GYC 2017: Arise

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Occupy Wall Street with Jesus

Cynthia Heidi

David Kim

1. The Case for Reaching W3s

This message was presented at the GYC 2017 conference, Arise, in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

All right, well let's start and let's start with a word of prayer.

Lord God, our Father, we thank you so much for life, for bringing us together, for the opportunity to draw closer to you.

And Lord, I want to thank you so much for each and every person who has come to this seminar, each and every person who has an interest and a desire to reach 1 of these wealthy, worldly, and well-educated people who are in their lives.

And so Lord, as we present, as we share this morning, I pray for the Holy Spirit to be with us, to be upon each and every individual as they receive the message, and upon Cynthia and myself as we present, we pray that every word would be from you, and that you would be the 1 teaching us this morning.

We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, amen.

My co, my ministry partner is Cynthia Nojima.

We're gonna do brief introductions because what I've figured out in the program booklet as well as online is that our bios are actually not anywhere and so you might actually be wondering why are you here and why do we have anything to say about reaching the wealthy, worldly, and well-educated.

And so without boring you with the details, with myself, so I have a bachelor's and master's in cello performance.

I was in the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and then I switched careers into corporate America.

I worked at Bain & Company, which actually, Cynthia currently works at Bain & Company, but that's purely coincidental.

But Bain & Company, for those of you who are not familiar with Bain, it's a strategy consulting firm.

And you may remember Mitt Romney, who ran for president.

After that, I joined a financial services company called the Vanguard Group, where I now run the Japan business, which is why I live in Tokyo.

Okay, so, alright, well, if you need more detail, you can go to the app.

But what I will say is more relevant to this seminar is I was heart converted 8 years ago and I realized before that I had never been a witness in any way, shape, or form.

In fact, maybe I'd have been an anti-witness, despite having grown up in the church.

But after 8 years ago, the Lord really led me on a journey of having a heart burden to reach my peers.

We have so many ways, so many methods, so many programs of essentially witnessing to strangers in our church.

Whether it's going door to door, whether it's doing public evangelism, and those are all great, but those are witnessing to strangers.

And that's what you'll see today over the next 5 sessions is the culmination of a journey that the Lord has been leading me on for the last 8 years.

I had a kind of a similar story to David.

I actually also was raised in the church, but I wasn't truly heart converted until after my undergrad.

So I got my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and then had a very different experience being a pseudo-Christian in a public campus.

Then I had a heart conversion experience and I was to actually say before I had a heart conversion experience, I started as a management consultant at the firm that I'm currently at.

I left, joined Bing Capital, which is a private equity fund, and that's when I met David and we started thinking about how to build this ministry.

I had a heart conversion experience and then went to business school at Harvard and then came back about a year and a half ago.

So that's really what happened with me and I'll share a lot of examples of how I took the tools that I learned with David and used them in a place like the Harvard Business School and my current firm as well.

I don't know if it's me or you, but maybe I need to.

Maybe the bass in your voice is too booming.

So as we get going here, I just want to say a couple other logistical things.

Now some of the questions we may be able to answer right on the spot.

Some of the questions we might say, hey, we're going to talk about that in a future session, so please hold your question.

Other questions, we might say, hey, come talk to us at the booth or at a break or something like that, but we do welcome questions and we'll do our best to manage the time.

Sometimes people like to do like presentation and then Q&A, but we're happy to take questions as we go, as long as you are okay with us either answering it or not depending on the circumstance.

Speaking of the booth, we do have a booth.

The Nicodemus Society is the name of our ministry.

We're at booth number 309, so we'd love for you to come by.

Also, we would love for you to, at some point, maybe with your device or you could come to the booth, sign up for our email distribution list.

In fact, we don't really send that many emails because, as you just heard, we both have full-time jobs.

But when we have programs or resources, you will be able to be updated about that.

There's also a link to request a speaker, because a lot of what we do is we go to church groups or college groups or just alter GYC and we do seminars on how to reach the wealthy and worldly and well educated.

And sometimes people ask, can I get the slides?

And the answer is yes, but you need to sign up for the email link because we will, after GYC is all said and done and we get a chance to breathe, we will send out a link to the materials or a version of the materials through the email distribution list.

So if you're interested in getting the slides, it's great.

You just need to be on the email distribution list.

And so, you can do that by going to our website, which is nicodemussociety.org, nicodemussociety.org, or you can come to the booth and sign up as well.

And actually, the email is on, excuse me, the website is on that little postcard that you received earlier today.

We actually have some very specific objectives and aspirations for you.

And I know that there's so many great seminars here at GYC, and it's very tempting to want to jump around.

But what we will say is this, that all 5 of these sessions are cumulative.

So you won't get the full methodology unless you stay for the 5 sessions.

So that's just the caveat I would have to the extent you want to jump around.

Over the course of this next 5 sessions, there are a few specific aspirations we have for you.

1 is that you would recognize your own heart condition.

We have a methodology for this, and what you'll see is 1 of the first steps is recognizing your heart condition and making sure that you are a heart-converted Semte Adventist Christian.

As we talk, we would really encourage you to reflect on what is being shared and reflect on your own life.

This will be a challenging set of seminars.

In order to witness to the wealthy, worldly, and well-educated, you need to be at the top of your game.

And I don't mean just athletically or intellectually or any of that, but even spiritually.

As you will see, this is the hardest group to reach.

And so you will need to be like an Olympic level spiritual athlete in order to be able to be effective in this community.

I often get the question when I do these seminars, why should we even care?

I get to, almost every time I do this seminar, I get the question, why should we even care about reaching the W3s?

I thought Jesus was only about reaching the poor and the sick and the wretched.

2. Heart Conversion

I don't know if everyone is familiar, because I think I see a lot of new faces.

Do you want to do a quick introduction again?

So we were pressed for time on the last session, so we're just going to jump right in.

For those of you who weren't here for the first session, we are basically started off with the case for why this is so important to share the gospel in an effective way with what a group we're calling the wealthy, the worldly, and the well-educated.

And we talked a little bit about how this is a group that's traditionally been neglected in evangelistic efforts, but that this group has to be prioritized first because they have a lot of the resources and means to accelerate the spread of the gospel.

So what we're here today is to share with you how can you do this in an effective way and we're gonna start our second session.

The other reason why we should reach them is because Jesus loves Doug Dixie too.

I just want to be clear, not just for their money and their talent.

And so we're going to be talking this session about 1 big piece of what you need to have in your arsenal in order to be able to share the gospel effectively.

So today we're going to talk about heart conversion right now.

Before we jump in, I actually would like you to go to menti.com.

We're going to do a quick poll of the audience.

I'd love to know where you all are at right now.

And if you'll indulge me and go to menti.com and enter the Code 115447 on your phones, we will see how the response To this question goes.

The question is how confident are you that you are heart converted right now?

On a scale from 0 to 10, you'll see, there we go, people are starting to answer.

We're starting to see around a seven-ish, which is about what I expected.

What you'll find as we keep coming with responses is you have to be really on your A-game when you are going to share the gospel with this group.

You can't just bring pat answers or, honestly, it's a...

So what you need to do is really have this step first in your life because this group of people that we're trying to reach is going to ask you really hard questions.

And having pat answers or things you are quoting from Saba school or from a friend of yours isn't really going to work.

In fact, if I think about some of my experiences of having people ask me questions, A lot of the things people ask you, you probably won't find a standard Bible study for anyways.

So this is something that you start with being heart converted and from there you'll be in a much better position to actually share the gospel effectively.

So it sounds like we landed on 6.9 and with 49 people in the room roughly.

So that's actually an easy way to keep count as well.

Alright, So in terms of what we're going to show you is throughout this presentation we're going to show you that this is very much a process in terms of how do you share the gospel effectively.

So this is a very self-reinforcing feedback loop in which the first step is experiencing heart conversion.

This is obviously really important because you really can't share what you don't have.

2, we're going to talk on experiencing life transformation.

So after you have that authentic genuine heart conversion experience with Christ, you are going to experience life transformation, which we'll talk about in more detail again, but this is important because it's going to testify to God's awesomeness and his presence in your life.

Then we're going to talk about how do you actually attract spiritual interests from your neighbors and colleagues and friends that are in this group.

Hopefully that will lead to Bible studies.

And finally, that will hopefully win souls for Christ.

So this is the virtuous cycle, because when you start this process and you win those souls, it actually reinforces your heart conversion and your relationship with God as well.

So it all starts with your heart conversion.

In John, we are called the Nicodemus Society, referencing the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, who was himself a W3.

And in that conversation, Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again of the Spirit.

So it starts with your heart conversion, right?

And when that happens, the spirit will make you a witness.

This is what John, or Jesus told his disciples as well, is that the spirit will make you a witness.

So conversely, if you're heart converted, so first of all, if you're heart converted, you will be a witness.

And if you're not a witness, therefore, you are not heart converted.

If you are heart converted, you will be a witness.

If you're not a witness, you're not heart converted.

So take this as a little bit of a self-reflective moment to think about your state of your heart conversion and to think about how eager you are and how confident you are with sharing the gospel.

In other words, your witness is actually a barometer of your salvation.

And for me, I actually grew up in the church.

But I would argue that I never tried to actually be a witness until I was in my mid-20s, when I was actually heart converted.

Just to add to that, I never, so you had like probably 15 years on me, because until my heart conversion 8 years ago, I never was a witness at all of anything.

Well, I was a witness, but not for Jesus.

I don't know what I was witnessing for, but it wasn't Jesus.

So this is really also a little bit sad for me because when I met David...

When I met David, I realized that God had placed me in this sphere, right, of interacting with, being friends with, being colleagues with people in this group that were calling the wealthy of the world in, the well-educated, and I never actually had thought that God had placed me there for this explicit reason, to use my access to share the gospel in their language in a way that they would appreciate and internalize and hopefully actually have Bible studies and lead that to heart conversion for them as well.

So I felt very, well first I was very, I felt very thankful that God had put me here, but I also felt very sad that I had spent so many years with this group and had never used that access to work for God.

I mean there are literally hundreds or thousands of people that, whether it's in school or at work, that you've been exposed to.

And if you're not being a witness, every 1 of those people is a missed opportunity.

You're probably the only person, I mean, and probably very commonly you might be the only person that they'll encounter who is a Christian and who lives hopefully your life authentically.

I was in business school a couple of years ago for 2 years, and there are about a thousand students at Harvard Business School.

And of those thousand, I was for sure the only Adventist, and there were very, very few Christians on campus.

So in terms of heart conversion, people generally say, we took a quick poll at the beginning of the last session where we asked people, how do you feel about sharing the gospel with this group?

And a lot of people said what you would expect.

They're nervous, they're intimidated, it's uncomfortable, They're just not confident about it.

But here's the thing is if you have heart conversion that actually gives you confidence right like People if you think about the general reasons why you're hesitating to to share the gospel It's usually because you're worried about what the other person will think about you.

It's because you're worried, oh, I don't know if I'll be able to answer their questions.

I don't know if I can come across as intelligent.

And I don't know if they're going to think lesser of me or they're going to think I'm crazy.

When you are heart converted, your focus shifts away from you towards the other people around you to try to figure out, how can I show them God's love in a way that they will understand and appreciate and they will actually receive the message of the gospel in a way that's going to change their life?

3. Life Transformation

This message was presented at the GYC 2017 conference, ARISE, in Phoenix, Arizona.

How many of you actually were here earlier for any of the earlier sessions?

Okay great, so a lot of you have been hearing a lot about what we've been talking about.

For those of you who weren't here, we talked about the case for change, about why it's so important to reach the wealthy, the worldly, the well-educated.

Then we talked about heart conversion and how that's the first step in order to be prepared to share the gospel effectively.

And Now we're going to talk about life transformation.

So before we do that, why don't we just have a quick word of prayer and then we'll get started.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this afternoon and for this opportunity for us to get together and study a little bit more about why this is such a burden and why this is such an important ministry that we should have in our hearts for the W3s.

I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to each 1 of us here today, be with David and I as we share our experiences, and I ask that you touch the hearts of every person here so that they can find and discover the opportunities you've put in their lives to share the gospel more effectively.

So be with us this afternoon and help us to have a blessed rest of the weekend.

So before we get started, I've been doing this because I'd like to hear a little bit more about the audience.

So before we jump into the material, if you will indulge me and go to menti.com with your phones and use the code 586930, which I will have on this as well.

And this time the question is, think about a friend, a family member, or a colleague who is a W3.

Does he or she admire you and want to be like you?

0 being you strongly disagree with that statement, or you strongly agree.

And if you can't see the code, it's 586930.

So just we'll give it a few minutes for people to drop this in.

So as the votes come in, this is going to be a really important piece of sharing the gospel with the W3s because it's really hard to share something with somebody if they don't find you credible.

So If somebody is going to take your advice on something, let's pretend you were, you know, I love food.

So I like to tell people if I come across any really interesting restaurants, if I have really bad taste, like people go to my house and they try my food and it's awful, and I tell people, hey, there's this fantastic restaurant that I went to.

Chances are they're probably not going to love my recommendation, right?

So similarly, the reason why we're asking this question, which is we're going to talk about life transformation in this session, which is in addition to the heart conversion piece, you need to have life transformation happening for you to A, live an abundant life, which is what God wants for us, but 2, to actually have something credible to base your sharing of information with somebody else.

So it sounds like we actually had a bigger mix of people voting in.

I don't know if you can see from the screen, but there's a little bit of a mix in the curve.

So it sounds like there's a decent number of people who actually put below a 6.

But on average, it sounds like we're doing okay.

As we go through this module, I'm hopeful that you will come up with some ideas of how you might improve the likelihood that somebody's going to be interested in hearing more about your lifestyle, your interests, and why they might want to learn what makes you tick.

The thing, what we're trying to really show here is sharing Christ, especially with the W3s, is really part of this virtuous cycle, which I had described as a self-reinforcing feedback loop, which starts with the heart conversion, which we talked about last time.

We're going to talk about life transformation, and then it's going to continue, but this is all part of a loop that will actually reinforce your own heart conversion.

So long story short is, life transformation is critically important.

First of all, sin separates you from God.

We talked a little bit about how heart conversion has to happen first.

But if your life doesn't look different after heart conversion, there might be something wrong, right?

Because if you do everything you used to do before, you're probably missing something.

Because what God wants for you is so much better than what you had before.

And you can't really, again, you can't share something that you don't actually have.

And the second piece of this is what I was alluding to.

So when you have God in your life and you have a transformation that happens from the inside out that, frankly, can only happen supernaturally, It actually shows others how awesome knowing God is and how knowing God can change your life so much for the better.

So just to put a point on that, I mentioned in a prior session, I am leading, I'm the CEO of the Japan business of my company.

And so I have these employees who are watching every single thing I do.

Like it's hard, you know, you kind of forget that.

But I had 1 of my head of sales said to me 1 day, from the moment you walk in the door, people are looking at you and wondering whether you are having a good day.

And he said to me, he was saying it to me in a complimentary way, he was saying, yeah, you're very stable, steady, you know, you're upbeat and positive.

But our last boss, he was like happy and he was mad and He was just bipolar.

I don't know if he was literally bipolar, but that was the behavior he was describing.

And so this idea that our lives testify to the awesomeness of God is really, really critical.

They're noticing things about you, whether you know it or not.

And everything you do is either making God look awesome or making God look not awesome.

And so, once you claim the name of Christ, you are not merely representing yourself.

It gets out of the realm, oh, that's just the way David is.

Oh, wait, but David claims to be a worshiper of this God who allegedly is omnipotent and has life transformational power, but he's a total jerk.

If that's the impression that I'm leaving to somebody, you can see how that's very damaging to God and His name.

And so we talk about, you know, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

There's a literal sense in which you shouldn't use God's name as a swear word.

But I think there's an even more pervasive sense in which it's, you claim the name of Christ, but you make God look terrible.

And that is taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

And so if you take nothing else from this presentation, remember that your life actually is a testimony of who God is.

And think about it this way as well, is the W3s in your life, don't get me wrong, they're going to have challenges just like everybody else.

But remember, a lot of their earthly needs are met.

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Series

Occupy Wall Street with Jesus

1. The Case for Reaching W3s

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

1. The Case for Reaching W3s

1h 6m

2. Heart Conversion

57m

3. Life Transformation

1h

4. Attracting Spiritual Interests

1h 1m

5. Studying with W3s and Winning Souls

1h 8m

Sound Doctrine