Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

Father in heaven, as we meet together today, I pray that your Holy Spirit will be with us.

Thank you for deacons and deaconesses, the role that they play in their churches, and it's not just a play role, but a serious role of leadership.

I pray that your Holy Spirit will give us instruction today.

I pray that you'll speak through me and that my words will be yours and that you'll also give ears to hear for those who are listening to what we do today.

Thank you for being with us in Jesus' name, Amen.

All right, this morning I want to introduce you to what we're going to be working with in terms of tools and you have some documentation in front of you that will be of help to you.

I'm not going to make a lot of reference to this particular book, except to let you know right now, this is a Deacon and Deaconess' Handbook that is produced by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adonis.

It is a valuable tool and has only been out since last year.

They used to have 1 before and then they kind of run out of them and then it's time to update it and then it takes them years to get that done and finally last year they came out with this handbook.

And so we're trying to make it available to people.

I give it out to people that come to a class like this because I feel that you need to have the information and it's my reward to you for taking the time to come and being part of this class.

So you don't have to go buy it, because I'm giving it to you.

The second thing that you have is your textbook, and this is where we're going to spend most of our time.

And I'll explain a little bit more about this textbook here in just a few moments as we get into it, but this will be where we're going to spend most of our time together with what I do on the screen and the things that I add to our conversation along the way.

So this is our main source today, along of course with the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy that are undergirding everything that we'll be doing.

Then the last thing that you have is the workbook.

The workbook looks like this, and I will not spend any time in the workbook at all.

The workbook goes along with this book and it's just a nice tool for you if you're going home you know and you don't want to, boy you say, huh I need something to keep me awake while I'm reading this book or or whatever and the workbook kind of helps you focus in on some areas that are of value and or specifically the author who made the workbook you can tell where things were important to him and he put them in the workbook and you can kind of work through that.

It's, you use on your own tool and that's its purpose.

I also have a, have a pen if anybody needs a pen, and I have notebook paper, blank notebook paper, line paper, if you want to take notes.

But if you're like me, I get a book like this and there's something there I'm going to write right in it because I don't want to lose the notes somewhere along the line.

So whatever works for you is great and those are our resources today.

I'm the Ministerial Director here in Michigan.

And the Ministerial Department is responsible for training and supporting elders and deacons and deaconesses, not just pastors.

So it has to fall under some category and that's a major leadership role somewhere.

It's not Sabbath school and it's not Pathfinders.

It's not in that area and so it falls under our area.

And I tell you that so that you know where to go in terms of getting resources to help you in whatever ministry angle you might be responsible for and we are happy to come out and do training in the local churches.

1 of the reasons I do this is not because I'm getting a big crowd here.

I'm doing it because I know that there's some people that can connect here.

There's so many seminars going on that people are having a hard time choosing which 1 to go to.

And then the truth of the matter is, yes, on Sabbath there's 5, 000 people here during the week, there's 12 or 1, 500 people, but there's 26, 000 members in the Michigan Conference and there's only a fraction of the leaders that actually get here.

And at some point, I hope you're inspired enough to go back and say, we need to have training for all our deacons and deaconesses or all our elders or whatever and go back to your local church and set something like that up and all you have to do is ask me and coordinate with your pastor.

And that's how that works and I'm happy to do that.

And by the way, that's exactly what's happened.

I've gone from camp meeting last year and went to 2 or 3 different churches and places where they invited me to come and do some training for them.

So I look forward to doing that because it's in the real world and situation that people are dealing with in a local church and I'm happy to do that.

I believe that the work of deacons and deaconesses and elders, and I'm using all 3 of those, because those positions interact with each other or should interact with each other, just as they did biblically, they should be doing in our local church.

And if these positions are functioning as they should, our churches will be stronger, much, much stronger.

Our churches have become frankly weak today and 1 of the reasons is because these positions have not been functioning at full strength like they should be.

And you'll understand what I mean as I go through this a little bit and explain a bit about what the purposes of elders, deacons, and deaconesses.

And I won't be spending any time with elders today because we've been doing that for the last couple of days.

How many of you are deacons or deaconesses in your church?

Okay, so I know I have 1 elder here today and the rest of you are deacons or deaconesses in your church.

And that's terrific, really glad that you're here.

How many of you are new to this position and it's brand new to you, you've never done it before.

You'll notice that in the notes that I put out about the class, advertising class, it's especially designed for people that are new to this position.

New, I've never done this before, or yes, I've done this before, but I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm hoping to find out.

That's why I'm here, and that's what we're going to be searching for.

That's 1 of the reasons that I really want to encourage churches to get the elders, the deacons and the deaconesses into a training program because it will strengthen the church and you'll understand what I'm talking about today.

So we're going to get right into our material now and take a look at this.

Let me explain that the textbook that you have before you was produced and written and produced by Dr.

He's an Adventist minister, I think he's retired now, but he's a Seventh-day Adventist minister who also got so involved in this whole process of training deacons and deaconesses and researching the whole process that when he worked on his doctoral degree, he used this as a format and a basis for his doctoral degree.

I will tell you that that's 1 of the reasons that the book is kind of laid out the way it is.

Now, that doesn't mean it's so deep and difficult to read that it's a doctoral dissertation, but I am telling you that because the book has references that are very broad.

It's not just written in a total Seventh-day Adventist vacuum.

By that I mean that he has drawn from other sources and he will have some sources in here that are from non-Adventist sources, historical sources, and others.

And why he's done that is to try to help us draw an understanding of what has happened in the deaconess' positions in the Christian church over the last 2, 000 years.

And you can't do that from only Adventist sources, and you can't do that from only biblical sources, because the biblical sources end at 100 AD, more or less, and the Adventist sources don't begin until about 1850.

So, you know, you've got to have Phil in the vacuum there somewhere, and he does that just to have a complete picture of how the whole experience and position of a deacon and a deaconess in the church has developed over time and how it comes to be what it is today.

And what it comes to be today is both good and bad.

We'll explain more about that along the way.

So he's entitled this, The 21st Century Deacon and Deaconess, Reflecting the Biblical Model, and that's really where we want to begin today.

If you have your Bibles, I'd encourage you to take your Bible out and turn to Isaiah chapter 61 because we want to get a little bit of perspective here in terms of the biblical lay, or I should say, background to what we are talking about here with deacons and deaconesses and the responsibilities that they have.

So I'm looking at Isaiah 61 verses 1 and 2.

I would be grateful to have a volunteer read that for me.

He has sent me to heal the broken hearts, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are gone, to proclaim the acceptable fear of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.

Isaiah is the writer, but to whom is he referring?

When it says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Now I want you to think about this in the context of the New Testament, and you remember once when Jesus was in the synagogue and he was talking to the people there, and They asked him to stand up and to read the Scripture reading.

And the Scripture reading that he chose was this passage.

And then after he got done reading it, he made a statement that almost got him stoned.

He said, today this is fulfilled in your hearing.

And the point that we're making with this and we're trying to identify, and this by the way is the first chapter in your book, so if you want to open your book you'll notice that this is the scripture that Dr.

White quotes here in in beginning his book and setting the stage and for the biblical model and showing that Jesus is the model of servant ministry.

He's helping us to understand that servant ministry is modeled first of all by the Messiah, by Jesus Christ.

And that becomes important as we dig in just a little deeper here in the next few moments because we'll begin to see how that connects with the role of deacons and deaconesses.

Same book, Isaiah 53, go back to chapter 53 and look at verse 11.

If someone else would read verse 11, I'd appreciate that.

In verse 11 of Isaiah 53, it says, He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you again for a new day.

And at the beginning of this class, we once again want to ask you to guide our conversation that we have here today, that you will do the training for us.

As we spoke yesterday, we were reminded, Lord, that this is a spiritual work.

It is not just a technical work, and it's not just doing this task or that 1, but it is spiritual responsibility of leading the congregation.

I pray that you will be with us as we meet together.

Once again, give me words to speak and give us all ears to hear you speaking in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're going to, again, I've given you a textbook.

You have the Deacon Deaconess's handbook and you have a workbook that goes with the other.

Again, I'm not referring to the workbook and the workbook is just a supplemental tool for you to be able to utilize.

I do want to remind you that this book, especially as I was reviewing things last night, I picked up something that for some reason I never quite caught before, and I'm not sure why I hadn't noticed it, but He has prepared this book not just for Seventh-day Adventists.

And it is written for Seventh-day Adventists obviously because it's all about Seventh-day Adventist history and all of that, so it's there.

But I noticed later he has some parts of it where he includes details of what other denominations, what would apply to other denominations, and if I understand correctly he's just utilized it in that particular context and there may be some people who have used his material with that idea in mind and do that.

But he's a Seventh-day Adventist minister preaching in a Seventh-day Adventist context, and that's what that's all about.

I'm going to share some things today with you from the book.

I'm going to share some things to do today with you from my own experience, and I'm going to share some things today with you from the book.

I'm going to share some things today with you from my own experience.

And I'm going to share some things with you from the handbook.

So it's going to be a hodgepodge a little bit today that you're going to receive.

So take some notes along the way if there's some things along there.

And the ones that come from the handbook, I'll make sure to try to highlight that for you so that you know that it's in there and you know what that source of that information will be.

Yesterday we were talking about the fact that a deacon or a deaconess are spiritual leaders in the church.

In our early conversation we were talking a little bit about this aspect and in terms of responsibility, helping somebody.

You said you'd been a deaconess for 12 years or something like that, and people are still trying to, you know, talking about how to fix the communion bread and how to get, you know, take the tablecloth off and all of that.

And I wanted to use that as an illustration because that becomes the focus of what we do is with deacons and deaconesses in our church, and we miss out on this great big opportunity that we have.

We concentrate on this little piece over here And it's like going into a state park or a national park, and you see this little portion of the state park like Yellowstone.

And if you only go to where 1 of the geysers is, like Old Faithful, and say, I've been to Yellowstone!

Yeah, you probably did, and yes, that was Yellowstone.

But there was a whole lot more to see you didn't even come close to, and the rewards of seeing all of the rest of it is phenomenal.

Well, you know, when we concentrate on communion bread, And we miss the great opportunity for service, ministry, experience with the Lord, changing people's lives.

And whether we're an elder, a deacon, or a deaconess, God is helping to provide these opportunities for us.

Now, of course, if you go to Yellowstone and you drive in and you go over to the geyser and so on, it's a relatively easy walk over to Old Faithful and you can go over there and it's no big deal.

But if you really want to see Yellowstone, you're gonna be tired.

You're gonna be hiking off into the wilderness.

You may be camping overnight or 2 or 3 nights or whatever.

But if you want to really experience it, you've got to put in the energy and then you really know what Yellowstone's about.

Well, it's the same with being a deacon or a deaconess.

If you really want to understand what it's all about, it's going to take some effort.

It's going to take time out of your schedule.

It means changing what might be seemingly important to you now and changing that for what God sees as important in utilizing in your work.

Now I'm not talking about working 80 hours a week as a deacon or a deaconess unless you have the time and the energy to do that, but I am talking about going from 1 hour a week on Sabbath morning to maybe 4 or 5 or 6 or something like that hours a week in the evenings, ministering to people, organizing outreach ministries of various kinds and not just out of the church, but also in the church reaching out to people who need your specific help.

So that was the foundation that we laid yesterday, and today I want to get into some of the specifics of ministry and meeting some of the challenges that take place in the church.

1 of the reasons, as we spoke about yesterday, 1 of the reasons that this work is so vital is because as with the early Christian church, when the apostles discovered that they had this problem with the need to be meeting the food needs and other needs of the widows in that daily distribution, When they organized deacons to accomplish this work and eventually women got involved as well, either spouses or whatever, got involved in this work, The fact of the matter is the work was able to continue to move forward and even exploded.

There are 19 million members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

There are approximately 25, 000 congregations, if I understand that, around the world, and that may even be a low number.

But the point of all of that is we've got a great work to do, and we have a handful of ministers in comparison to the need that's out there.

So if the pastors are expected to do everything, if they're supposed to solve all the problems, conflicts that come in, if they're supposed to visit all the shut-ins and nobody else is doing that work, I didn't mean that a pastor shouldn't do some of this work.

I'm saying if the pastor is the only 1 doing that work, and the pastor is the only 1 giving Bible studies, and the pastor is the only 1 who is taking care of the physical plan of the church, and etc., etc., etc., How long are we going to be here?

And God isn't going to bypass us because Ellen White actually makes it abundantly clear that the latter rain is not coming until the majority of God's people are involved in the work.

It's less than 20% of the church members are involved in some aspect of work.

And in some churches, and maybe it's just like that in yours, it's down around 5% of the people that are actually involved in doing anything in the church, whether it's a leadership role, giving Bible studies, outreach, or whatever.

Very few people are investing in this because we've gotten to become so involved and so connected with what's going on in the world and our own personal goals and all, not that those are bad, but they've taken over our lives completely.

So I want to get into some of the details today and talk about what God can do with you and I don't want you to be overwhelmed.

I want you to be encouraged that there's a greater horizon in front of you that you may not have realized was there.

And that you get through to all of those places on the horizon by taking 1 step at a time.

If you wanna see all of Yellowstone in 1 minute, you can't even do it in a plane.

If you're gonna see it on the ground, you're going to have to take a step at the time and you'll get around to it.

If you wish that you had 10 deacons that were trained or 10 deaconesses that were trained to do that work, and there's only 1 of you because you came to this training program, and you're going to go back, and you've only got 5 deacons, and you wish you had 10, and you need them, and they could be that number because of the size of your church.

Now, some of you don't even have 10 members coming to church, so you're not gonna have 10 deacons, you know that, right?

But you will find that God will provide what you need in time.

And if you will start doing your work, God will start blessing your church, your church will start to grow, and you'll see those resources begin to develop.

He provides what we need when we need it.

So the training I want to do today is I'm going to start talking to you about conflict work as conflict managers.

Because that was the first thing the deacons and deaconesses in the New Testament were involved with.

There was a battle going on, and it was a cultural battle, and it was a battle between people as we looked about in Acts chapter 6.

You remember we went through that yesterday, and in that story, what the people were experiencing was a significant challenge.

They were unified until it looked like there was a problem or that it, you know, some people thought, well, there's a problem here and maybe it's because they don't like Greeks.

And so people started doing what people do.

They started talking about each other and dealing with that kind of situation.

So I want to talk to you about being a conflict manager.

Yes, you as a deacon or a deaconess, that your work is to assist the pastor with conflict issues when they arise.

But even better to stop them before they arise.

Because sometimes you know something's brewing in your church long before the pastor.

Pastor is usually the last 1 to find out there's a problem.

But you are sitting at potluck lunch 1 day at the church or you've invited somebody else over to your home and they are mumbling to you.

I know that doesn't happen very often, but they might be doing that and they are telling you a little bit of how unhappy they are, that the pastor has 45 churches instead of just 1, and he is ignoring them especially, and they are just getting really upset that the pastor doesn't care about them.

And besides that, they're really upset with Sister So-and-So because of what she did last Sabbath to them when they came into the church.

She turned around and walked away just as they came in.

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Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

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Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

1h 12m

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