Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elders Advanced Training

Royce Snyman

Elders Advanced Training- Part 1

Elders Advanced Training- Part 2

Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

Father in heaven, again, we come to you at the beginning of this class, grateful for the opportunity to serve, but also challenged that the opportunity provides a great need on our part to know exactly what you have in mind for us, what you want us to do, and how we can do it best for you.

This class is intended, Lord, only to be a beginning wedge into that experience, but Lord, We need you more than anything else if we're going to rightly represent you and do the work you've given us to do.

Bless our class today with the presence of your Holy Spirit and prepare our hearts for deeper and greater and better service in Jesus' name.

Well today we're transitioning from the basic into the advanced part of our elders training.

And when I say advanced, that sounds ominous, but it doesn't have to be.

It basically means I'm going to go more in depth into some things and a little broader, not just giving you a summary of job descriptions for an elder, but to talk about some of those things that elders do and give you hopefully a chance to ask some questions about some of those things.

In the next couple of days we'll deal with some problem areas and the challenges that you have to deal with in your church.

Some of those challenges that you have to deal with, that sheet needs to come back up here and get up here because there's some people that haven't signed in for that yet.

And you know that some of the most difficult problems that elders face and churches face have to do with disciplinary type circumstances, problems that arise in your church of unfaithfulness to theology, unfaithfulness to spouses, conflicts that come up in your church, they can absorb you and destroy you in terms of trying to make it so that the church is doing everything about that and not about what you're looking for.

So those can be some really challenging opportunities and we want to talk a little bit about that.

So I'm assuming you're coming in for the elders class and you're in the absolute right place.

There's a couple classes around here and people sometimes get confused.

So we have some notes coming in just a moment.

My secretary is making a few extra copies and she'll bring them in and everybody will be together.

But we're going to work off the screen today.

And here's what I'm going to focus in on mainly today.

We're going to talk about some of the special services that elders might be called upon to participate in or to lead out in.

And I'm also going to tell you what you can do and what you can't do.

So that that part of it is clear to you because sometimes I get calls from the field and they're saying, can an elder do this?

And so we wanna work through that part of it and make sure that part of it is clear to you today.

So we're gonna start first of all with baptism.

Perhaps most important thing the church does is bring people into the church and nothing more valuable to your personal experience and to the experience of your church members than to be involved in bringing people to Jesus.

If you're not involved in doing that, I really, really, really want to encourage you to get down on your knees and say, Lord, how do I do this?

Because as I said yesterday, you're a disciple before you are an elder, and you should be a disciple before you are an elder, and you should be a disciple before you are an elder, and you should not be an elder if you are not a disciple.

I hope you understand what I mean by that.

And that is that you have been called to be a Christian before you're called to be an elder.

There's nothing worse than an elder who's not a Christian.

You all are looking at me with blank stares.

You understand what I mean by that, right?

Now I'm talking to the choir because I realize that this is the kind of situation, people who come to camp meeting are like people who come to prayer meeting.

Do you know what Ellen White says about prayer meeting?

We'll talk about that in a moment, but people who come to camp meeting are coming here because they're motivated.

Many of you take your vacation time to come to camp meeting.

People don't do that if they're not Christians.

But I'm also wise enough to know as a gospel minister to know that sometimes we put on a facade.

Sometimes we're wearing a mask and we have to take evaluation of ourselves sometimes and that's the work of the Spirit of God.

You read in John and you see what Jesus said about the work of the Holy Spirit, and the work of the Holy Spirit is to get to our hearts and help us to look and see what is in that heart of ours.

And if there's what shouldn't be there, or We're not in the relationship that Jesus wants us to be.

But because you are disciples, you are winning souls and you are leading people to Jesus and because you are leading people to Jesus you want them to be part of your church.

This is a church that exists just before Jesus comes back And this is the 1 that fulfills the prophecies in Revelation.

This is the church that God said would go through to the kingdom of heaven.

But it's also the Revelation 3 church that is called Laodicea.

And the Laodicean church does have to be reformed.

But when people come to the church, they should be baptized.

All right, let's talk a little bit about that.

That was a little back from yesterday and some of that.

But let's talk about baptism for a moment.

When was the last time you had a baptism?

Anybody have a baptism in your church in the last year?

I'm glad also to see the 1 hand that was down come back up.

All right, so you've had baptisms in your church.

When was the last time you did a baptism?

Part of the work of an elder is to participate in the process of preparing people for baptism and I'm going to tell you honestly, to be perfectly frank, sometimes we pastors do not do a good job of involving our elders in this process.

And if that's the case, we need to grow too.

We're busy people out there as pastors, and we get going running down that track, and we go from home to home and visiting, and we are doing Bible studies, and we're running to the hospital and preparing sermons and you know trying to get the agenda ready for the board meetings and and prayer meeting and yada yada yada and sometimes we don't take the time to pause and realize that the elders need to be involved in that process number 1 number 2 that the elders can be trained to actually lead out in that process and take the pressure off of us, and that's a lot of what should be happening.

Recognize that if you go back and simply say, Pastor, Elder Snaman said, you've got to let me do this.

You can go back and say, Elder Snamen encouraged us to learn how to develop some skills in this area, and I would like to be able to learn to do that.

Are you willing to help me to do that?" You notice what you're asking because that actually gives the pastor the opportunity to say, no, I'm not willing.

That's when you call me Because I will encourage the pastor to be willing and to find out what it is that would be a stumbling block from the pastor being willing to do that.

But elders should help in the organizing and the directing and giving support throughout that service.

If you don't even know the service is coming, how can you do that?

But I got a response from I think most of you that you're having elders meetings and that you're meeting with your pastors and and doing so on a fairly regular basis.

The pastor and you should be talking about, do you have baptisms coming up?

And if you have those baptisms coming up, what do you need to do to prepare for that?

So the organization, the directing, the giving of support throughout that service, ordained pastors do the baptism, All right?

Now there, I immediately saw some hands come up on that, and I'm gonna just say it again, ordained pastors do the baptism.

But there is a phrase at the end, and what is it?

Well, first of all, Be careful of your theology, okay?

When you take a look at what happened in the New Testament, you find that the people that were doing the baptisms were the apostles and the leaders and the elders and the preachers that were doing that work.

And there's a very practical reason when it comes to the work that we do.

If everybody just starts baptizing, you're going to have chaos in your church.

If all of a sudden you have people that start baptizing, and anybody and everybody is authorized to baptize, who's going to be making sure that good work is done in preparing those people for baptism?

There seems to be kind of this movement of lowering that and I believe it's dangerous.

And the church manual is very clear on this and you and I are Seventh-day Adventist elders not Baptist elders and we're not Methodist elders or whatever.

We are Seventh-day Adventist elders and the Church Manual lays that out for us because of the the danger that's there of us simply falling into to chaotic practice.

By us working together we maintain the strength of the church.

If we don't do it, we begin to bring in the weakness of the church.

And you know, you already have enough problem with a mixed multitude in the world today, don't you?

Series

Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

58m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 2

1h 8m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Elders Basic Training- Part 1

1h 10m

God Saves the Church from Jewish Fables

15m

The Sanctuary

04 The Sanctuary Power of the Tabernacle

55m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 1

1h 7m

It Happened Because of Prayer

Do Not Enter

49m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Questions and Answers in Conflicts in Ministry

1h 17m

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training- Part 3

1h 8m

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

1h 5m

Emmanuel Training Sessions

10. Bible Docs 101 Overview- Part 2

30m

Seminars

How to Preach and Speak with Power

1h 42m

Sound Doctrine