Cynthia shares practical approaches to sharing the gospel with hard-to-reach students on public school campuses.

ACF Institute 2018: A Higher Aim

<p>Cynthia shares practical approaches to sharing the gospel with hard-to-reach students on public school campuses.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Cynthia Heidi

Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

So I'm talking about the neglected class here.

So I alluded to the fact that there's this group that I refer to as the wealthy, the worldly, and the well-educated.

And this is a group that probably all of you are very familiar with because you go to school with them every day.

And I think I mentioned that I spent 2 years as a missionary in a very different mission field where there are people who, honestly, most of them don't believe God exists.

They're very skeptical about everything related to God and faith, and they really do speak a different language than what we typically grow up hearing in the church.

So there's 1 other thing I want you to think about, we talk in the church about the 1040 window.

Does anybody know what the 1040 window is?

It's the region in the world between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator where all the people groups that are the least reached by the gospel live.

So think of the Middle East and some parts of Asia.

So the ratio of Adventists at the Harvard Business School when I was there was 1 in about 2, 000.

That's worse than the ratio of Adventists in the 1040 window.

So I really want you to reframe how you think about a mission field.

Because the places that you are studying in and living in and working in right now are actual mission fields, and we should think about them that way.

Now I want to define the W3 segment a little bit more for you.

I mentioned that the first W stands for the wealthy.

This is essentially the top 25 household, 25% of households in the country with respect to annual income, which is around $100, 000 per year.

This is about 80 million people, so it's roughly the size of the country of Turkey.

This is a pretty significant population, but we only are 7% of this group.

We're not really represented very well there.

Why aren't there more Adventists in this group?

He said there are other evangelistic efforts has traditionally focused on other groups, which is true.

You're saying Adventists live more simple lives and therefore they're not necessarily falling into this group.

So he's saying that there's actually a verse in the Bible that says the satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb and God is sweeter than the honeycomb.

So the satisfied soul does not really, it's not really interested in the things of God typically.

Okay, so he's saying there are certain careers.

You're saying there are careers that make higher salaries that maybe Adventists might find more difficult to work in.

Well, there's another reason actually, which is that if you look at the average age of the Adventist population globally, is we're actually a lot older than the rest of the population.

So if you think about what happens when you age, you're typically going into retirement, and you're actually not contributing to like annual income anymore.

So that's the other big reason is that the Adventist Church as a whole is aging, which is bad because that means it's not growing.

I think many of the reasons that you guys have identified are very much correct.

Like that's why this group is very underrepresented by the world church.

Let's look at the second W, which is the worldly.

This 1 you should find very, very relevant because you're surrounded by people that are more worldly, right?

Like, heck, I'm probably more familiar with this, especially growing up and being exposed to the mentality that what's important in life is getting famous, getting money, being influential, getting more powerful, etc.

So this is very much an aspirational mindset that most of the world shares.

So this is about a third of Americans with a bachelor's degree or above, which is about 63 million people.

And to give you a frame of reference, that's roughly the size of the country of France.

And I think we're doing a bit better here, because we have lots of Adventist universities.

Now, I want to talk about why we should, well, actually I'm gonna give you 3 objectives that I would love for you all to internalize by the end of this talk.

The first is that W3 should be prioritized with the gospel.

The second is that they're actually the most difficult mission field.

And the third is that you are actually the best way to share the gospel with this group.

And I'm hopeful that at the end of my talk, you're going to feel confident that you actually know how to do this effectively.

And I'm going to tell you that it's so natural and easy that people are going to ask you to study the Bible with them.

Why should you care about reaching the W3s?

And I'm gonna say like this is not a surprising question because I actually do have people that I talk to that are like, why do you care?

Like Why are you trying to focus on this group?

Because the first point I want to make is W3s are soul burdened, and they need the gospel just as much as everybody else.

So let's take a look at this quote by Ellen White.

She actually wrote, surprisingly, a lot about this group.

She says, we talk and write much of the neglected poor.

Should not some attention be also given to the neglected rich?

Thousands of wealthy men have gone to their graves unwarned because they have been judged by appearance and passed by as hopeless subjects.

But, indifferent as they may appear, I have been shown that most of this class are soul burdened.

There are thousands of rich men who are starving for spiritual food.

Many in official life feel their need of something which they have not." So isn't that interesting that you might look at your classmate in school and like they'd never be interested in the gospel.

Ellen White is telling us what I've definitely experienced in my time at even Harvard, right?

When I was in school, I didn't realize this because what you don't understand is that people want to put a facade forward that they have it all together.

But when you actually get to know people and look beneath the surface, you'll find that they are actually hurting, that they are truly soul burdened.

When I was in business school, people really struggled with the pressure of being at the Harvard Business School.

They wanted to be the ones who make the highest salaries, get the best sounding jobs, and there were people who were regularly seeing the psychologist, they were taking medication.

I know multiple, now, I'll tell you why I know now, but like, I found out later that multiple people were taking marijuana to handle the stress.

So, all I have to say is, this group is truly soul burdened, and they do need God just as much as anybody else.

1 other thing I'll mention is, 1 of the most powerful ways I've shared sort of a little bit about my faith with people is actually through the concept of the Sabbath.

It's interesting that when I was growing up, I always thought the Sabbath was very, it wasn't a celebration, let's put it that way.

And what's amazing is when you actually portray the Sabbath, what it was intended to be for people, atheists find it amazing.

In fact, I was talking to a classmate of mine from business school who is from the Czech Republic.

But when he found out what I was doing about keeping the Sabbath every week and having this dedicated 24-hour period to just unplug and reprioritize and rethink what's important in life, he thought that was amazing.

He was gonna try it and just try to unplug, even though he was a little bit skeptical about how you have the time.

Like how are you able to get everything done every week without using those 24 hours.

And I actually told him, I was like, look, I know you don't believe in God, but I will tell you that from my personal experience, there is a God, and that he actually, I think I told you this morning, he multiplies your efforts.

So anyways, that's another interesting tidbit.

So he decided to try keeping the Sabbath but being atheist.

So there's another reason why we should we should care about the W3s.

So Ellen White writes, in men in business life in high positions of trust, men with large inventive faculties and scientific insight, men of genius, teachers of the gospel whose minds have not been called to the special truths for this time.

These should be the first to hear the call.

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Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

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