Turn your church into a new member magnet! Discover simple steps that will help guests stick around rather than move along. From their first impression as they drive by to enthusiastic involvement in church ministry, you will discover how to attract and keep new members in your church. 

ASI 2018: Business Unusual

<p>Turn your church into a new member magnet! Discover simple steps that will help guests stick around rather than move along. From their first impression as they drive by to enthusiastic involvement in church ministry, you will discover how to attract and keep new members in your church. </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>

Unusual Witness

Rodney Bowes

Vicki Griffin

Joshua Vazquez

Sustainable Health Evangelism

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have given us the opportunity to be here at this place.

We thank you for ASI, and we thank you for the vision that you have given to us to be your hands and feet in a world that is dying.

I pray that you will specifically bless us now in this seminar, that truly Jesus Christ will be uplifted to all of us, that we can each gain whatever it is that you have for us today.

Thank you again for your love and amazing grace in Jesus' name, amen.

Again this is going to be a panel discussion on sustainable health evangelism and we're very excited.

So Rodney there are seats up in the front.

There are some more seats, those who are coming in.

If you need some more seats, there are a few more right here at the very front.

Feel free to come in, both sides, the front.

We're just so glad that each of you are here.

Again, we have a short time, so I'm going to get right into the program here.

The participants that we have, I want each 1 to introduce themselves.

Vicki, would you introduce yourself, please?

Having all these bodies helps warm the room up a little bit, so we're very thankful.

I'm the Director of Lifestyle Matters and the Health Ministries Director for the Michigan Conference, and it's just a thrill to be here with you today.

Thank you very much for being with us, Vicki.

I'm a Bible worker and wellness coach in Oak Harbor, Washington, and I'm just glad to be here this morning.

We're very excited to hear from both of you.

We have a lot of experience here at the table with us in health ministry and health evangelism.

My name is Rodney Bows and I serve as the president for Health Expo Resources and also a division Director for Light Ministry.

We do health evangelism training around the world.

So we're very excited to be with you and we have a lot to share in 75 minutes.

I'd like to point your attention to the screen And just notice what it says here.

It is not just health education, and it is not just sharing Bible prophecies.

It is the blend of these like Jesus shows us.

That is the message that we've been given for these times.

Is it a biblical idea to combine these together?

We believe it definitely is because if you see in Matthew chapter 4 verses 23 and 24, let's read it together, shall we?

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

He was teaching, he was preaching, and he was healing.

Many of you have read Ministry of Healing, I can tell.

And in Ministry of Healing, page 19, it says very clearly there that during his ministry, Jesus devoted more time to healing the sick than to preaching.

You know, it's very important to notice that Jesus was a walking hospital, but not every place received His healing touch.

So it's important for us to remember that our job is to be like Jesus, to bring comfort, hope, and encouragement to people everywhere.

Now, it was not only Jesus who went about doing this healing ministry, He gave it to His 12 disciples.

In Luke chapter 9, we read that these 12 disciples, that Jesus called them together and He gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

The disciples of Jesus are always supposed to combine healing and teaching and preaching together.

It's always supposed to be a blended message and ministry that is done by the disciples of Jesus.

Who else did Jesus send out beside the 12?

So you look in Luke chapter 10 and verse 9, talking about the 70, Jesus said, and heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.

Does that sound like a message that we have to do today?

And then we have another group that Jesus sent out.

Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Is it clear that we are to preach the 3 angels' messages to the world?

That is why the Seventh-day Adventist Church exists, to share the 3 angels' messages to the world.

At the very end, after it says how God will be with his people, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

This simply means that there is a ministry of healing that God wants His church to do.

So all of God's disciples throughout history have been called to follow Jesus.

Does that mean that every person is going to be healed?

During Jesus' time, there were people who were not healed for various reasons.

And so Our specific calling is to simply be the hands and feet of Jesus, bringing hope, encouragement, comfort in a world that has a lot of questions.

We'll never know all the answers, but our job is to bring that hope and courage.

I wanted to share just a few more things and then Vicki has some very encouraging things to share with us.

In Testimonies Volume 7, page 62, there is a clarion call for each 1 of us.

We have come to a time when every member of the church should take hold of medical missionary work.

How many of you are members of the church?

And today in our seminar, we're going to be looking at how medical professionals and non-medical can all take hold of this work.

I'm guessing we have a blend here in this room, even as we're talking, a blend of health professionals and non-medical, but who are interested in health.

Vicki, please, Feel free to take the podium there.

Joy Kauffman

A Relevant Health Message for a Global Church

Heavenly Father, I thank you for this opportunity to be here, to share your message, Lord.

I pray that that is, in fact, what will come from my lips.

And I thank you, Lord, for the fact that we are part of a global church and that we can operate as a family to reach those that need us the most and to reach out far beyond our family.

Lord, you are coming soon and we hope to be part of making that happen.

We look forward to being in your service until the day you come and then worshiping you forevermore.

I pray this in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.

Okay, so thank you for choosing to come to the relevant health message for our global church.

There's a lot to share, but I wanna start out with a few questions.

First, you know I like questions from my 30 second intro.

Why is it that during the next hour that we're going to be in this room together, there's going to be 14 Americans that drop dead simply because of the food that they eat?

And why is there a 20-year gap of life expectancy between affluent suburbs of most American cities and their inner city neighbors?

And why is it that the entire continent of Africa does not have a single blue zone?

Those are the types of questions that I've been asking for a long time.

I've been passionate about public health nutrition for about 30 years, studied about Adventists when I was in my undergrad program.

I'd never met 1, but I actually was doing my papers on vegetarianism, because I'd been a vegetarian since I was 9, through my own convictions.

And you can read my testimony as you grow out, or if you grab it.

The Lord has been leading me and guiding me into this church, but I was only baptized a few years ago and only met my first Adventist about 6 years before that.

So I praise God for being part of this church.

It's so exciting because I feel like these questions I've been wrestling with for 30 years, I now have this whole group of people that like to actually wonder about the same things, and not just think about it, and not just pray about it, but actually do something about it.

And that's what I am really excited to be a part of.

Now, all of you answered the first question right, I think, yesterday.

And that is, do we truly believe that Jesus came, that we might all, all people, have life abundantly?

In John 10.10, we know that the great controversy is in that very verse.

Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy, but he comes that we might have life and have it abundantly.

We know that we're not the only ones talking about abundant life.

There's other people in the Christian community speaking about abundant life.

All over Africa, you have pastors and preachers selling different ways that people can get abundant life.

For example, this pastor is sharing that he knows that the principles of abundant life work because they work so well for Hannah's wife that they have a $10.5 million mansion.

That's not the type of abundant life we are sharing about.

That's not the promise that you want, that I'm offering here, or that the Bible offers.

So we're getting a little closer to the promise of abundant life that Jesus is talking about when we look at the blue zones.

And it's those good old Loma Linda Seventh Day Adventists, right?

Something really special is going on in our church that is causing us to have an abundant life.

And we can use this information as an entering wedge, as the right arm of the gospel to open doors to conversations about something very unique that's going on.

Something so unique that National Geographic, a magazine that's really committed to its secular evolutionary focus, is going to highlight a bunch of Christians.

But you'll take note, I was able to put that magazine on 1 place on the globe.

And even in your community or in your home, that we would have the ability to have a blue zone in your family, in your community, surrounding your church because of the outreach that you're doing.

And then that through our partnership with the global family of faith that we would have hot spots of health and longevity all over the continent of Africa and other parts of the world where our ministries are working.

So we know not all Adventists are doing the right things.

Not all of us are benefiting from the health message.

We have what's defined as the best behaved Adventists contrasted by the worst behaved Adventists here.

And there's a full 10 years difference of life expectancy between the men and 8.7 years difference in the women.

So we know that just because you're sitting in a pew does not mean that you're going to get the benefits of the Adventist health message.

Sometimes my kids, who I'm still the only Adventist in my family, and I'm sad to say that my kids, because I raised them vegetarian, they had never had a hot dog until they came to an Adventist function, which is pretty sad, because then when they go to other functions, they sometimes eat hot dogs.

Even though there's things in them, I really would beg them not to eat.

But they also ask me, mom, if you guys have this wonderful health message, if you're running around the country telling everybody about your health message, why are so many people in your church so unhealthy?

And I'm not trying to judge or throw anybody under the bus, but it hinders our witness even in my own family, and that does hurt me, because we know better.

So let's look a little bit into these blue zones.

What is going on in these blue zones that are causing abundant life.

So I love a little Venn diagram like this.

So we have 3 concentric circles with 3 of the 5 blue zones.

We have Loma Linda up top, Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan.

And the characteristics that all 3 of them share are highlighted in red.

And just as I'm reading these characteristics, think about what you know of Ellen White's writings.

Think of what you know about the Bible, and think about also what you can observe in nature or how these things are connected to nature.

Because that's our sources for inspiration.

So there's our temperance message right there.

We have the plant-based diet, highlighted by high soy, fava beans over there, turmeric, different things that are coming from plants.

So these are not people necessarily with a gym membership that go 4 times a week and walk on a treadmill.

These are people who are incorporating movement into their regular daily lives and having sometimes occupations that require movement.

Then 1 of my favorites, and you'll see by the end of the session, legumes, legumes, legumes, beans.

And these cultures are eating them in 4 times the quantity that we typical Americans are.

Now In our thinking, in our sort of politically correct, that might seem like culturally isolated.

But when God calls us to be consecrated or a peculiar people, having some isolation from this culture is a good thing, Right?

So 1 of the things that we are trying to do in Africa, too, we are trying to build up the entire family.

And really, you'll see focusing on the men and the women, but doing it in a partnership and not in a domineering type situation.

Michelle Doucoumes

Eric Flickinger

Douglas Na'a

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

Welcome, glad that you are here this morning.

For those of you who may not know which seminar you're in, you just chose the most appropriate room and closest 1, you are about to learn how to build a sticky church.

We are looking here at Unusual witness, the track that teaches us by the grace of God how we can be more effective in witnessing to others.

So how to build a sticky church is what we're going to be looking at this morning.

I'm the associate speaker for It Is Written.

I'm joined in this panel discussion by 2 very good friends and colleagues of mine.

We have Michelle Dukamas, who is an assistant associate professor, assistant professor, there we go, of business at Southern Adventist University.

She's also 1 of the instructors at the SALT program.

SALT is Soul Winning and Leadership Training.

You know how we Adventists love acronyms, can't seem to get away from them.

So SALT is Soul Winning and Leadership Training.

It is the soul winning school, evangelism school of It Is Written and Southern Adventist University.

And we have at the far end of the table there, Douglas Naa.

He is the director of the SALT program there on the campus of Southern.

You know he's dedicated to the work of soul winning because he came to the program from pastoring in a place called Hawaii.

So we are grateful to have him here, absolutely.

And our hope and prayer is that our time together this morning from 1045 till right about noon is going to be beneficial and will give us some practical ideas of how to build a sticky church.

So let's begin with prayer, then I'll share with you a little bit of a story.

Those of you who have maybe heard me speak before know that I love stories, and the kind of stories I love most are ones that we call true stories.

So I'll be sharing a true story with you to get started.

Then we'll have a little bit of discussion among ourselves and then have a bit of a panel discussion.

So we'll kind of work through this hour in 15 minutes and by the grace of God, it will be a blessing to you.

Father, this morning, we're grateful to be able to be here together to talk about the work that you have called each 1 of your children to, and that is witnessing and soul winning.

I can't imagine that there's much that brings greater joy to your heart than seeing someone who makes a decision to choose to be with you throughout eternity.

So bless us as we seek to find ways this morning that we can help our churches to not just gain members but to retain them and to teach them how they can be active participants in the work of soul winning as well.

So I want to share a story with you about Keith and Jenny.

I met Keith and Jenny several years ago when I was doing an evangelistic campaign in Kentucky.

And as I visited with them, they were members of the church, had been for a little while anyway, and I talked with them and I always like to hear stories from church members about how they came to the church.

What touched their hearts and made them make that decision to join the Seventh-day Adventist church?

And so I was having dinner with them 1 evening.

They're a youngish couple, I guess they're getting younger and youngerish and youngerish by the year as I get olderish and olderish.

But they were probably early 30s and had a couple of young kids.

And they said, you know what was interesting?

We got a handbill in the mail 1 day for a seminar, a Bible prophecy seminar, and it sounded really interesting.

We couldn't go the first few nights, but we went several nights after it had started, and the night that we went, they were identifying the Antichrist Beast of Revelation 13.

We thought that sounds really interesting and so they came and they were sitting there in the audience in the chairs and as the evangelist was going through the identifying marks of the little horn and the the second beast of Revelation or first piece of Revelation chapter 13, Keith started to kind of sink down in his chair, point after point after point after point.

He said, I know the identity of the Antichrist.

And it just so happens that Keith and his wife were raised Catholics.

So he was seeing the points and they were settling home and he knew kind of where things were going.

But he also realized that what he was hearing was biblically accurate.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable, but I can't deny it.

And at the end of the campaign, Keith and his wife, Jenny, were baptized and joined the church.

Excited about it, but not long after that, some members of the church kind of pulled them aside and said, you know that seminar that you went to was really, really good and they shared a lot of things with you, but there are a few things that they didn't cover during the seminar that it would be good for you to know about.

And they started to tell Keith and Jenny about the time of trouble that was coming and how there was going to be great persecution against the Adventists.

And they started to tell them about how concentration camps were being built across the country right now to house the Sabbath keepers during this difficult time.

And how the government had already begun surveillance of them from the time that they were baptized and how black helicopters would circle their neighborhood and keep watch on them.

You can imagine what this did to Keith and Jenny.

They started looking over their shoulders everywhere they went.

They, after a while, they started thinking, you know what, if this is what it's all about, we really don't need this.

And so they seriously began to contemplate leaving the church.

By the grace of God, some other members saw what was happening.

I will say some more well-balanced members saw what was happening and they drew close to Keith and Jenny and they built positive relationships and friendships and trust with them and help them to see the gospel a little bit more clearly and to not focus on some things that may not have a complete element of truth to them.

And so, by the grace of God, Keith and Ginny were brought back into a little more positive relationship with the message of the scripture in the church and they stayed in the church.

I think if you're here this morning it's probably because you're familiar with 1 or 2 stories that don't necessarily have good endings.

And so, or at least don't have good presence, maybe the ending yet will be good by the grace of God.

But I wanted to give us a little exercise to get started this morning.

Why do people leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

Often there's really not a single reason, but it's a journey.

It sort of starts with something, a seed being planted and then that seed grows into something more ominous and then something else gets added to it and there's this snowball effect that ultimately results in people leaving the church.

I want to encourage you to think of someone you know who is no longer in the church.

How many of you can think of at least 1 person that is no longer in the church.

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Series

Unusual Witness

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

Sustainable Health Evangelism

1h 17m

A Relevant Health Message for a Global Church

59m

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

1h 18m

How to Reach People Living in Your Neighborhood

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine