationwide.

So on my website here there's a link to them.

And so they came and they were teaching us how to do sidewalk evangelism.

And they had these old campus crusade tracks from like the 70s.

They were these old crusty things and it's got the like the 4 worlds and like where they draw the cross between 2 valleys.

Have you ever seen those things from campus ministries?

And so there's just these outdated things and kids are like, oh what is this?

They'd staple a couple together and they're just really not good.

You open them up and they're just confusing.

And so I thought, well, I used to be a literature evangelist leader, I know what literature looks like, I've written a book or 2.

It's like I bet I can put something together a little bit better than that.

So the concept is this is an outreach either for Adventist students that go to a public school.

What it is is on the sidewalks outside of a public high school when kids get out for the day, the sidewalk's public property.

You can just be on the sidewalks and get into a conversation.

And with these evangelical groups, they like to make a gospel presentation.

Do you know what a gospel presentation is?

That's where they talk like the 4 worlds which is the world was created for good, the devil came in and tarnished it, made it bad.

Jesus came to save us, and now you can have a beautiful life in heaven.

So it's kind of their four-step progression.

It's like, well, that's a great controversy.

It's like, why aren't we teaching Adventist teenagers to give a Gospel presentation.

Maybe if we taught them how to share a very simple Gospel presentation, maybe they'd get it for themselves and understand it because we are so good at our distinctive beliefs, but with the Gospel, We struggle a little bit more.

So what I did is wrote a little book called The Light Booklet, Light for a Dark World.

And what it does is this is basically a gospel presentation.

And so it has an introductory section, which is just a couple pages, very short book.

It's got a lot of pictures because kids like that.

And so these are really geared towards as a training tool for the students that you know in your youth group that want to do outreach or anyone that you want to teach the gospel to.

So it has an introduction talking about how evil our world is.

They start out with the evil that surrounds us and it's talking about all the kinds of terrorism, all the violent terrible things we hear about so every day in the news.

Series

Evangelism

Devotional Life as Fuel for Evangelism

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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