IMPACT Generation Leadership Retreat

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IMPACT Germany

Joakim Hjortland

The REBELution

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

Thank you that you, as you have promised, are together with us, as we come together in your name to seek you, to seek your will.

And as we sang, Lord, we want showers of blessing.

We want that you may bless us in a special way this weekend This through this message and in general and we know that's only possible with your spirit So we pray Lord that you may you may lead in a special way that you may tailor make this message We pray that you may help us to understand the things we will be talking about today.

Help us to to understand what it means in our lives.

And Lord, you know, Your word was given not so much for our information, but rather for our transformation.

And we pray that this message will not be information that we have put into our heads, but that it will lead to a life, transformed lives, Lord.

That you may, that we may take the decisions you want us to take, that we may take with us what you want us to take with us.

Thank you Lord, that you're here and that you will answer this prayer.

Many times, you know, you have this quite known picture that we often use, this analogy.

We talk about the work of the church or even sometimes the Christian walk as a race, right?

And I think we can learn many useful lessons from running a race that we can apply in our personal Christian lives and as a church in evangelism.

And now, especially you that like running can probably relate to this, whether you have been running like real races or not.

But especially if you go into a race, especially a long distance race, if you run a marathon or a 10 kilometers race maybe or whatever, I think that how you start that race will have a big influence on how you will finish that race.

Your attitude walking to the starting line will many times be important for how you actually will finish that race.

Especially, like think of running a marathon.

If you go into that race not being sure if you will complete the race or not, because it's quite long, you know, 42 point, what is it, 5 kilometers.

If you're not sure that you will complete it, you will most likely not complete that race.

Your attitude, how you start the race, your attitude in the beginning of the race, when it comes to running, is important to how you will finish the race.

Now if that is true, If we take that just thinking in regards to the analogy we often put to the race, could it be that how we as a church started up could be important for us today, for how we can finish strong?

Could it be that we could learn some powerful lessons from the early church and from our pioneers, from the beginning of the Advent movement, that will help us or that would be important, that would be crucial for us in order to finish the work, to finish strong?

I believe that we can learn a lot of valuable lessons from the beginning, both of the early church and of the Advent movement.

And the vision statement of IMPACT, as you might know, is empowered by the Spirit.

IMPACT seeks to inspire members to proclaim the advent of Christ together in this generation.

Basically, the name of Impact Generation in a little more word, the acronym.

We want to be part of finishing the race.

Reaching out with the 3 annual semesters in this generation to finish the work.

I want us to think a little bit of how it started, how it all started off.

Our church, the Advent Movement, started with a group, a very special group of young believers.

A very special group of young, young elitists.

They had a special caliber, they were, they had really, they started off really well.

Many of them started at a very young age as well.

1 guy called Luther Warren and Harry Feller, when they were 14 or 17 years old, they started the first Adventist youth society at a young age, and the purpose was mission work.

John Andrews, John Andrews, 1 of the more known pioneers, When he was 24, he had published some 35 articles.

He had a New Testament, all the New Testaments memorized in his head, can you imagine?

He envisioned a new Latin, a new Greek, a New Hebrew.

At the age of 30 he published the book The History of the Sabbath.

At the age of 35 he represented our church, the Amity Church, in Washington DC to basically get non-combatant status as a church.

At the age of 38 he was elected as the first GC President, the first president of the Amity Church.

But at age only 38 years old he was elected the GC President.

In 1845 he was sent out as the first official missionary from the U.S.

To Europe, to Switzerland, not far from here.

Started early, did a lot at an early age.

Unfortunately, he died also too young, age of 54.

You could talk many, many of the pioneers.

They did powerful things at a very young age.

And for instance, in 1844, many of our key pioneers, they were very young.

James White, he was 23 years old at the time, in 1944.

John Andrews was 15 at the time, Uriah Smith was 12.

And they didn't only start early, but as we heard, they really had a powerful commitment, a powerful, a special caliber.

They were a special group of young people that really made an impact in this world.

And I believe that we can do well to learn from them and to remind ourselves of their attitude, their mindset, the culture that was within the church in that time.

I think we can take many valuable lessons from that.

You know how many times we think of the pioneers as, you know, when we think of the pioneers we get these pictures in mind, these old people with these long beards, you know, like, And it's true, usually most of the pictures, that's kind of how they look, you know.

But the reality is that's not how it started, you know.

They didn't wait until their hair grew grey and the bridge grew long.

And by God's grace, let's start early as well.

We want to have such long briefs anyway, but let's not wait, let's not wait until that time.

Okay, so, now I think it's helpful and important to realize, though it's not the most nice thing to become aware of, but I believe it's important to realize that we are, I believe, as we also heard a little bit about yesterday evening, what Jeremy shared, we are in many ways, I think we can say, Christianity today and the Seventh Day Adventist Church today is in a crisis, I believe, especially in the western part of this world.

And You can read many, many studies, many statistics that indicate that we are living in a weird time in our history.

We are living in a difficult time, we are living in a crisis.

Here are a couple of examples of that, a couple of statistics that indicate that we are living in a time of crisis.

Did you know, in the book, why our teenagers leave the church.

Roger Dooley has said the following, there is a 50% chance that a teenager who gets baptized in his or her mid teens will leave the Adventist church completely by the time he or she is 25.

50% chance that someone baptizing the mid-teens that they will leave.

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