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Montana Conference Campmeeting

Gardening, Mission, and the End

David Obermiller

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 1

I'm gonna start by telling you a little bit about myself.

My family was, my mom was Lutheran by profession and I was baptized as an infant.

That was the extent of my religion for the next 18 years or so.

In 1996, my sister and I found the flyers in the mail at my mom's house and then at my dad's house for the net 96 meetings, Mark Finley in Florida.

While you were watching that on your screen I was being born again, or the start of it.

It took me about a year to realize what I needed to do with my life.

My sister shortly after that, she was actually baptized first.

She was baptized right after the meetings in 96 and she went to Union College in 99.

I went up to visit her for Thanksgiving in 99 and then felt God calling me, if you want to say it that way.

Speaking of calling, that person's calling.

While I was there I felt God calling me and I went back home and prayed about it, talked to my local pastor about it, and decided to go to Union College and study theology.

I thought I was going to be a pastor, and I guess it depends on your definition of a pastor.

I wound up in literature ministries, though.

I was a literature ministry director for the Nevada-Utah Conference for about 3 years, and Then I took a call to go to Souls West, which is the evangelism school run by the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

I'm just curious if anybody here has heard of Souls West.

I believe your literature ministry director is a Souls West graduate, Karsten Moutre.

His brother Joel was a student of mine and my wife's when we were there at Soles.

As was mentioned a moment ago, it was when I was at Soles that I was studying Ellen White's writings regarding education and how to understand the work of education better.

And I discovered that you can't read about education without reading about farming.

And those of you who have perhaps read the book Education will remember some of those statements that she makes about the importance of agriculture and hands-on learning in that context of education.

So I said to my wife, I said, I have a problem.

I'm on a school campus and I don't know enough about farming and it sounds like we should really be doing this.

I left ministry, abandoned church work for a farm in southern Arizona.

And I say it that way because I had some people think that I was really crazy.

The pastor of my church, Soles is in Prescott, Arizona.

It's at the conference campgrounds there in Arizona Conference.

And the local church pastor, he was a Southern guy from Arkansas, and he said to me when I told him on the phone that I was leaving in a really slow Southern drawl, are you sure?

And actually he drew it out even further, he said, are you sure that's what God wants you to do?

He was like, Okay, I can get you a call as a pastor.

So 2010, we went to southern Arizona and worked on an Adventist run farm just outside of Tucson.

My real goal was to come back into church work and start a farm on an Adventist school campus.

I was speaking at an event in Southern California not related to farming and my topics had nothing to do with farming and a board member from Fresno Adventist Academy was at that meeting.

He came up to me the next morning in the hotel, we were talking about my presentation the night before and just general chit chat, and then all of a sudden we fell on a conversation about farming and the school there at Fresno.

He discovered I was on a farm, and I discovered they were looking for a farm, and then the next thought that went through my head was, Lord, please not California.

I grew up in a not so populated part of the world.

You've been to California, you know what I'm talking about.

First time I was in California, drove in through Reno down into Sacramento down the 99 And I was surprised.

It was not so bad going from Reno to Sacramento, but once you hit Sacramento and then the 99 all the way south, it's just like it never ends.

Like you here in Montana, you leave Bozeman and what is there between here and Billings?

But you know, I said, okay, Lord, I'll see how you're leading.

I went and gave several presentations to the school board there.

They were very convicted as I learned their story that reforms needed to be made in Adventist education, that we needed to take a step back towards some of the things that used to be done.

And as I gave my presentation, they were convicted that I was the person.

And I was convicted that the Holy Spirit was leading them, not just to hire me, but that the Holy Spirit was leading them in what they were trying to do with the school, becoming more mission focused, becoming more hands-on based in regard to learning.

If it's where you want me to be, if it's where you're leading, I'll go there.

And so in 2014, in January, I went to Fresno Adventist Academy and started Harvest Fields Organic Farm.

I want to get rid of my computer here so it's not a distraction, but what I want to tell you real quick before I go into it, what's on the screen is a virtual farm tour.

I'll show you some pictures of the farm, tell you a little bit about what we're doing, and then go into the presentation.

After the farm tour, I want to talk about, again, 5 different things between today, tomorrow, and tomorrow evening.

Today I want to talk about farming in the context of our understanding of prophecy.

Then the second hour this afternoon, I'm gonna go to the story of Joseph, and I'm gonna further expand on that idea.

And what I want to do, this is not a how-to seminar, I'd be willing to take some questions at some point about, you know, how to deal with bugs or something, or if you wanna talk to me afterwards, that's all very fine and everything, but I wanna talk to you about why we should do this.

Why should, as your Secretary Treasurer mentioned, why should Mount Ellis Academy be doing this?

And then tomorrow, the second 2 hours of session 3, session 4, if you will, I want to talk a little bit more about what it would actually look like.

How do you integrate agriculture and education together?

And then from 4.30 to 5 tomorrow, I wanna close with some thoughts on the general direction of Adventist education, and where we're going in the context of our mission, where we're going in the context of prophecy and the time of Earth's history that we live in.

And so 2014, we started the farm, Harvest Fields Organic farm.

It was a little bit of a play on the scripture, the harvest is truly what?

In addition we wanted a farm sounding name of course and subtitled this here, we are a farm with a mission.

We are a farm, we grow and sell produce, but our farm is about more than just veggies.

I spent 10 years in denominational employment doing evangelism and ministry, and this is a farm with a ministry mission.

And on a school campus, that mission starts with our kids.

So Harvest Fields Organic Farm, I'll give you a little tour here.

So our main farm building, Fresno Adventist Academy, was started in 1897.

And they were in a different part of town originally.

In the 60s they bought a dairy slash beef farm.

Very different looking now than it used to be.

The cattle would come in from the sides here.

That's our delivery truck parked right there.

Cattle would come in from the sides, and they would come in and feed down the middle.

So the workers would go down the middle and put the feed in the troughs as the cows came in the sides.

We are a 13 acre farm that's 100% certified organic.

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 2

Father in heaven, I wanna pray that you would bless our time here.

I wanna ask that you would join us, that you would fellowship with us heart to heart.

And Lord, that you would send your spirit to be here and make your will for us known.

I pray that for myself, that you would teach, to teach all of us how we can walk more perfectly with you and fulfill your desires for us.

Go to Genesis 41 if you have your Bible with you.

I'm going to summarize a little bit of Joseph's life here.

Joseph was the son of Jacob, the firstborn of his favorite wife, which was Rachel.

You remember the story of Rachel and Leah.

And Joseph was favored because of that and he's the recipient of his brother's hatred and jealousy because he was daddy's boy.

They didn't like that and so they captured him and sold him as a slave into Egypt.

You remember when he was there, he was at Potiphar's house, Potiphar's wife falsely accused him and then he wound up in jail.

While he was in jail he had the baker and the butler in their dreams and he interpreted their dream and the butler told him that he would remember Joseph but then promptly forgot.

And Joseph sat in prison for an additional 2 years.

We're gonna look at the first 8 verses and talk about Pharaoh's dream this afternoon.

It says in verse 1, that it came to pass at the end of 2 full years that Pharaoh dreamed and behold, he stood by the river.

And behold, there came up out of the river 7 well-favored cows and fat-fleshed and they fed in a meadow.

And behold, 7 other cows came up after them out of the river, bad-looking and lean-fleshed, and stood by the other cows upon the brink of the river.

And the bad-looking, lean-fleshed cows did eat up the 7 well-favored, good-looking that is, and fat-fleshed cows.

Verse 5, he slept and dreamed the second time and behold, 7 ears of grain.

The old English word for corn is not the same as we think of corn.

Old English corn means grain, not corn on the cob.

So this is grain, maybe wheat, maybe barley.

So 7 ears of grain came up on 1 stalk, rank and good, and behold, 7 thin ears blasted with the east wind sprung up after them, and the 7 thin ears devoured the 7 rank and full ears.

And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream.

It came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all the wise men thereof, and Pharaoh told them his dream.

But there was none that could interpret them to Pharaoh." It's a very interesting story.

I want to go through it and make some applications to us.

There are first 7 well-fed, good-looking cows that come up out of the river.

They're followed by 7 bad-looking, poorly-fed cows, and the 7 bad-looking cows eat the good-looking cows.

This is followed by the second dream, 7 good looking heads of grain, followed by 7 bad looking heads of grain, and the bad ones eat the good ones.

It says though to end that the bad grain was blasted by an east wind.

The butler remembered Joseph, told Pharaoh about Joseph.

Pharaoh was desperate to get an answer for the problems that he saw in the dream, things he didn't understand.

So in desperation, Pharaoh called for Joseph and speaking to Joseph said, "'I have dreamed a dream "'and there is none that can interpret it.

"'And I have heard it said of you that you can understand a dream to interpret it.' And Joseph answered Pharaoh saying, it is not in me, God will give Pharaoh an answer of what?

There's a couple of things that Pharaoh adds, he repeats his dream to Joseph, we won't read through the whole thing, but Pharaoh adds 2 little details that aren't in the first part.

Pharaoh first says in verse 19, I never saw any cows like that ever in Egypt.

They were not just bad, they were really bad.

I'd never seen a cow looking that bad anywhere in Egypt.

The second thing he adds is that there was no 1 who could tell the interpretation.

What made his problem even worse is he had no 1 to go to about his problem.

For just a brief moment as I talked about this morning, I don't know how you feel about your current president.

Our people in positions of leadership in our government have real stresses.

Whether Trump is somebody you like or dislike, or if Obama was somebody that you liked or disliked, they had very real stresses.

And unfortunately, as a reflection of our society, it's becoming more and more difficult to get anything done in politics, it's just because of the hatred inherent in politics.

And our political leaders face issues not only in society at large, but increasing issues just within politics, and who do they go to when they need help?

I can tell you that Pharaoh had real problems.

This wasn't the beginning of Pharaoh's problems, but it certainly was an additional problem that he had.

And Pharaoh knew that this was a real problem and he was very uncomfortable with this dream.

His wise men, his cabinet, his counselors, his advisors had no advice for what Pharaoh saw coming upon the world.

And what's worse is he didn't even understand it.

It's kind of like, they used this illustration this morning.

It's kind of like being sick and not knowing what you're sick with.

I'd rather know that I have cancer, have the doctor tell me you have probably 3 days to live than feel like I'm about to die and not know why.

That's kind of the way Pharaoh felt in this situation.

He knew that something was happening, he knew it was not good, but he didn't know exactly what it was, and that made the whole thing worse, and nobody else could help him.

Except for 1 person, and that was Jesus Christ, and the person of Joseph.

Never seen anything this bad in all my life.

Never seen a cow that bad in all my life.

And I don't have anybody to talk to about this problem that I'm having.

Pharaoh had rehearsed his dream to Joseph.

Joseph now responds, the dream of Pharaoh is 1.

God has showed you, Pharaoh, what he's about to do.

The 7 good cows are 7 years, the 7 good ears are 7 years, the 2 dreams are the same dream, it's 1.

And the 7 thin and bad looking cows that came up after them out of the river are 7 years, and the 7 empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be 7 years of famine.

This is the thing which I have spoken to Pharaoh, what God is about to do he shows to Pharaoh." I really like certain things.

I've never before until I really studied into this realized how much gospel is in the story of Joseph for Pharaoh.

And what's interesting about Pharaoh is Pharaoh's not really a great guy.

I don't know him personally, I don't mean to criticize him, but you think about Egyptian culture and Egyptian religion, Pharaoh probably worshiped Ra, the sun god, maybe Osiris.

Can't remember the other 1 that starts with an I and I want to say Isis but that's not it.

What's worse is that Pharaoh was believed by many to be at the top of the religious system, he himself was actually viewed as a God and he may have viewed himself as a God.

And now Pharaoh in his whole religious system, including himself at the top, was incapable of providing an answer to what lie in front of him through this dream.

But Joseph's words to Pharaoh are these, God has showed you.

I don't think that Pharaoh deserved a visit from God to be honest with you.

I don't think that a pagan, heathen, sun-worshipping, Nile River-worshipping pagan deserved a visit from God.

That makes it very abundantly clear that it's a good thing that I'm not God.

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 3

So as I mentioned yesterday, we were going to talk about why agriculture is important right now, and I want to shift a little bit this afternoon and talk about what it kind of looks like.

I won't get into lots of details, still like I said yesterday, not a how-to seminar, but I want to talk about what it would look like within the context of the church to have farms, gardens in relationship to our educational institutions.

I'll do this in 2 parts, so part 3, part 4.

We're gonna talk a little bit about education and character development.

The next hour we're gonna talk about education, agriculture, and academics, and how farms benefit academic programs.

And then at 4.30 we'll do part 5, which neither group has heard, so it'll be different yet.

So part 3, gardening mission and the end.

So I shared with the group this morning in 1999, Roger Dudley, who's a professor at Andrews University, finished 10 years of research on youth in the Adventist church and the departure of our young people from the Adventist church.

In other words, Roger Dudley was observing what many other Adventists were observing, that is that young Seventh-day Adventists were not staying in the church.

They were leaving, and his question was why.

So he found 1, 500 Seventh-day Adventist young people scattered across the country and sent them a survey once a year for 10 years and tracked their church membership, whether they were in the church or out of the church, whether they were active in the church if they stayed in the church, or were they were just names on the book, but not active.

And he did all this research, and what he found is not good news.

What he found is that between 40 and 50% of Seventh-day Adventist young people are leaving the church immediately after graduating from high school.

And that's pretty consistent with what many of you and I have observed in our churches.

For the past 15, 20 years as I've been an Adventist, I've had the opportunity to travel and visit a number of different churches, both here in the United States and in other countries.

And I've observed a fairly consistent phenomenon.

Whether that was in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I was preaching when I was studying theology at Union College, or if it was in a little church that I interned at in Iowa, or if it was in 1 of the churches I spoke at in Arizona or in California where I now reside or in other countries, you go church to church, typically you will find an absence of young Adventist.

When I became an Adventist in 1997, I was nearly the only, and my sister who was baptized about the same time, we were the only young people in the 15 to 20 year old age bracket.

There were a couple kids that were just a little bit younger than us.

There was almost no 1 in their mid-20s, and you started again when you were in your 30s.

And I have seen that over and over and over again at all the churches that I have visited, and I find that his statistics seems to be fairly accurate and consistent with what church administrators and church educators are also observing and sharing and acknowledging that our young people are not staying in the church.

When he did his research, he came up with a number of reasons why.

There wasn't 1 reason, there's a number of them.

Some of it is that our young people aren't involved in anything.

They don't have something for them to do.

Some of it is is that they don't feel loved in our church.

They sometimes feel like the Adventist church is a works-oriented, obedience-oriented, either you did good or did bad type of church, and they don't feel supported and valued for who they are in the context of their own personal struggles and they don't get the love and support they need until they leave.

Some of them find that church members are inconsistent in their beliefs, you could probably use the word hypocritical, we go to church but we don't live what we preach, And they're not impressed by that.

And he gave a long list of reasons why young people are leaving the church based on those surveys, and the results that he compiled were kind of frightening.

What's more interesting to me, when I continued to read into it, was that he found that young Adventists weren't the only Christians leaving their church.

He says here, this is in an interview with the Adventist News Network, He says, while the study was conducted on Adventist youth, the pioneering nature of the study made it of general interest to other denominations.

Go down to the bottom, a half a third of that.

He says, I have found that many denominations are concerned over this very problem.

In other words, it's not just Adventists who are losing their young people, it's Christian denominations of all other sorts, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, non-denominational, the young people in those churches are not staying in those churches either.

He goes on, he was requested to give a summary of his presentation to the Religious Research Association, I believe that's a non-denominational organization.

He says many people of many faiths pack the room to hear my presentation and to request copies of the research.

He says no other religious group has ever attempted such a comprehensive and extensive study on church youth.

And the other leaders of other denominations and other educational institutions, Christian that is, were interested in the unfortunate phenomena of our young people not staying Christian.

And while I am a Seventh-day Adventist and I value the uniqueness of the Adventist faith, I have to acknowledge that there's a bigger problem in society and that young Christians do not see a value in staying Christian, even if they have gone to a Christian school.

I found that in 2008, the United States government, under the leadership of George Bush II, released a research document called Preserving a Critical National Asset, America's Disadvantaged Students and the Crisis in faith-based urban schools.

I don't know the full backstory to this, but someone in the Bush administration had discovered or was made aware of the reality that faith-based schools were closing in America, particularly in urban areas.

And so the Bush administration conducted this research and published their results as to what's happening with faith-based schools in urban areas in the United States.

And what they found is exactly parallel to what we've observed over the last 50 years, 60, 70 years in the Adventist church is that Christian schools are closing, not just Adventist.

He says, starting in the 1960s, or the document says in the 1960s, there was a sharp decline in the number of private schools and enrollment in those remaining denominations.

Schools were closing and the schools that stayed open had fewer students.

That's pretty much the Adventist problem in the last 50, 60 years of education.

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Gardening, Mission, and the End

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 3

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Parts

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 1

1h

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 2

54m

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 3

49m

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 4

43m

Gardening, Mission, and the End- Part 5

48m

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