Is literature evangelism effective? What purpose does it serve? Robert reviews the history of literature evangelism, and the reasons why we still use it today.

GYC Northwest 2018: Return. Receive. Run.

<p>Is literature evangelism effective? What purpose does it serve? Robert reviews the history of literature evangelism, and the reasons why we still use it today.</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>

GYC Northwest

Literature Evangelism

Robert Koorenny

Literature Evangelism- Part 1

We're going to look at some of the history of literature evangelism, both in the world, in the Christian Church, as well as in Adventism, and see really how literature evangelism has had a profound impact on the history of the Advent movement.

And so we're going to take a look at that, and then look at a few passages in the Bible, a few quotes from Ellen White, and then in the next session, it's going to be more of the practical application.

Here's some different ideas about how you can be involved and practically do things, although we're not actually going to go out and pass out literature during these sessions, although in the afternoon, I think it's afternoon, is the outreach time.

So a little bit of background and then the next session more of the practical application of it.

So let's go ahead and bow our heads for a word of prayer before we begin.

Heavenly Father we just thank you for the opportunity that we have to be gathered together to grow more not only in our spiritual walk with you, but in the practical application of that walk, and in actually being involved in reaching out to share what we know and believe with others.

And so we pray that as we talk about literature evangelism, as that's 1 aspect of that sharing, that you would be with us and help us to see the importance and the significance of sharing the printed page here in 2018.

All right, well, just to share for a couple of seconds really quick about who I am so you can at least know a little bit about that.

My name is Robert Kereny and I work for Upper Columbia Conference, which is the home conference that we are in, the local conference that we are located right now.

And I am the Literature Ministries Coordinator for this conference, which means anything that has to do with sharing literature, that ultimately is what I try to coordinate and help happen at the local church level.

So I've been involved in literature evangelism since 2002.

As a student canvasser, I started in San Jose, canvassed all throughout California.

Almost any city south of San Francisco and Oakland in California, pretty much any of those cities, I've knocked doors and canvassed.

As well as in Kansas and Nebraska and Michigan and a little bit in Southern Union.

I know that there's a couple here from Canada, but a wide variety of places across the US.

And really had been privileged to be a part of having that experience.

And so 1 of my passions is to be able to share with people about literature evangelism.

And so that's what we're going to do here.

Just to give you an overview of what we're going to go over here today, if you look at the screen here, we're going to talk about literature evangelism in the world and the Christian church, and then move into the Adventist church.

We're going to talk about how Cole Porter's got their start, how Cole Portering began, and then we're going to talk about how literature had an impact in the growing Adventist church, and then we're going to talk specifically about the effectiveness of literature.

And we're going to go through the first 3 or 4 of those pretty quickly and get down to that.

But hopefully you'll have at least a broad view of how literature has impacted each of those various areas.

In talking about publishing in world history, there was a TV show in, I think it was either 1999 or 2000, where this network went around and they interviewed a bunch of people, people that wrote for like Time magazine, people who were influential thought leaders, and they interviewed people and asked them, who do you think is the most influential person of the last thousand years?

Now, this is 99-2000, so that's the end of a millennium.

And they wanted to figure out who's the most influential person of that thousand year period.

Who are some of the people that you would you would guess might be some of those most influential people?

Yeah, there was presidents there's you know, at least 4 or 5 presidents Abraham Lincoln people like that Yeah, that was actually the number 1 pick, was Johann Gutenberg.

And Johann Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press, and the first thing they ever printed on it was the Bible.

Now, what was important about this invention?

Why was he named the most influential person of the last thousand years?

It was because it made it far easier to reproduce literature in mass quantities, more than just a few.

Because up until then, if you wanted to get a copy of the Bible, you would take 1 of the scrolls or texts and copy it by hand.

And you would write out the entire thing.

And so you can imagine how, you know, if you're writing an essay in school or something on a test, like how tired your hand gets, you know, imagine writing the entire Bible, every word in the Bible.

That's how long it took to reproduce things, and even just a shorter piece of literature took the same amount of time, I mean the same, what's the word, the same, not the same length, but the same rate.

Took the same rate of writing, just to get a little piece of literature.

And so, this invention made it possible once you set it up, now it took a long time, you had to set every single letter, you know it's a lot longer than it is now, you can't just like hit print and it prints out on a printer, but still you could, once you got that page set, you could make as many copies as you wanted.

So it made it a lot easier and it created, what that did is it created a way for ideas to be spread very quickly.

So instead of, usually back in those days, if you got news of something, it wasn't because a newspaper came or because an email or a text message, it's because somebody came, a person showed up and they said, here's what happened over in this town.

But this made it possible for ideas to be spread much more rapidly and That opened up a whole new world of possibilities, and we'll see why that was significant here in just a second.

And so in following along with that train of thought, 1 of the most important aspects of the invention that Gutenberg made, which was the printing press, was not just what it was, but when it was made.

Do you remember what year the first Bible was printed?

Now, What was going on at that period in time?

What period of time do we refer to that's during that?

What was the major cause of the darkness?

They didn't have the knowledge that came with having the Bible and that's because it was really confined, it was hidden.

It was really just reserved for maybe the people that were royalty or clergy, you know, really high up.

Most people didn't even know how to read.

And so it was, truths were hidden and that was the cause of the darkness.

In fact, Johann Gutenberg, who invented the printing press, this is what he said about the fact that it was being confined.

He said, God suffers in the multitude of souls whom his holy word cannot reach.

Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books, which confine instead of spreading the public treasure.

In other words, he's saying it's hidden to the point that it's not reaching the people that it should be able to reach.

Then he continued on saying, Let us break up the seal that seals holy things and give wings to the truth.

In order that she may go and win every soul that comes into this world by her word no longer written at great expense by a hand easily palsied." Remember we talked about writing out your essay, writing out books?

We don't have to have that anymore, but he says, "...it's multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine." That was his vision for what the press could do.

It could spread instead of confine truth, which is what was happening.

It's easy for us to not really realize that that's the reality of those days because we have printed literature, we have the Bible, we have Bible on our phones, we have Bible on our laptops, We have the Bible anywhere we turn, but then it wasn't like that.

And notice what Ellen White said that sounds very similar to what Johan Gutenberg said.

She said, There is a great need of men who can use the press to the best advantage, that the truth may be given wings to speed it to every nation and tongue and people." Isn't that very similar to what Gutenberg said?

This thing, it's like giving the truth wings so it can go and spread it.

So Gutenberg's vision for the press was very similar to what Ellen White said many years later, that if we use the press, we can really give the truth wings.

1 other quote here from Gutenberg says this, talking about his invention again, Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which soon shall flow in inexhaustible streams, the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men.

A spring of pure truth shall flow from it like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men." That was his vision that this invention could spread the gospel, could spread truth to people who hadn't heard.

The Gutenberg Bible, and this is a picture of what 1 of them looked like.

The Dark Ages had been going on at that time for 979 years.

Almost a thousand years of the Dark Ages were going on when Gutenberg printed the first edition of his Bible.

Almost A thousand years the truth had been closed up and Gutenberg printed the Bible and 60 years later, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the door of the Chapel of Wittenberg in 1517, which as we know last year was 500 years ago.

60 years after it had been going on for almost a thousand years, less than a hundred years later, there was a movement that was beginning.

And 1 of those things, 1 of the causes for that movement was because of the printing press.

Now, as you know, Rome was very powerful at this period of time.

The invention of the press launched their work forward.

In fact, in 3 years after 1517, Martin Luther also was a writer, which means he needed to be able to spread that and he was able to do that because of the press.

In 3 years after 1517 when he nailed the 95 Theses, it says 30, 000 tracts of Luther's writings were distributed.

So not only was he able to preach and to share in that way, but a lot of the spread of knowledge that he was behind was spread because of literature.

Literature Evangelism- Part 2

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the fact that you've given us an easy way to be involved in sharing light with others through the printed page.

And we just pray that as we look at some practical methods that we can use literature, that you would help us to be inspired and encouraged as we do the work of planting those seeds so they can spring up and bear fruit and be harvested for your glory.

Alright, The title for the second session that I've had is, If There Is 1, and there's going to be a quote that will bring that around here in a little bit.

There was a young man, His name was Charles, and he was very interested in a new type of substance back in the 1800s called rubber.

They didn't know much about it back then.

In fact, they didn't really have many uses for it at all.

In the summertime when it became hot, rubber would be kind of melt and be sticky and you couldn't really use it for anything.

In the winter, it would crack and become brittle and break up, and rubber was just not very useful.

But Charles thought, you know, there's something to this.

I think we can probably use this for a lot of different things if we can figure out a way to take advantage of it.

He was always playing around with rubber, trying to figure out how to get it to be more usable.

He tried different projects and it wouldn't work.

So the little bit that he did have was very precious to him.

He was always telling his friends about it like, hey, check out this idea that I had.

And 1 day he was there with his friends and he was always talking about it and he said, hey look at this, I have a new idea for how it can be more useful.

And they were kind of making fun of him, they weren't really paying attention, so he kind of got upset.

He got mad at them because they weren't listening to him.

And back in the 1800s, especially in the cooler months of the year, the way that you heated up your house was with a wood stove.

And so he was standing there, he got upset and he threw the rubber across the room.

It just so happened to land on the wood stove.

And of course, they were trying to heat their house with it, it gets pretty hot.

And since he didn't have a lot of money, he couldn't just go out and buy more rubber to replace it, he wanted to keep that piece that he had been working on, so he went over and he took it off, but when he took it off the stove, he noticed that around the edges, something different that he hadn't seen before.

It had cured in a certain way that it was a little bit different.

And so he got this idea, maybe heat is the key to doing what I want to do here.

And so he began to work with it a little bit more and a little bit more.

And before long, he found out that he could use fire as a way of curing the rubber so that it wouldn't break and it would be useful.

Now, if any of you are entrepreneurs and you want to start a business, don't do what he did.

He sent out examples before he patented it, and somebody else got a hold of it in Europe and patented it and made a lot of money off of this.

But he invented the process called vulcanization, which is named after the Roman, I think it's the Roman, 1 of the gods of fire.

But heat, essentially what he discovered was that heat can be used as a catalyst to change the rubber into something that's useful from something that isn't as useful.

He invented that process called vulcanization.

He never became rich off of his invention.

Even though there's the name that you see all over tires, some of you may even have Goodyear tires on your car.

What he found was that the rubber needed a catalyst, something that could take something that was not very useful and make it more useful.

You know, in many ways, literature is a catalyst for the message that we're sharing.

Doesn't mean that it's not useful without it.

I don't take the example literally, but literature can greatly increase the effectiveness of what we're doing.

Let me just share, we're gonna share a few stories with you during this session as we go.

Joseph Talavera was involved in Youth Rush a couple years ago here in Upper Columbia Conference.

He was knocking on doors in Kennewick or Richland.

He was knocking on doors and he met this guy who he said, now I've never seen this show, but he said he looked like somebody from Duck Dynasty.

He had this super long beard, like a really gruff looking guy and he met this guy, his name was Dan.

And so he met Dan and he was sharing some of the books with him and before too long you know, Dan was saying, you know I'm not interested, he kind of put him off a little bit and he ended up leaving and Joseph continued on down the street and after a while he kept on going down he heard something behind him he looks and he sees this guy Dan He's running at him and he's thinking like, what in the world did I do?

Like, you know, I don't think I did anything mean to this guy, like, what's he doing?

And he gets to him and he says, hey, show me that book that you showed me at my house.

And he was kind of going through a couple of the books that he showed him, and he gets to the Great Controversy, and he pulls it out, and he's like, yeah, that 1, that's the 1 I want to see.

So he begins to share with him about how it goes over people who stood up for their faith, some of the reformers, just explaining the great controversy to him.

He said, I've been keeping the Sabbath in my house for years, by myself.

And he says, I've been watching this TV program called 3ABN.

And he's like, and 1 day I was watching it and there was this guy up there who was running all across the stage.

And he's like, and then at the end of his thing, he mentioned this book named The Great Controversy and said that he should find it.

And he says, I've been looking for that book for years, and now you came to my door with it.

And he says, I want to learn more about what it has to say.

And he got the Great Controversy, a couple other books from him after he realized.

You know, he thinks maybe is this guy going to like try to beat me up?

This guy's been looking for the book for years.

And Joseph was there at his door with it.

Literature, like we finished off with the last session, literature, 1 of the benefits of literature is that you can use it to go to people instead of people having to come to you.

People don't have to be interested in it because you can knock on their door and share literature and they realize, hey, this is something I might be interested in checking out where they would have never looked it up before.

Publishing ministry says in page 50, And in a large degree through our publishing houses is to be accomplished the work of that other angel who comes down from heaven with great power and who lightens the earth with his glory." Now that references Revelation 18 and verse 1 where it talks about the angel that comes down.

Now we know based on what Ellen White tells us and a closer study of Revelation that that angel comes and gives added strength to the 3 angels' messages.

So that angel in Revelation 18.1 that comes down, lightens the earth with his glory, Ellen White says here at Publishing Ministry that a large degree the work of that angel is going to be done through our publishing houses.

In other words, a lot of the light that's going around the world at the very end of time is going to be doing so because of literature evangelism.

And what we talked about last time, at the end of last time, is that people, many people don't know about the literature that we have.

If I'm interested, if I want to become, let's say, a hot air balloon pilot, if you're from Walla Walla, you might like hot air balloons because they have the balloon stampede every year, right?

Any of you grew up here or been here enough to have gone to the balloon stampede?

So if I want to become a hot air balloon pilot, What's going to be the first thing that I do to figure out how to do it?

Yeah, I'm going to look it up on Google, right?

So what about somebody that doesn't know about our literature?

They're not going to go and type in Seventh-day Adventist literature glow.

They're not going to look it up because they don't know it's there.

And so we need to take the literature to them and the literature can stop them wherever they're at and essentially say, hey, this is something you should check out.

That's 1 of the reasons why literature is a great catalyst for things to happen with the truth because it can go where you can't go.

In fact, we hear stories all the time about people leaving glow tracks in bathrooms, like at a rest stop.

Series

Literature Evangelism

Literature Evangelism- Part 1

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Connecting the Dots of Adventism

45m

My Dream and His Dream - A Story of Dependence

56m

God's First Book, Our First Classroom- Part II

God’s First Book, Our First Classroom II: Part 3

1h 12m

Christian Service and the Great Final Test

1h

Sabbath and the Divinity of Christ

1h 3m

For My King

45m

Lessons from the Life of Daniel

Lessons from the Life of Daniel - Part 1

47m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

24 The Sanctuary and the Testimony of Jesus

55m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter at Simon’s Feast

44m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with Philip and Nathanael

38m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 10: The Church Board

1h 13m

The Book of Proverbs

6. Proverbs: What You See Is Not What You Get

46m

Sound Doctrine