Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Master Guide Skill Development

1. How to be a Christian, Leader and Leadership Skills

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about cards.

There are primarily 2 different cards that are in use today.

The big difference is this 1 says among your prerequisites you're to have completed a basic staff training course in adventurers or pathfinders.

And so if you're working with adventurers or pathfinders, this card is very, very, very adequate.

The big difference is this 1 adds youth ministries.

So if you're not going to be getting a basic staff training from youth ministries, either card will work.

And the other difference is there's a couple, They corrected a typo in this 1 from here and put in a different 1.

You know, it says youth ministries, so...

The pathfinder, I believe at the Adventurer Leader Shops in Michigan over a period of I think 2 years you can get all of it.

You go 2 consecutive years and they offer like a Part A and Part B.

So you can Start with B and get A the next year.

And I ask a rather pointed question of Pastor Harris once about that.

And I plan to not ask him again Because I like that answer.

But should he find reason to change it, I don't want to hear about it.

So I think you've got a feeling for where I'm at on this.

And I want it to be as accessible as possible.

Can we fill this out and then send it to the conference office?

Because I have a letter from my church board, they already did that, or like the pastor and several church members or something.

Yeah, so this does need to go to the conference office, And it can go electronically if you can scan it or fax it.

I don't know how many are coming, but it looks like you can take a few.

Let's take just a few minutes just to go through the card because I know there's always some questions on what do I have to do to pull this off.

Does everyone have a card of 1 form or another?

I'm going to go through the 1 I prefer that's prettier.

And I'm starting at the back end, the very back, under documentation.

It says, 1, the Master Guide curriculum must be completed in a minimum of 1 year, maximum of 3 years.

So it isn't something you start this weekend and get invested in in 6 months.

And based on what Pastor Harris says, he's accepting 5.

2, all MasterGuide candidates must document all work in a portfolio.

And this is, I should have grabbed a new binder but I grabbed an old 1 and yanked the stuff out and you can see there was transfer to the cover.

If you look closely, it doesn't say what the portfolio is supposed to look like.

According to what that says, under that heading of portfolio, it could be done electronically.

I will however say that I want you to finish reading because it says curriculum completion is under the supervision of a conference youth pathfinder or adventure director or their designated master guide representative.

That person might not be as technically adept as you are.

This is the potential I see for a problem keeping your portfolio electronically.

I try not to be totally buried under technology because I have to use some of it.

I put this together and if you like I can email you the file I started with so you've got a starting point.

It says MasterGuide portfolio of your name, your contact information so whoever reviews it can get it back to you.

We want, You want this to be in a form that's easy for whoever reviews it to look through it and say, yep, they've got this, yep, they've got this, yep.

You don't want them to have to go looking for anything.

And I have some notes in here, but then I just have 1 page where it lists the prerequisites.

Behind that I would put whatever documentation is needed for that, such as the MasterGuide candidate application.

And so Anything that you send off to the conference office, an advantage of scanning it and sending it as an attachment to an email, is you can keep the original in here.

It's like this, but I have a page for each thing, and so I had figured behind 2 spiritual development, you could put in all the handouts that you get, and if you're supposed to be keeping a diary or something, you can stick it in here.

Okay, so if you want I can email you that file.

Okay, Let's go to the beginning of the book.

I wanted to start with that so you know where we're headed.

This is written for the whole division, and this is a division, North American Division card.

If we go over, get outside North American Division, their card is probably going to be a little bit different.

Different conferences do master guides differently.

There are some conferences where they have 1 person, the only thing they do is master guides.

You know, people never want the front ones.

Now, I think Angie may need them in the morning.

But basically here we're looking at the pastor's card, to my knowledge.

Okay, we're ready to go to the beginning.

Be a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Most of us, if we were ever given a baptismal certificate, have no idea where it is.

So what are you going to do to document that?

2. What a Personality

Our Father, we thank you again for the opportunity to gather together here at Camp Meeting and look at ways we can learn to better serve you.

Help us that we can develop the attitude of service and that that can be a part of our life now and throughout eternity.

North American Division Master Guide mission is to empower leaders through effective training, equipping, and deploying them for service.

If you go to this particular URL, This I believe is a part, it's affiliated I think with 1 of the Texas conferences, and you may find some things there that are a little different than the way we do things here.

They have a very, very, very big Master Guide program down there.

They have somebody, the only thing they do, this is a conference, someone in the conference house, The only thing they do is stuff with Master Guides.

There is something that is starting to show up around some of our conferences that we haven't seen for decades.

Long ago, far away, I went to Maplewood Academy in Minnesota.

I went there my junior and senior years, and they had something called the Master Guide Club.

And the whole idea behind that was to help people become a Master Guide.

I made progress on it, but I didn't get it done then.

And it wasn't actually until about 20 years later, 25 years later, somewhere in there that I got it done.

And Between now and then, many cards have come and gone, and we're working with the current stuff.

Back then, way back then, the focus was Master Guides were going to be leaders in the Missionary Volunteer Society.

And I see a few people nodding their heads that they might remember that term.

Missionary volunteer was a wonderful, wonderful term and a wonderful society, and it got killed by politics.

And people went to form MV societies there.

And some of the people in government did not like the idea of missionaries.

And so it became necessary to change the name.

And so we ended up with AY, Adventist Youth.

But it was never as strong in many conferences.

Now, if you get into some conferences, more of color, you will find a Y that is strong and thriving.

Typically in the white conferences, not so much.

And they typically have, as I understand it, and my knowledge is being...

But I am learning, as I understand it, the 2 primary functions of a Master Guide Club.

1 is like the 1 I had in the academy to help others become master guides.

The other function, and this is the 1 that sort of goes back to some of the old MV stuff, but not yet has much of that spirit, is to serve.

Now a while ago I asked how many of you were at the fair.

We have among our area coordinators 1 who is bilingual.

He is an American citizen, but this is not his country of origin.

He came from down south when he was 8 or 12.

But he found the Lord, and he became a master guide somewhere along the way.

When Pastor Harris was looking for someone to coordinate the parade at the Union Camperee.

And he had master guides who were willing to serve.

And their function was to help people know where to be, when to go, where to go.

When we go to our camperees, either down at Berrien or in the North Woods, we need someone to be on what we call security.

Not because we're afraid of somebody stealing someone's phone.

The big concern is the safety of our kids from outside.

Service can take many, many forms, but that is 1 of the parts of being a Master Guide.

I came across this, I think, when I was on Facebook.

If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.

What is the purpose of MasterGuide ministry?

We want to develop Christ-like leaders to disciple children and youth.

Loving the Lord Jesus, I promise to take an active part in the work of the Adventure and Pathfinder Ministries, doing what I can to help finish the work of the gospel in all the world." So how do we help in all the world?

Do we have anybody here from a conference other than the Michigan Conference?

So we're all here in the Michigan Conference.

How do we help finish the work of the Gospel in all the world?

If we're Master Guides, how do we do that?

Some of our kids can become missionaries.

I moved to Michigan 21 years ago this month.

And in the Lansing church, there was a guy there, he and his family were there, And I got to know him a little bit, but not a lot.

But he went on a team mission and he caught this bug of the idea of being a missionary.

3. Vision, Mission, and Motivation

Our Father, we thank you again for the many blessings that you've given to us.

Thank you for the chance to be together and learn more about helping your kids.

Now we ask that you send your Holy Spirit so that the people here can hear what you have to say, not the words that I use.

A lot of times we're going to assume that somebody's lips are moving, that communication is taking place.

But realistically, it does involve more than talking.

There's also the receiving and listening end of things.

Frequently, we think we understand what someone's saying, but sometimes what we hear isn't necessarily what they meant.

We're first going to look at 5 different levels of communication and we'll look at each 1 of these individually.

The shallowest level, the first 1 is small talk.

This is the how are you, what have you been doing, hey, how's it going, this kind of stuff.

And if communication just stays here, well, you're not gonna get anywhere.

But this can be an opening to other things.

And different cultures will, and this is coming from an American context, okay.

I had 1 of the gals in my club in Lansing who is, she's German and she's better at German than English, but her English is Pretty good.

And when she first came to America, she was just amazed when people would say, hi, how you doing?

And she thought they were actually asking.

How are you?" And it took her a while to figure out that they weren't looking for an extended response.

I'm sorry, I know I said hi, but I really wasn't prepared for any follow-up conversation.

Let's face it, sometimes when you ask some people how they're doing, you end up with an organ recital.

There are times that we are, but at any rate, first level is the shallow stuff.

At this level information is shared but there's no personal comments along with it.

You're gonna find a lot of this in the workplace, and this is very important stuff that needs to be done.

Typically, men are more apt to settle for this than women because a lot of guys don't want to express their feelings and get into this deeper stuff.

And they're more than content to talk about this factual stuff.

So here's where we're starting to actually open up and let people know us a little bit more.

Some people are very reticent to do this until they get to know somebody a little bit, but that's what this is about.

Now here is a little bit different spot than the other ones because a lot of guys really don't want to get into this 1 unless it deals with the sport that they're interested in.

To a lot of times because you didn't feel judged by other people.

I know a friend of mine just the other night, she was saying, oh, she's 3, 4, she's 5 kids altogether here, under 11.

She said that the younger 3 had to go take a shower.

She was thinking, oh, I'll take a shower.

We're talking and drawing, the kids were enjoying.

Then she said again, I said to her, I said, you know what?

And she said, I just love the fact that you're so open.

And that I say things that make it normal.

You know, there's the ideal and there's the real.

If we are faithful, we'll get to see the Garden of Eden.

But, in the meantime, this is the planet we're on.

On that exact point, I think you were the 1 that was talking about exercise, how do you log it and stuff?

At any rate, I brought, this is the book I use, just a simple notebook that I found thrown away somewhere and I ripped out the pages that were scribbled in, but I just scribble in what I do and so if I were needing to do this, I would photocopy pages and stick them in there.

Anyway, there is stuff that comes in on this thing periodically, news items that it says you might be interested in this.

And I clicked on this 1, what to do if your gym doesn't have a shower.

And I was curious, what are they going to offer?

Sometimes kids go on campouts that don't have showers.

Okay, So basic here, short version is they said put some wipes in your gym bag.

It's a simple solution, it's low tech, but we live in a real world.

Now how much you're going to need them is going to depend on how big a group you've got, the age of your kids, if you've got mostly friends and companions and heavily leaning it to the boy side, they aren't going to be looking to use them a lot.

I have observed through the years that the younger ones typically tend to get dirtier than the older ones, And the younger ones are less concerned about getting dirty than the older ones.

But let's face it, some of the older kids, when they start becoming teens, become a lot more worried about these things.

And so it's a simple thing to do, to have some wipes and you can throw out the idea to them, hey, you may want to throw some wipes in your duffel bag just to clean up with a little bit.

So you do that in your tent as you're getting dressed.

A lot of people today, I think more so in this age of social media, we judge people more often, there are more people being more critical of people than they used to be.

And as a result, some people, there are some people who are going to just plain be a lot more in-your-face about it, and the other people are just going to retreat, because they don't like it.

So, when you are in a situation where you do end up sharing more feelings and emotions, If it is a shared experience, typically this will draw people together.

Brother-in-law and his wife were at an Oshkosh.

And his wife commented afterwards, she noticed that the kids who went on that were closer.

They were, something about that pulled them together more.

You're together in a good way, for us, for 8 hours, whatever it takes to get over there.

But you're also sharing all the rest of it together too, and they probably had to work together to do stuff to get there.

Sometimes you gain flashes of insight into your friend's character that will give you a better idea of how they feel and think.

A good combination is to alternate between the levels of ideas, opinions, feelings and emotions, not just staying there.

Deep insight isn't going to be happening real often, realistically.

But this is the kind of stuff that makes deep impressions on both people.

So, we spend about 70% of our waking hours in communication.

But between speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

And about a third of this, for many people, is devoted to talking.

Hey, there are people here who are thanking me for the binders.

Here's the guy you thank for the binders.

And thanks for helping out on the handouts.

Did you have any announcements you wanted to make to these master guides?

No, I'm glad to see so many of them here.

4. Understanding Your Spiritual Gifts

Our Father, we thank You again for the blessings You've given us.

Chance to learn more about Your love for us, and help us that we can better learn how to communicate with each other, so that we can share Your love.

Unfortunately, when we're involved in relationships of any sort, conflicts sometimes happen.

And different people are going to view things differently.

Sometimes they're minor, sometimes it's not a real big deal and we just say, okay, That's how you see it, this is how I see it, but we need to work together and we're going to move forward.

Here we have a picture of 2 people who are involved in what 1 guy terms a naval engagement.

Okay, so that's what they, we can call that a naval engagement.

Hopefully this isn't how your staff meetings go.

Some people are going to look at conflicts with horror because they figure it's going to be threatening a relationship and everything.

Conflicts aren't always going to screw up relationships.

We shouldn't run from them, but we don't want to ignore them when some of them definitely do need to be solved.

Hopefully this isn't your main method for resolving conflicts.

I'm like, all right, I'm trying to wrestle you.

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Series

Master Guide Skill Development

7. How to Prepare Effective Creative Worships

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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1h 4m

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Sound Doctrine