Hartland Summer Conference 2018: Prepared for the Final Crisis

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Jim Howard

Grow Your Church- Part 2

I'm going to talk to you, the title today is discipleship part 1 and 2.

That's because I didn't get them a title.

So, they put down what they felt I was going to talk about.

We're going to talk about making disciples.

I actually prefer the phrase making disciples over discipleship in the context of what I'm going to be talking to you about today because people have real weird ideas about discipleship.

Sometimes they think that only pertains to the nurture of church members.

There is a component of discipleship that is related to the nurture of church members, but making disciples helps you to understand that you're talking about something that happens from the moment that you introduce yourself to someone to the point where they are trained into workers for God and they're already members of the church.

So there's a whole process of making disciples that starts before they're a member and continues after they're a member.

And I'm gonna talk to you about the whole process because I think it's very important.

Let me just say this, we're going to talk about soul winning.

Almost 3 hours, 2 and a half hours, something like that.

To talk about soul winning, we are going to take a break.

I can't promise you when it's going to be.

But I'll tell you this, the concept of evangelism is so disputed today, even in the church.

Like, not that we don't think we should do evangelism, but why we aren't as successful as we ought to be, what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing, which people we're trying to reach, which people are, you know, where we should invest our time and resources, and on and on.

I will tell you the number 1 problem that we have in evangelism in the church.

I hear all the time about the methodologies that we should be using.

I've got my opinions and we're going to talk about methodology.

But before we get into methodology I just want you to understand something.

What I'm going to share with you to a great degree has more to do with getting people active in doing it than it has to do with how they're doing it, though that's important.

But more important than how they're doing it, to a great degree, is that we start doing it.

We have places in the world church that are growing very greatly.

Other places where it's a lot harder to get traction.

I know that when I went over to Ghana and I was preaching in Ghana back a few months ago, Preached a series of meetings in a rather small site, had 50 baptisms.

I said, praise the Lord, I like these results.

And there's some places where the atmosphere is ripe for people to make decisions.

Other places, it's a lot more challenging.

Let me just give you a little sense of what I'm talking about here.

We make a mistake when we think that the reason that they're growing in such and such an area is because it's easier there and the reason that we're not in this area is because it's harder here.

There is a percentage of the problem that is related to that, but we totally miss the greater percentage of the problem, which is we're simply not doing it.

When I go down to South America, I was part of a series of meetings in Bolivia.

And I was amazed the division director was there in Bolivia because twice a year in South America they go to a particular area and all the division directors come.

The women's ministries director, the youth director, every department director from the division comes.

The secretary comes, the treasurer comes, they all come.

And they come and they stay somewhere in that area, whether it's a hotel or wherever, and they each preach at a site where they're holding meetings.

I want you to think about your own conference and when the last time every department director went somewhere and preached a series of meetings.

Someone will say, oh but souls are won so easily down there in South America.

Well maybe they are a little bit more rife but you know what?

They've got a plan and they're working it and they're active.

And it's the activity that brings results.

We might have the same activity here and not have as many new members, but we'd have a lot more than we have now.

So the biggest issue when it comes to soul winning is getting active.

That's our biggest problem in the church is just doing it.

And so if you leave with anything from this little time we have this afternoon, I hope it's with the realization that the harvest is ready and that what we need are laborers.

Now you see that up on the, I say screen, but the wall?

Now there's a couple things I want you to know about that.

1 is that that represents a representation of the General Conference Personal Ministries Strategic Plan.

And it's something that we train every local church wherever we go around the world.

The your church is there because it's personal.

This is not something that's on a high level.

This is intended to be something that every local church can do.

And so I want to talk to you about local church soul winning.

And this simple logo that you see on the screen is going to help explain a lot more than you might think.

First of all, when we talk about growing, we are already dipping into the model for soul winning that Jesus used.

He talked about how the harvest is great.

He used parables such as the sower went forth to sow.

And this cycle of sowing and harvesting Jesus used to describe how to grow the kingdom of God, how to win souls, how to grow the church.

He said if we sow sparingly, we will reap sparingly.

And if we sow bountifully, we will reap bountifully.

Wow, even the Bible said what I said just a moment ago, didn't it?

Hey, if we do it bountifully, we're gonna get bountiful results.

But what I want you to see for now is that the Bible lays out this agricultural picture as a model of how we as Christians are to go forth and meet the commission that Jesus gave us to go make disciples.

We're supposed to do it by sowing and harvesting and the entire process.

So what you see is a picture of that process.

Before I dive into it though, I wanna show you another logo.

How many of you are familiar with that logo?

This is the philosophy of the general conference when it comes to soul wedding.

By the way, are we all on board with the general conference?

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Grow Your Church- Part 2

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