ASI 2018: Business Unusual

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Plenary

John Bradshaw

Business Unusual

Our Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of Jesus, and we are grateful that we can.

We thank you that we can be in this place tonight where the focus is on salvation, and seeking the lost, and blessing lives, and lifting people up, and being involved in ministry, On the front lines, financially invested.

We thank you for soul winning and evangelism.

And we pray that because we've been here tonight, we would hear your voice and we would be encouraged.

Lord, I pray, knowing that you will not rely on the limitations of fallen humanity tonight.

And I pray your spirit would not be restricted by that, but that you would speak to us and bless us.

We love you, we thank you, we praise you, and we pray in Jesus' name.

Every so often you meet somebody who will admit to things that certain other people wouldn't admit to.

I was at a camp meeting earlier in the year and spoke with a pastor who happened to mention that he was a musician.

And as you do, we talked a little more and I said, what is it that you played?

I said, okay, what was it that you played?

He said, I was a drummer in a heavy metal band.

And he didn't look the type, which I think on the balance is a really good thing.

Not everybody wants you to know about some things from their past.

I'm not trying to suggest that would be the most shameful thing by any means, but it was interesting.

There are some things people won't admit to.

Many of us here are old enough to remember 1977.

That's when Saturday Night Fever came out.

And you won't find a person at this convention who will admit to have bought the double album.

Many of you thank God because you walked a better path, didn't, but some of you did.

There aren't many people who will admit to having worn once a powder blue polyester suit or bell bottoms.

I don't think you should admit to that, frankly.

Better that you admit to being a heavy metal drummer.

I just wonder how many people would admit to have been part of this.

A businessman, well he was an advertising executive to begin with.

Gary Dahl grew sick and tired of hearing his friends talk about the trouble they were having with their pets.

Cats that roamed the neighborhood, dogs that dug in the garden, dogs that shed and left hair or fur or whatever it was they left everywhere they went.

He said, man, yours should get a better pet.

And that's when he came up with the idea.

A pet you don't have to feed, a pet that doesn't shed, a pet that doesn't make noise in the middle of the night or any time at all for that matter.

A pet that won't cost terribly much to buy and if you wanted to buy 1, you could buy it from him.

And along with a bed of straw and a cardboard box, a little carry container, for just $3.95, Mr.

2, I'm concerned for this year's convention.

Now he made a lot of money, he ended up losing a lot of money.

In his words, wackos came out of the woodwork to sue him and he spent money on lawsuits that I think were largely frivolous.

He would drive to Rosarito Beach, 10 miles south of the border, the California border, into Mexico.

He'd load up with rocks, bring them back, and It was just like that.

He tried to sell a few more fascinating things after that.

1 he was, this is interesting, he sold a tube of sand, and you don't remember this because for some strange reason it wasn't successful.

He said, this is the male tube and this is the female tube.

And he says, this is, you know, you can grow your own beach if you just put the sand together.

He demonstrated lightning does not always strike twice.

Of course, people bought pet rocks because what they were doing was buying into the gimmick, buying into the fad.

You know, You like to think when you get together with other business types or entrepreneurial types that you come away with great ideas, great ministry ideas, maybe some good business ideas, maybe some, I don't know, ideas to enhance your personal life.

Pet rock, who'd have thought that would fly, but the pet rock was business, finish the phrase, it was business, yes it was.

And sometimes business unusual comes along because somebody just has a bright idea.

It might simply be because you looked at something and you said, wait, there's a better way.

And you can think of many products that you think, I could have thought of that or I might have thought of that but somebody looked at what you've been looking at for years and Just saw a difference Business unusual sometimes business unusual is pressed upon us by the simple fact that the times they are a-changing Then so a few years ago you could do your shopping without even leaving home.

The internet came along and what was so fascinating is that you could go online and order your groceries And your food could be delivered to your doorstep.

When I was this big, my mother used to get on our telephone, which was a telephone connected to the wall with a curly cord, and she would call Phyllis at the IGA downtown, make her order over the phone and the man who owned the supermarket would deliver it.

So business unusual isn't always very unusual.

But we started to shop online and Amazon changed the world after Walmart changed the world.

I remember when a few years ago when the kids were younger than they are now and we explained to them, we said, we used to stay at this hotel.

It was odd that we happened to be back there.

We would go to conventions at this hotel.

When we were looking for restaurants, in fact, this was at a town that later on we lived in, so there was a point of reference.

And when we looked for a place to eat, we would go downstairs and we'd go to the foyer and go to the front desk, and they had a card with recommendations on it.

And you read it and you took down the address and then Somebody either had a map or you asked for directions, and they looked at us like we had 2 heads.

And they looked at us, and they said, you didn't just Google?

Sometimes our business practices change because of great ideas or because of circumstances.

I'd like to hope that nobody watches this 20 years from now and says, 2018, remember that?

Amy Ratsara

The Power of Influence

Well, as Naomi introduced me to you, my name is Amy Ratsara, and I have the privilege of sharing with you a little bit about what it is that God has done in my life.

Now, when I received the invitation from ASI to come and speak at this convention, I asked them, okay, well, what would you like me to talk about?

In my role as a lawyer, the facts are usually given to me about any presentation I have to make to a jury.

I don't have to decide on the subject content, I just have to figure out how to present it in a convincing way.

Well, they said, we want you to share your testimony.

And we want you to share it in the context of the theme this year, business unusual.

So I thought to myself, well, do you know how my testimony fits into the theme this year?

And if so, could you let me know so that I know what to say?

I thought about presenting about something else, about talking about something other than the things that God has done in my life.

But the more I resisted it, the more I was convinced that no, this was what God wanted me to talk about.

I don't know why, some of the stories feel a little old in terms of the distance in time that's gone by, but the spirit of God has blessed me in thinking about these things and remembering these things, and so I just pray that this morning it is a blessing for you.

Now the reason I might hesitate, or why I was curious as to why my testimony would be something you might want to hear is, I grew up a Seventh-day Adventist.

I grew up in Berrien Springs, Michigan at Andrews University with Adventist parents who taught in Adventist schools.

I attended Adventist schools myself and I never really wandered far from the faith.

Now, I know that doesn't mean that I don't have a testimony.

But, I just wondered how would my testimony be relevant or interesting to a group of people who are coming to listen.

I don't have any radical conversion story about being plucked from obscurity or something like that.

And I haven't gone to an exotic mission field to talk about the wonderful things that God has done and worked in obviously miraculous ways.

My testimony just seems kind of run of the mill like everyone else.

But the fact of the matter is, I really shouldn't be here.

And it's not just because of the fact that I didn't know what to talk about this morning.

I shouldn't be here because, at least the buzz in our church these days is that my peers are not here.

I am a millennial, and the talk seems to be that millennials are not present in our church today.

Either they're there, but they're not active, or they're not there at all.

And so as I reflected and thought about, well why am I here?

Why has God been able to keep me with that faith that I grew up with?

And I realized that's what he wants me to share with you this morning.

So before I do, why don't we pray together and then we'll spend some time together looking at God's word and also just seeing how God has worked.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for bringing us together here in Orlando, Florida for this opportunity for us to spend time with 1 another.

Lord, I just pray that you would be with me now as I speak, that you would share something from my life, Lord, that you have done that would bring encouragement and peace to those who are listening, and Father, that it would encourage us all to be faithful to you in everything that we do.

We thank you Lord and we ask these things in Jesus name.

So as many of you are probably aware, social media is kind of changing the way things that are going everywhere.

There's a group of people called social media influencers, and what they are, many of them are millennials.

They take their phones and they post pictures, they post tweets, they post things on Facebook, and they get many, many followers.

As a result of getting all of these followers, businesses are starting to leverage their social clout in order to try to get their brands out in front of other people or get their business in front of other people.

These social media influencers have been so effective at changing the way that marketing has been going that they've spawned a new class of wannabes and copycats who will go onto these different social media websites, they will pay for followers to make it look like they have 80, 000 people following them and then they'll email a luxury hotel and say, I want to stay free for 2 weeks and I'll do 2 posts about it so all of my followers can see.

These luxury hotels, they're starting to get really frustrated with these young people and what they're doing, but it does go to show that those who are legitimately exercising this are using their influence in a way to change business as usual, and they're remodeling the way that people are going forward with marketing.

I'm sure many of you with your businesses or with your ministries have even tried to figure out how can we use social media and are there young people who can help promote what we're doing and what we're doing.

But this generation who has figured out how to market so effectively on social media can oftentimes seem absent in the Seventh-day Adventist church today.

Maybe it's because they're not here, or maybe it's just because they're not active.

I praise God for blessing me with the family that I grew up in.

As I indicated before, I was born to parents who were Seventh-day Adventist.

I went to Ruth Murdoch Elementary School and Andrews Academy in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

While in high school, I became a Sabbath school teacher and I worked with summer day camp programs through our church, where I was able to teach children about the love of Jesus, as well as do summer activities with them.

But many of the friends who I grew up with are no longer Seventh-day Adventists themselves.

They're not in the church, and some of them are even antagonistic against the church.

And that's despite the fact that we sat next to each other in elementary school, we sat side by side at Sabbath school, we taught together at the Summer Flag Camp, And we did all of these things together.

We studied for baptism together, and yet they're not here.

I don't claim to have perfect knowledge to know what happened to my peer group and why they are not in the church or why they're not active in the church, But my reason for being here is not to give some sort of scientific analysis or explanation of the cause and effect of what's going on.

I'm here to talk about what it was that God has done for me and how he led me along the way and the joy that that has brought.

So having grown up as a Seventh-day Adventist in a Seventh-day Adventist college town, I assumed that when I finished academy, of course I would go to a Seventh-day Adventist university.

I also thought I would go to Andrews University.

My dad by that point was a professor at the university.

Why would I be going to school anywhere else but the place where my parents were?

That's what a good Seventh-day Adventist would do.

But to my surprise, In an answer to prayer that I was not expecting and a full tuition scholarship, I ended up that fall at the University of Michigan instead of Andrews University.

In making that decision to go and following God's leading there, I became a statistic of the young people in our church, the vast majority of whom, and when I say vast majority, I mean the 70 or 80th percentile of the young people in our church, I was at a secular institution of higher learning rather than 1 of our institutions for higher learning in order to continue my education.

And it was that fall of my college year that I encountered 2 things that completely changed my life forever, campus ministry and GYC.

I'll tell you in just a minute what drew me to each, but as I discuss each, I also want to share with you a portion of scripture that spoke to me in those moments and how I think the word of God acted to keep me not just in the church, but in the careful watch care of God.

My last Sabbath at my home church, PMC, before leaving for school was the first Sabbath of the school year.

All the freshmen were on campus, and these would have been my classmates, my dorm mates, the people I would have been going to school with.

During the whole service, my mind was wandering, wondering if I had really made the right decision, if God really was calling me to go to the University of Michigan, rather than staying in this place where I felt comfortable, where I assumed he would want me to be.

The pastor's message that day was on being a missionary where you are, and he was encouraging the students to encourage 1 another in the Lord, even though they were on a Christian university campus.

He then directed us to turn our Bibles to Isaiah 49.6, and I'd ask that you do the same thing right now.

And this is when my wandering mind finally perked up and started to pay attention.

And in this verse it says, he says, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob to bring back the preserved of Israel.

I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

As he read that scripture, it was as though my heart stopped and I could sense the spirit of God telling me, this is why you're going to the University of Michigan.

It's time for you to be a light to all nations.

This was a complete paradigm shift for me.

Even though I knew God was leading me to the University of Michigan.

I thought for whatever reason, he needed me to get my education there instead of somewhere else.

I could not have been more wrong because the education that they give there, we know is not true education.

But God was directing my path to that university so that I could be a missionary.

Now, this perspective was so new for me that I thought it was an original idea.

Surely no 1 has ever thought of the fact that if they go to a secular university, they should be a missionary.

To my surprise and joy, though, when I found the Seventh-day Adventist group on campus, that is exactly what they were about, and I jumped right in.

I started attending the weekly Bible studies.

They had both large-group Bible studies and small-group Bible studies.

I soon learned how to give Bible studies myself and began regularly giving Bible studies to people on campus.

I remember my sophomore year, it was the second semester, I had maxed out the number of credits that I was taking, so I was very busy, but I wanted to continue my ministry as well, so I think I was participating in 2 different small groups and giving an individual Bible study, only to find out that the president of our student group was leaving and that now the responsibility of leading the group was also gonna fall to me.

I committed myself to God though and said, Lord, I don't wanna suffer academically.

I believe you've called me to do all these things, so please help me.

He created time out of nowhere it seems, and he also gave me a mind quick for learning.

That turned into 1 of my most successful semesters academically, but also 1 of the most rewarding spiritually as I saw how God continued to work in the lives of my friends on campus and the way that we were able to influence what was happening on our campus.

1 of the things that a friend of mine and I really liked to do in order to try to encourage our ministry was to take classes together in order to find a student who was searching for the truth.

The first time we did this was our freshman year.

And sure enough, there was a young man in my physics class who invited me to study with him 1 night for us to learn.

Members in Action

This evening, you know, ASI is made up of more than just chapters here in the United States of America.

Christiana is the ASI Europe president, Gabriella is the vice president, and Michael is the treasurer there for the ASI Europe.

Thank you for coming all the way to join us here at ASI.

Christiana, you're the president of ASI Europe.

What is your vision as you think about what needs to be done to finish spreading the gospel in Europe.

My personal vision and the vision of the team is that we are really getting Europe back on fire for evangelism.

Christina, how did God lay that burden on your heart, personally?

And this was followed by a life-threatening brain surgery.

Just before the surgery I made a deal with God that if you still need me, please give me recovery.

And it was only during an evangelistic campaign in the Philippines while I was preaching that I realized it was not God who needed me.

So since- When you say you were not ready, What I assume you're saying is at that point your heart was not really right.

You would maybe have questioned your salvation even at that point.

But God gave you another chance and through evangelism What happened?

He actually really brought me in fire to spread the gospel right where I live in Europe.

So what's happening there is you're getting your team ready now.

You want to set Europe on fire for evangelism.

What have you done this last year as you prepare for that?

First of all, we turned a board meeting of ASI Europe that's consisting out of 18 chapters into a mini convention and we realigned all chapters for evangelism.

And secondly, we went, I took a team of ASI Europe to the TMR evangelistic campaign to Zambia to preach there.

Okay, so you say we're going to get ready for this and in order to get ready, we're going to go do some evangelism.

Michael, tell us, how did that change your life?

How did that affect you to go to Zambia and do evangelism?

Zambia a month ago, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

I had heard with my ears, but then my eyes saw it.

I saw the Holy Spirit coming down, and in 1 day, 10, 000 people got baptized.

And how did that affect your life and even your wife?

You just said the real converts were you.

Yes, the real convert was me because now I am a converted believer in the power of God.

So as you're preparing now, you're thinking about this, you take your team to do evangelism, how many meetings did you end up doing there in Zambia?

All together, we as a team of ASI, we covered 6 sites.

But at the same time, there were a thousand sites.

And God really blessed through that effort.

Tell us what are your plans for next year?

We are so excited to share Christ with the secularized population of North France that we have planned for next year, April 20 to 27, to have an evangelistic campaign in North France in the Paris area.

And because there are so many people who need to know Jesus, we have thought that each 1 will win 1.

We need the church members, we need the pastors, We need you, we need everybody who wants to help us.

Well, I heard you say you're planning an evangelistic campaign.

How many series of meetings are you planning to do simultaneously in Paris next year in the month of April?

We are planning to have simultaneously 100 sites where evangelistic campaigns will be presented.

So next year, April, in the city of Paris, 100 series of meetings happening simultaneously.

Can you believe what God is going to do with that in a secular city like Paris to do something amazing for His name?

So we have the opportunity to do several things tonight.

Christiana, tell us, how can people help now?

What is it that someone can do in helping with what you're doing there in Europe?

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Series

Plenary

The Conversion of Paul

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Business Unusual

1h 58m

The Power of Influence

1h 29m

Members in Action

1h 55m

Why Did You Laugh?

1h 58m

The Conversion of Paul

1h 28m

Why Unusual Business is Business Unusual

1h 54m

ASI Presents

57m

Stay on the Wall

1h 2m

Sound Doctrine