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

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?

Elders Advanced Training- Part 2

Father in Heaven, thank you for a new day, for life, health, strength, the blessings of a place like Camp Meeting, where we can come together and convene and fellowship and learn together, be blessed by biblical preaching, and also have opportunities to emphasize the work that you've given us to do and learn how to do it better.

We pray that your spirit will be here as we talk about the work of an elder And may these individuals be strengthened in their work to go back to their local churches to rightly represent you.

Thank you for hearing our prayer in Jesus' name.

Today we want to continue into our second phase of our advanced training.

I want to be able to share some things with you in a very more specific way.

I also hope that we have enough time for you to dialogue as you have questions.

How many of you have been elders for 10 years or more?

The rest of you, I'm assuming, have either been not elders or you've been elders for less than 10 years.

So, there's a lot of experience in here, in terms of being an elder.

I've never been a lay elder, such as yourself, with a job besides ministry.

But I have been an elder in a church when I wasn't the pastor, and it's a lot closer to being an elder in a church when you are a layperson doing it, because I had my day job, so to speak, as well as being an elder, and it was a good lesson for me.

I found what it's like to be having another job besides being the pastor of the church and having to carry the burden of being an elder and working in that church.

And as I, this is while I, when I came to the conference office and came to the Lansing Church back in 1993.

I'm barely that old, you know, so I'm probably about 22 by now.

At any rate, during that time, I got involved in the Lansing Church, and I was the personal ministries leader and the Sabbath School director for the Michigan Conference disaster response coordinator and those things were keeping me busy.

But when you get into a position like that, you're not as busy.

And So they asked me to be an elder and I said sure, and I spent several years as an elder in the Lansing Church.

A time came when my job started to change and it also started to expand.

And as that began to happen, I had to make a decision and sometimes you have to make the same kind of decision.

I know your churches need you as elders and I'm not telling you now this is kind of counterproductive to my class, but there does come a time when you say, look I honestly can't do the job of an elder because my life just does not allow it right now.

And it's better for you to step out and let someone else step in who has the time to be able to do that job, or at least more than you are able to do that job.

For example, if you're traveling 6 days out of 7, And the only time you're home is on Friday night through Saturday night, and then on Sunday you're gone again.

And that's your work, and that's your life, and that's your job.

You can't do the work of an elder, folks.

You can't do the work of an elder if you're not there during that time.

I already said earlier in the job description time that an elder's time commitment should be at least 4 hours a week.

If you're going to visit people in their home, you have to be present to visit them in their home.

Well, maybe you could Skype with them, I suppose, but not really the ideal way to be able to do it.

So what I'm saying is, I've learned from experience what it is to carry that kind of a load, and recognize the challenges that are there, at least more so than when I was a pastor.

And as we're working through this, I value your experience.

Those of you who have been doing this for 10 years or more, you've had experience in doing this.

At some point when I recognize, when we are doing interaction, that I've got to share some material with you, and I may say, I'm going to just have to keep launching ahead and not take your questions or your comments.

That's I still have to accomplish some level of content delivery.

Okay, But I do want, especially today and tomorrow, to have some time for you to ask questions or to share appropriate experiences of things that have worked for you or the like.

So if we come up to that, I would like to encourage you to do that.

I have 20 slides today, and this is the second 1.

So I've got 19 slides, which means I don't have that much as I have had sometimes.

And so I'm hoping to be able to get through that, and then we can have some dialogue.

If we wind up with a little extra time, I'm happy to take some situations that you may be dealing with, that you'd like some advice with, or things that you know you've had in the past that are long since past, but you say, you know, did we do that the best way we could have?

And use it not so much to fix the past, which you can't do, but to use it as a teaching moment for the present, and a learning moment so that not only that you might learn for how to handle things in the future but also how the class might learn how to handle things to the future.

All right, did I make a lot of sense in that or any sense at all?

At least 1 person thinks I've made some sense I might have to go over it again all right just a lead-in not the best word but I'd like to just remind you that you are leaders okay?

Now everybody follows somebody and we all follow Jesus, all right?

But you are in your church, you're viewed as being a leader.

You were elected because you have been recognized as a leader in your congregation.

You have been elected because You have shown leadership potential or leadership skills, and the church needs that leadership.

You've been elected for some of the other qualifications, your spiritual qualifications, your spiritual mentorship of others, and even though you might not have been an elder, but they've recognized that and now they want to make you officially a leader.

When you are a leader, there are some things I want you to think about, and they're what are on the screen right now.

Leaders first of all must love people and the challenge of course is that not everybody's lovely and just about every church that I've been to has somebody who's less lovely than others And you can think of who some of those people might be, because your mind right now is playing back in your mind some of those people, or at least 1 of those persons in your church that's harder for you to love than others.

The challenge of course is sometimes we have to love them with tough love.

And we can't allow unlovely people to dominate the church.

Now there's an individual in the Michigan, that is in Michigan, and I'm actually going to tell you this man's name.

And the reason I'm going to tell you is because he could visit your church.

I have gone in the lower part of Michigan, I've gone a number of different places, and I'll go there and bump into him.

He doesn't particularly care for me, But 1 of the reasons is because he's a challenge.

Well, I'm not going to tell you his name because I don't want to put him on recording.

But maybe at the end, if you will remind me, I'll turn the recorders off and I'll tell you this individual's name.

But the problem is that he borders on the level of being a predator.

And you cannot allow people like that to continue to dominate your church and to control what goes on in your church.

And people like this can often target new members or vulnerable members, And if you simply allow it to go on, you're not loving the rest of the church, and caring for the rest of the church.

And you're ultimately not loving that person either, because that person is being destructive, and they need to have their lives changed and fully surrender to Jesus.

So love comes in many different forms, that's my point.

Part of your work is to maintain church unity.

The devil wants to divide your church because He understands the principle of divide and conquer.

He's the author of divide and conquer, and he's been doing it for a long time.

And if your church becomes divided, he knows that you will be ineffective in the community.

A united, loving, caring, Christian church community is a powerful force in the community that you dwell in.

But a divided church is unable to be effective in doing anything in that local church.

So, your work is to maintain unity and to keep unity.

When you start to see something happening that's bringing disunity into your church and division.

Your work is to number 1 pray about it and ask God for solutions and number 2 to begin to get involved in that process.

But you can't just step back and say, pastor it's your job to solve this problem.

Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

Father in heaven, this morning we come to you grateful for a new day, grateful for the newness of life that you give us every day.

And Father, as we spend some time here as individuals responsible for leadership in our church, in our churches, there are some times when we have to face some pretty challenging issues.

And oh, that we had all the answers, but we don't, which is actually a good thing because it makes us more dependent on you.

And I pray that as we have a conversation about these issues today, that your Holy Spirit will guide and direct what we do and that you will be present here to teach us, give us ears to hear, minds to understand, and hearts to be willing to work through these issues in the best possible way.

Tom, You're not close enough to see that thing, but you keep an eye on it for me, okay?

Does it look like it's working all right right now?

I'm just picking on Tom because he saved me yesterday, so I hope it doesn't run out of memory today.

So today, we want to talk about discipline issues and we want to talk about conflict.

I have approximately an hour and 10 minutes to get 2 of the most challenging subjects into place here.

So here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

I'm going to ask you to let me give some content here to start with.

And I'm going to try to do that content in the first 45 minutes or so here before I go on.

And then if I can get that content to you, That was good, really good.

If I can get that content through to you, then anybody else here needing this?

Then I'll give you a chance to ask some questions and all.

So will you hold your comments, whatever the comment or question might be, write it down if you want to share it.

But please, if you'll let me get through this, then I will, I'll give you a chance to ask questions, and we'll try to work through some of that this morning.

And that way I can be sure to be able to...

Yeah, my wife told me this morning she needed it and I did not prepare it the other way, so I thought she's not even doing presentations with that.

Yeah, blame it on the other person, right?

So, let me bring this up here really quickly.

First of all, when we are talking about the issue of discipline, and that's where we're going to start, I really want to stress with you today that discipline is redemptive in nature or it's not what God wants it to be.

Now I don't have time to do a redemptive discipline seminar, but we do redemptive discipline seminars.

I learned from Elder Gallimore the principle of what he calls redemptive discipline and it's not a new term to him, I'm just saying it's a seminar that he does and I sat in his classes for a number of times and then I asked him, will you give me permission to also teach that?

And he said yes, and I have that material, and I share that in a seminar.

I'm not going to do it here today because it takes more time than I have here to do with it, but I'm going to share some of those principles with you today and help to bring about that emphasis.

When you and I are dealing with the issue of discipline, it is not for the purpose of punishing people.

It's not for the purpose of punishing people, it is for the purpose of redeeming people.

We're trying to save people, not get rid of them.

God has no value in us doing that because that isn't why Jesus came here.

He didn't come here to figure out how many people he could get rid of.

He came here for the purpose of saving souls.

Here's the major point that I want to be able to stress to start with.

Does God expect his people to live to the lowest standard or to the highest standard?

We're not perfect human beings, am I right?

But God does want his people to grow and develop.

Because we're human beings, we tend to reach to the lowest standard.

What is the least that I need to do to get into the kingdom of heaven?

Rather than what is it that God wants me to do?

What is the best way that I would be able to represent Jesus?

What does he want me to do in my life so that I can live for him and be the representation for him that he wants me to be?

Because God is holy and righteous, His church has set high standards of moral and social behavior that reflect the character of God.

Those standards that the church has set, some people will say, oh, okay, so the church gets to set the standards.

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Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

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Elders Advanced Training- Part 1

1h 15m

Elders Advanced Training- Part 2

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Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

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