ASI 2018: Business Unusual

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Young Professionals

Mark Finley

History & Mission of ASI

Father in heaven, we thank you that we have only 1 life to live and we can give it to you.

We thank you that life is not some cosmic joke, that it's not some long, tedious process toward oblivion, but that our life can have meaning and purpose and focus and direction and that the deepest needs of the human heart can be met in Christ as we serve him in mission.

Guide us today as we speak in Christ's name, amen.

I was on 1 of those long flights coming back from Brazil.

I was anxious to get back home to Washington.

And you know, as just before you're getting ready to land, the pilot often says, it's 20 minutes or 30 minutes before landing.

If you need to get up and use the bathroom or do anything else, it's time to do that now.

And after a long flight and following the Adventist health message of drinking a lot of water, I needed to use the facilities.

So I got up and went into the small bathrooms on the planes.

I don't know why they don't make those things bigger.

But when you are 6 foot 1 and it's hard to find room in the bathroom anyway.

I shut the door and I knew something was wrong immediately.

The light went out in that small cubicle.

It was totally dark and the door locked behind me and would not open.

Now imagine it, we are descending out of 36, 000 feet.

And as we're coming down, this door is locked.

Now I wanted to act dignified because when you are the assistant to the president, to the general conference, you always have to act dignified.

So I just gently pushed on the door, nothing happened.

I became less dignified and began to pound on the door.

Sat, put the top of the commode down, sat on it, put my feet against the door, and began to kick that thing, nothing happened.

And I had all these kind of visions in my mind.

I had the vision of landing, hitting the ceiling, breaking my neck, and having the front page of the Review and Herald say, Pastor Mark Finley dies in plane wreck.

You know, that wasn't too pleasant of an image.

I kept pushing on that door and pushing, And finally it opened a little crack and a flight attendant came by and she said, sir, do you need help?

You know, sometimes doors that you knock on, sometimes doors that you push on do not open.

You thought you were supposed to go a certain direction.

You thought that God was leading you in a certain way, but yet God changed his plans.

The history of ASI begins with plans changed in Acts the 16th chapter.

If you happen to have your Bible, you may have a scroll like I do, or you may have a text on your iPhone, and if you're looking at it, I know you're not texting, but you're looking at the text.

Acts the 16th chapter, Paul had door after door closed in his life.

Acts 16, we look there beginning at verse 6.

Now, when they had gone through Pergia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.

Now here's Paul, he sees the great cities of Asia.

And he says, God, I know you're leading me there.

And as he's going to Asia, he has God's plans in mind.

God shuts the door, the Holy Spirit deeply convicts him, don't go to Asia.

Did I misunderstand, God, what you were doing?

God, I thought you were opening that door and you slammed it in my face.

Paul continues, next verse, after they had come to Mysia, they thought they were gonna go to Bithynia, but the spirit did not permit them.

They were on their way to Ephesus, and God said, no, don't go.

They were gonna go to this Bithynia, don't go.

Every door that Paul thought was opened shut.

When God closes a door for you as a young professional, he's gonna open another door.

God never closes a door without opening another door.

Paul goes to Troas, and there in Troas, he hears a voice from Macedonia saying, come over and help us.

As he leaves, he sails across the bay, lands at Neopolis, walks the 7 miles out to Philippi.

Philippi was a retirement community on the end of the Ignatian Way for Roman soldiers.

It had beautiful sea breezes, it was a wealthy city.

They had gotten gold from the Pagonian Hills.

And so Paul went there, he surveyed the city, and he discovered that there was a small group of Jewish women out by the riverside.

And 1 of them was a woman by the name of Lydia from Thyatira.

She was 1 of the first ASI members in Europe.

What brought her there if she was from Thyatira?

Purple is a dye that comes from a mollusk, that is a seashell.

And archaeologists have found large mounds of this type of seashell along the coastline of Neopolis.

So you take these seashells and you boil them.

And as you boil them, the little creature inside dies and produces a purple dye.

That purple dye was used to make Roman togas, and they were the rage for women in that day.

So Philippi was a shopping bazaar at the end of the Ignatian Way.

Paul meets Thyatira, or rather Paul meets Lydia of Thyatira.

She has a large home, and in her home is established the first church in Europe.

Here you have a young professional, Lydia, who supports herself and does not depend on church funds.

And as the result of that, comes to Christ, finances the gospel to be preached in Thyatira, and also in Philippi, and Christian churches are established there.

The function of ASI is not to produce individuals who are dependent on donations for their ministry, but the function of ASI is to motivate and equip and inspire professionals who are so committed to the work of Christ, that they can generate their own income while they do ministry for Christ.

Now, the second great example in the New Testament of supporting ministries is found in Acts the 18th chapter.

The Apostle Paul in Acts 18 has preached in Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, And he comes to Corinth.

And as he first comes to Corinth in Acts chapter 18, he meets 2 people.

And you remember what the Bible says about them?

And because that was Paul's trade, here the greatest evangelist in the history of the New Testament does not depend on the church to give him income.

He begins with Aquila and Priscilla making tents.

There were 3 great athletic events in the Greek Empire.

The Olympic Games, the Pothinian Games, and the Ismanian Games.

Corinth was on the Ismanian in Isthmus, and every 2 years Corinth had the Ismanian Games.

There were athletic events, there was wrestling, there was a track and field events, there were weight lifting events.

In the Olympics in those days, you even had singing events.

Jason Churchwell

Jesus’ first miracle was making juice!

As Kyle said, I work for ADRA now, the Advanced Development and Relief Agency, and I help them with their marketing and development.

And then I'm also on a small team that investigates social enterprise opportunities, business opportunities around the world, places where We can start businesses that generate more private funding.

So we don't have to be so reliant on government funding, cuz we don't know when those streams of income will dry up.

But we wanna continue serving people, the most vulnerable people around the world.

And so if that's your interest and your passion too, come talk to me afterward and we can sit down and discuss those ideas, but that's really what we're interested in at Adra, getting into that space.

But today I've been asked to talk about a venture that I worked on before this in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where I'm from, called Press Together.

And we were brainstorming ideas to reach the city.

There was a big push from the General Conference a few years ago to reach the cities, and it's still going on.

Often in our evangelistic efforts, we go after poor people.

They have an obvious need and we can meet that need.

We thought, well, how can we get into the lives of wealthy and influential people who aren't in our sphere of influence?

I didn't really want to start a restaurant.

That's really expensive, but I can make some killer juice And so we developed some juice flavors in my house and we said hey, we're gonna do a juice bar But before we get into that You guys are all here to talk about business and religion and is that Venice at the end of time?

Are we all going to be unemployed shortly?

You know, should we even be talking about this?

There's a super interesting quote I want to read to you guys in last day events.

And do you remember that parable Jesus tells in Matthew 24, Luke 17?

2 will be sowing in the field, 1 shall be taken to the other left.

2 women will be grinding at the mill, 1 shall be taken to the other left.

And oftentimes we talk, and the disciples are like, where Lord?

And we're like, Is it where are they taken or is it where are they left?

Well, there's a super interesting quote in Last Day Events.

This is what it says, Christ declared that when He comes, some of His waiting people will be engaged in business transactions.

Some people are going to be doing business who are looking for Jesus coming when he comes.

It says some will be sowing in the field, others reaping and gathering in the harvest, and others grinding at the mill.

So I'd encourage you, now is a great time to start a business Some of God's people will be doing business at that time So we decided we're gonna open a juice bar in Atlanta.

So we looked everywhere And it's like thousand square feet in Atlanta 5000 bucks a month and they want you to sign a 3 to 5 month lease.

Kind of expensive to start out of the gate, and we're trying to operate on this lean startup model, right?

Friends and family financing, the best kind.

And so we find this little store, it was a coffee shop, in a high-rise that's just off the strip, Peachtree, if any of you are from Atlanta, Peachtree Street is kind of like the main street, and Buckhead, and Buckhead is like the premier part of Atlanta.

And so we find this high rise that's kind of just off the strip, But there's tenants there like Salesforce, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo.

But the building is only like half full, there's no street parking, it's terrible.

I had to be convinced to go into this spot.

They said, hey, we'll let you come in here for $350 a month, And we'll only make you sign a 6 month lease and you can just go month to month afterward.

So I'm like, we can at least figure out the business model, refine it, start doing some deliveries and things like that.

So I developed 5 flavors of juice just 5.

That's all we had in my kitchen And we we have this grand open we had kind of a soft opening where we started selling it and learning the system of making Juice we have this grand opening and my friend Jared Thurman.

He had a panel yesterday He and I opened this juice bar, So we're there making juice all night.

I think even Jared's mom was there, his wife was there.

And it's kind of slow and we start getting a little bored.

And he and I are back there and we're like, well, we wanna start expanding our line, so maybe we should try some almond milks.

A press is like 2 and a half tons of pressure.

And so we fill this press bag with this almond mush, and we filled the bag wrong.

We filled it from the bottom, and you're supposed to fill it from the middle and fold the ends in and Literally like I'm in my soup bag.

They were trying to make this almond milk So we put it in the press and it starts pressing and because we filled the bag wrong.

It starts shooting out the front Now when I say shooting I'm standing in front of the machine and Brian's right here, it starts spraying us in the face.

Jared's behind me, ringing up a customer right here.

The almond milk hits him in the back of the head and he turns around to see What's going on and it sprays into his eyes and so Jared's like down out of commission like going to the sink to wipe his eyes Well, there's a lady buying juice at the register I'm like 6263.

This was this was a large African-American lady taller than me, standing at the register, and almond milk is just showering down on her.

And she stands there, and she just freezes, and she starts screaming.

So everyone starts grabbing towels and running everywhere, trying to wipe it all up.

And I run around the counter, and I'm giving her towels to wipe herself up, and she's wiping her face, and she stops, and she looks at me, and she says, Do I look like you?

She puts the towels down and goes straight up to the women's restroom.

And this is how it got started, our grand opening at Press Together.

Now I wish I could tell you that was the last bad thing that happened.

Our best-selling juice was this juice it was called gringo.

Gringo is what they call American people down south of the border, right?

It was this citrus based green juice and it had a little jalapeno in it.

Well I don't know if any of you like jalapenos but some jalapenos are super hot, some aren't so hot.

We're like cold pressing jalapenos, right?

Well, I mean, we're making the most premium juice you can buy.

This is organic, 100%, it's cold pressed and it's raw, unpasteurized.

So we press these jalapenos and we're still figuring out the recipes.

I put twice as much in this batch as should have been in there.

So everyone's coming down and we're sampling, sampling, sampling, and now I'm like, you should try this juice.

I mean this was a unique juice, you couldn't get this juice anywhere else.

And people taste it and their face turns red and they start coughing and they're like sputtering and they're like losing their voices.

And I'm like, it's a little jalapeno, a little splash of jalapeno.

Well, what happened was it was the best marketing thing that could have happened to us because they went and told everyone about it.

And it really taught me an important lesson about marketing in life.

And that's that often we want to blend in with everyone else, right?

Sean Wycliffe

Developing a Level 7 Evangelistic Business

My name is Sean Wycliffe and I am excited to be here today.

And I wanted to tell you a little bit about my story before I talk about the fruit tree, which is mostly what I'm going to be sharing today.

And so, this is what we're going to go through.

And from there, we're going to talk about something called the level 7 business.

And we're going to talk about some of the evangelism that we're doing.

But first, I know I know some of you, but I don't think I know most of you.

And so I want to tell you a little bit about myself.

I actually went to school at UC Berkeley a few years ago.

And when I was a student there, I started this business, Mike was talking about it, selling long distance phone service.

And so most of you don't even know what that is, and I understand that.

And I barely knew what that was at that time.

And so it started going really well, and I got really involved and really into it.

And so when I was 19, I ended up buying a Porsche and dropping out of school and moving down to Southern California.

And so as Mike mentioned, we were growing this business.

Now at this time, I was actually an evangelical Christian.

We could kind of do whatever we felt like of course and so I'm just working just doing whatever and Just getting really into money making money by the time.

We ended up buying this mill into our house I end up getting this Ferrari as well and all I cared about was money.

That was my goal I was basically just dedicated to that and just money.

And so God actually had a different plan for me though.

So around this time too, my dad, he actually was a physician at the Loma Linda University.

And so he went to this thing called restoration.

I don't know if anyone's ever been to that before.

So he went in 2003, Randy Skeet, some of you maybe have heard him, he was preaching.

So my dad gave his life back to the Lord and then after that he started praying for me.

Now the business I had shortly thereafter, there's a long story here, the business actually went bankrupt, and I had to pretty much move in with my dad.

I don't know if anyone's ever had to move in with their parents before.

OK, maybe, you're all young professionals, right?

But The reality is I had to do that and I was broke.

And so through that experience, my dad was praying for me, working on me, and then I eventually went to a GYC, and that's where I was really convicted on my life.

And I became an Adventist, rededicated my life to God, and from there, that's when I met Michael Tuazon.

And for the next 2 years, we started just doing a lot of ministry.

He was discipling me studying the Bible the whole 9 yards and This was down at the Fontana Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I don't know if anyone's ever been to the Fontana Okay, if you I hear a few yes, okay good.

So anyways, we were down there for about 2 years.

Now after that, I wasn't really sure what God had for me.

And so my parents said, why don't you go back to school?

You should have never dropped out in the first place.

So I actually ended up going back to school at UC Berkeley.

And this is when my life changed in another direction.

At this time, I actually was continuing running a different business now, selling cell phones.

So it was a similar network marketing business, but now we're selling cell phones.

Oh, she's over there in the back next to the water.

So I met her, and she was working with us.

And I didn't think too much of it, because she was Buddhist at the time.

But in any case, we became friends and then I said, Oh, hey, who knows what, you know, 1 backslide, why not, you know, data Buddhist and have fun, let's see what happens.

And we moved in together about a week after we started dating.

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