Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Education

Diane Barlow

The Core of Adventist Education is Not Common

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can be here this morning or this afternoon.

We just pray that your Holy Spirit be here with us.

As I share, may it be your words and not mine.

And I just thank you for the message of Adventist education.

So before I get started with what I was going to talk to you, I was going to share with you a little bit about myself so that you can understand where I'm coming from.

And then growing up, church was very, very important to my family.

Even if we were on vacation, my parents would find a church and we never missed.

The only time we would miss is if somebody was sick and then 1 parent would stay home with that child and the other children and the other parent would go to church.

So if you were sick you're going to be really sick because you'd be in bed all day and we didn't like that.

We liked to play outside and do things outside.

I wasn't from a real rich family, probably lower middle income, so we had kind of a small house so it was kind of fun to be outside because when you're inside you were very close together.

1 thing I noticed when I was probably in about fifth grade I started eating at my friend's house for dinner And my parents always had prayer at dinner time.

And I went to my friend's house, and their parents didn't.

But my parents were very, very concerned about that.

And then when we were younger, we always knelt around my parents' bed at night time and we always had prayer.

So I didn't even think anything about that until I started visiting other friends' homes and their parents didn't do that.

So even though I was raised Catholic, religion was important to my family.

I went to school, in kindergarten, I think I was only 4, all the way through college, public schools.

I could tell you lots of stories that happened to me there.

Didn't even know what a seventh day adventist was during my schooling.

When I came home my junior year, finishing my junior year, I went to school at Central Michigan, just up there in Mount Pleasant.

I came home and my brother that's just younger than myself, he told me that they were hiring at Fisher Boddy, come on in, at Fisher Boddy that I should apply for a position.

So I thought, coming home from school, I needed a little vacation before I went to apply.

And the gentleman in HR said, you know, if you would have been here yesterday, I would have had a job for you.

But anyway, so I went home, about a 20-minute ride.

I got home, and he called me up, and he said, I have a job for you.

Show up on Monday, and you have a position.

So it was my desire, My plan was to work there during the summertime and then go back and finish my senior year at Central Michigan.

So it came August and they invited me up to personnel and they asked me if I would stay.

So I thought, well, looking at jobs in the public school back then.

And I thought, well, I could work a year.

I could make some money and I'd finish my education, go back.

He was, after I became, after August, I became a supervisor.

So I was working in a plant in Fisher Body in Livonia where they made door trim for GM cars.

And so when I was working there, I was like 21 years old, so I was a supervisor.

I had a group of 25 people or more at times.

I got all the people that nobody wanted, that they gave them all to me.

And these people, I mean, there's people who had been working there for 25 years or longer, and here I am young, and I don't even know what's going on.

But I learned really quickly that it was like teaching school, and if you give the people the tools, what they need to do their job, they do it really good.

So I had all these people that nobody wanted working in my group, and then we ended up in a short time having 1 of the best cost-productive groups in the whole plant.

So anyway, I ended up staying a little bit longer.

And when I met Mark, because it was during the energy crisis, and I left my exhaust fans on, And he reported me.

And so anyway, we became friends because then he showed me where they were, and then he started helping me out.

So anyway, so then my year, planning to go back to school, I didn't go back right away, and before long we were gonna get married.

And so then I realized that if I wanted to finish my education, I needed to go back.

So during that time I took some classes at the community college, so now I only needed 1 semester to graduate.

So I went back, I took an educational leave from General Motors, graduated in May, and we got married in July.

So even though I was raised going to church, we got married.

Mark was Presbyterian, and I was Catholic, and my parents always said, you know, you need to marry a Catholic.

His parents said, marry anybody but a Catholic.

So anyway, we went through the marriage counseling and then The priest that was going to marry us, he had a drinking problem, so kind of through the process, he got sent out to get dried out.

And then 1 thing that he said to us is if we got married at 5 o'clock or later on a Saturday that it would count for going to church on Sunday.

And my parents and being Catholics, I thought, OK, we could do this and it'd be a good thing.

But I started thinking, it planted a seed in my head, in my mind, why did he say that?

But I didn't do anything about it right away.

So then Mark and I got married and then we didn't go to church.

And then Mark liked to watch TV on Sunday morning and he started watching It is Written.

And so you know we watched this for a week after week.

He said you know you really yeah this is a long time ago.

So finally, we looked and said, who's putting on this program?

So we watched the credits really carefully.

And it's put on by the Seventh-day Adventist.

We didn't know what Seventh-day Adventists were, but we decided we'd go to church the next week.

I'm sure my dress was a little bit too short.

Showed up and we're kind of perplexed there's only 1 car in the parking lot.

And it happened to be a gentleman at the Ann Arbor School and he was working on their school.

So he came out and he told us that they go to church on Saturday.

So we never even put Seventh-day Adventist or Seventh-day as going as the Seventh-day as being Sabbath.

So our first time at the Seventh-day Adventist church was on a Sunday and there was no service.

So we came back, he told us when they met, so we came back the next Sabbath And then we started going to church, and then we moved during the process.

And then George Vandeman had a seminar downtown in Detroit.

I think it was at the Renaissance Center.

Jeremy Hall

The Three-legged Stool - Part #1

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for Adventist education.

We thank you for the impact that it has on the lives of so many young people.

We pray, Lord, that as we discuss today, as we talk together about the very important elements that can help Adventist education be successful, that your spirit would guide us.

Pray that you would speak through me and that the words that I say would be from you and not from myself.

As you have probably seen from the seminar booklet, we have 2 days.

We'll get into a little bit of what that means a little later.

But the first part that we're going to talk about today is the distinct aim, focus, and outcome seen in Adventist education, practically applied through something that we're calling the Key 3.

1 of the things that I've heard people say before is that the book education, which is our blueprint, is wonderful, it's phenomenal, but it's very philosophical.

And it's difficult sometimes to take some of the practical elements from that book and apply them and see how they would look and see how they would function.

So today we're actually gonna be taking some of the philosophical framework ideas from the book Adventist Education, the philosophical overview, and condensing them, synthesizing them down into 3 key principles, operational benchmarks that we can see in Adventist education for success in our schools.

A little personal introduction, my name is Jeremy Hall, and I have the privilege of serving with Diane Barlow, my superintendent at the Michigan Conference Office of Education.

And I am a product of Adventist education.

I'm also a product of homeschool Adventist education, because homeschooling is Adventist education as well.

And I went to Adelphian Junior Academy as a young person, and then I had the opportunity to come to Great Lakes Adventist Academy right here.

Although I have to be honest with you, math and I never got along, and so it's interesting how I'm sitting in the, teaching in the math classroom right now.

But just had a wonderful experience here and then went to Andrews University.

And then I actually came back to work here at this very academy as the boys dean.

And I did that for 5 years and then I transitioned into teaching religion and being the campus chaplain.

And then I went to Indiana Academy where I came to know the Currier family.

I was there for 3 years and then came back and just about to my third year at the Office of Education.

And I work with the secondary schools primarily, although I'm doing all kinds of different things in the education department.

So that's a little bit of an introduction of who I am.

As I talked to you a little bit before, I think it's important to set before you a purpose, something that will guide where we're headed.

The next 2 days, we'll attempt to synthesize the key philosophical objectives of Adventist education into 3 basic goals.

We have this ideal, philosophical ideal, of what Adventist education is, and we're going to basically try and synthesize that down into 3 basic goals.

And we're gonna show, specifically more so tomorrow, how the home, the church, and the school can work together to accomplish them.

That might give you a little hint of why the title of this seminar is the way that it is.

So on day 1, we're going to examine the philosophical framework of Adventist education synthesized into 3 basic concepts.

Day 2, we're going to look at how the home, church, and school can collaborate together to accomplish these 3 goals.

And as a teacher, I want this experience to be interactive.

If you have a question, if you have a comment, if you don't understand something that I'm saying, as a teacher 1 of the worst things you can ever do is to be talking on and on and on and people look at each other like, I don't have a clue what he's saying, right?

So I may not have the answer to your question, but I'll take your email address and I'll figure it out for you by God's grace and email it to you, but I want you to feel comfortable sharing, asking questions if you need clarification or wanna contribute to the process, Okay?

It is unique when compared to all other forms of education.

Public school education is definitely not like Adventist education.

Other Christian private parochial schools are not like Adventist education.

We have some specific key benchmarks that help frame what Adventist education is and what it's meant to be in the life of a young person.

Look at some of these quotes that may be familiar to you, coming from the first chapter of the book, Education.

Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range.

There is a need of a broader scope, a higher what?

True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study.

It means more than a preparation for the life that now is.

The whole being and with the whole period of existence possible to man.

It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, the spiritual powers.

It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for higher joy of service in the world to come." Wow, welcome.

In a knowledge of God, all true knowledge and real development have their source.

Wherever we turn in the physical, mental, or spiritual realm, in whatever we behold apart from the blight of sin, this knowledge is revealed.

Whatever line of investigation we pursue with a sincere purpose to arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty intelligence that is working in and through all.

The mind of man is brought into communion with the mind of God, the finite with the infinite.

The effect of such communion on body and mind and soul is beyond what?

It means you can't sit down at a calculator and create an equation that will be able to estimate its value.

So truly then we have a different aim in Adventist education.

We also have a different focus, don't we, in Adventist education?

Through sin, the divine likeness was marred and well nigh obliterated.

Man's physical powers were weakened, his mental capacity was lessened, his spiritual vision dimmed.

By infinite love and mercy, the plan of salvation had been devised, and a life of probation was granted.

To restore in man the image of his Maker, to bring him back to the perfection in which he was created, to promote the development of body, mind, and soul, that the divine purpose in his creation might be realized, this was to be the work of redemption.

This is the object of education, the great object of life.

So you see what our focus is, to restore in man the image of his maker.

Then, consequently, we have a different outcome.

So we have a different aim, we have a different focus, and we're looking for a different outcome.

Isn't that the reason why we put our young people into Adventist education?

We want the end product to look different than what secular society is putting forward.

I mean, that's what we wanna see in our young people.

That's why we invest so much of our church budgets.

That's why we invest so much of our personal budgets, to help our own children to be in school, to help other people's children be in school.

Such an education, Adventist education, provides more than mental discipline.

Note this, it strengthens the character so that truth and uprightness are not sacrificed to selfish desire or worldly ambition.

Instead of some master passion becoming a power to destroy, every motive and desire are brought into conformity to the great principles of right.

As the perfection of his character is dwelt upon, the mind is renewed and the soul is recreated in the image of God.

Now we've been reading through a number of quotes, but the reason why I put these in here is because it's important for us, before we move forward, to have an understanding of what our philosophical foundation is.

Okay, so these quotes are some of the most, I believe, powerful quotes that lay the framework, the foundation, for why Adventist education exists.

So just to summarize, so we have a different aim.

Our aim is the harmonious development of the physical, mental, and spiritual powers.

The Three-legged Stool - Part #2

Gracious Lord, we're so grateful for camp meeting.

We're grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.

We ask that your spirit would guide us, that you would fill me with what you want said, not what I want to say.

And if there are comments and questions that would be helpful and relevant, we pray also that you would impress our class in Jesus' name, amen.

So yesterday, just to review, We talked about the philosophical foundation of Adventist education, but because Adventist educational philosophy is difficult sometimes to understand in a practical sense, we basically synthesized Adventist philosophical approach down to 3 things called the key 3.

You remember the key 3, right, from Indiana Academy.

The key 3 is bringing students to the foot of the cross, having quality at all levels, and training them in the mission and message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And what we proposed yesterday was, if a school is following those 3 principles, and everything that they do in their school is filtered through those 3 principles, we can see positive outcomes in Adventist education.

Because Adventist education has a different aim, it has a different focus, and it has a different outcome.

We're about restoring in man the image of who?

So today in part 2, we're going to look at the vital collaboration.

It's the collaboration that is symbolized by a three-legged stool.

How many of you have ever sat on a three-legged stool to milk a cow?

Or, now, that's why this young lady came to this seminar, because of the title, Three-Legged Stool, and she remembered her dad, your mom was on the three-legged stool at the farm and your dad was on the one-legged stool.

Your mom tried the one-legged stool, it didn't really work out.

If you have a three-legged stool, you know that it is impossible for that stool to stand on its own unless there are 3 legs.

If you take away 1 of the legs or you break 1 of the legs, you're not going to be able to have that stool stand on its own anymore.

Adventist education, the success of training up a young person, the holistic picture of Adventist education, has been termed the three-legged stool.

Here's the reason why this three-legged stool is so important.

The work of education involves the whole being.

It is vital that all influential environments that a young person is in, it is important that all of these environments operate from a like-minded philosophy.

So today when we expand the key 3, It's going to add into the picture the home and the church environments.

And when these 3 environments, the home, the church, and the school, work together, we will see a deeper realization of the goals that we are after, which is to restore in man the image of God, to see our young people in heaven, to train them for service on this earth and for greater service in the world to come.

Well, just to go back with you again, the key 3, bringing students to the foot of the cross.

We want them to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We know that if Daniel would have had anything in his professional life that would have been subpar or shady in any way, the satraps and those that were fighting against him and were jealous of him, they would have taken him down based on the fact that he wasn't being professional and he didn't have integrity in what he was doing.

But because he had quality at all levels of his life, it gave God a chance to be uplifted.

If our schools have quality at all levels, then no 1 will be able to use an excuse for not sending their child to our school because of some kind of professional issue.

They will be making a decision that really will boil down to a spiritual issue.

We want people to make a decision to put their children in our schools because of a spiritual issue.

So if we run top-notch programming, then really if they decide not to, it's going to come down to a spiritual issue.

Lastly, what we reviewed yesterday, we want to train our young people in the mission and the message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as found in Matthew chapter 28, Matthew chapter 25 verse 40.

Those are the important benchmarks when we look at training our young people for service to others.

We talked about Project 58 that we started at Indiana, that God started at Indiana Academy, giving young people an opportunity to be active in service so that they can look back on the theory that they're taught in Bible class and in church and Sabbath school and say this thing called Christianity is real because I see how Christ through me affects other people.

So those are the the key 3 and now we're going to expand those things to the home, the church, and the school.

How do we bring young people to the foot of the cross in our homes?

You see friends, let me just pause for 1 second.

1 of the challenges sometimes that we have in Adventist education is that we do not have all 3 crucial entities working in harmony together.

We might have 1 of the legs standing strong.

For instance, in our schools, we may have spiritual programming, we may have teachers who are spiritually minded, We may have teachers who are uplifting Christ all the time, teachers who are talking to kids and saying, how's your relationship with Christ?

How are things going in your devotional life?

Giving opportunities for Jesus to be uplifted.

But unfortunately, the home is not modeling the same thing.

And so instead of walking lockstep together, in effect the teacher and the school are having to do reprogramming in the school because of what the kids are bringing into the school.

Conversely, when our schools are not representing the standards that are seen in the home, parents feel like they've got to reprogram their kids when they come home from school.

So it's so important that we have all 3 of these entities working together as they implement the Key 3.

So how do we bring young people to the foot of the cross in our homes?

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Series

Education

The Three-legged Stool - Part #1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

The Core of Adventist Education is Not Common

1h 5m

The Three-legged Stool - Part #1

1h 7m

The Three-legged Stool - Part #2

1h 6m

School Success

58m

Sound Doctrine