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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

How Can We Stir the People

Well, the title that I'm preaching from today is, How Can We Stir the People?

I don't know about you, but have you noticed that we live in a time and an age where people are saturated to death with stimulus and screens and even pumping gas.

Sometimes you have something come on and giving you advertisements, and certainly on our phones and our devices and everywhere we go, we're being entertained.

Almost to the point that we feel like a minute or 2 is going by and we're not being entertained, something is the matter.

We have a society that is obsessed with movies, if you will, and going to movies and the latest movies and the awards for movies.

Again, we already mentioned entertainment.

Entertain me all day long from the time I give up to the time I go to bed.

Concerts where the lighting and then all the pyrotechnics and who knows what they do is just so entertaining, if you will, it just stimulates all the senses.

We have huge arenas then for sports and the game and the way that they've improved how we view it and on and on to pretty extravagant vacations, right?

We wanna go to the nicest places and be able to place on social media or what have you, where we've been.

And so if you're not here, there's a problem because you're looking at a picture while you're eating breakfast or lunch or dinner at somebody else that is.

And then of course these little devices they seem to manipulate all of our attention we can't seem to go to the restroom without our device have mercy and all of these social media outlets you see listed there gaming you might be surprised but gaming is a huge thing I think the average American spend something like 3 hours a day gaming.

Now, if you don't spend any hours a day, like I don't, then somebody is taking your hours, right?

But again, this idea of entertain me, I have to have something fun to do and then we come to church.

It's so boring And now you've taken away the last gleam of hope.

And so we come back to the initial question.

Now again, I mean, entertainment in and of itself I suppose isn't necessarily bad, although we could talk about the forms of entertainment and all the devices that are there, but I believe the devil has got a way of manipulating things to cause us to feel like if we're not being entertained and even our attention span is shortening.

From 12 seconds to 9 seconds to 7 seconds to 6 seconds to where if I don't have something for 6 seconds to stimulate then I have to find something to do.

Maybe I have a notification, let me check.

And so we have coming up this unlock revelation, this evangelistic series that we're going to be doing in the month of April, but people oftentimes will say, you know, I just, evangelism to me, I think it's dead.

And so some churches are adopting the idea, well, let's just love people.

I'm not against relationships or anything of the sort, but I can do all of those things while doing all of these things.

I can be friends with someone while I'm at a game or while I'm on vacation or gaming I suppose, but will that really stir people and lead them, this is my question, to the foot of the cross?

Now I suppose If I'm very intentional, which I hope that you are, about bringing God into the conversation, and so sometimes when we do that, then it sparks a spiritual conversation, it might spark a Bible study, and people may come into the church, and that's all well and good, and we praise the Lord for that.

But all too often I'm afraid what we end up doing is we just keep getting cozy in these relationships and it just stays the status quo.

And if we bring up God it's in a very minimal way and we don't get into deep discussions, we certainly don't get into deep Bible study, but oh, this is still friendship evangelism.

And so for 5, 10, 15, 25 years, what are you doing?

Well, when are you gonna lead them and have a Bible study?

Well, they're not ready for that just yet.

And so the friendship goes on forever, but what happens to actually stirring the people to what they need to hear?

I've heard others say they're sick and tired of the beasts of Daniel and Revelation.

I was in a church somewhere that we were talking to the congregation, maybe it was a church board I guess, or maybe it was a church business meeting, and someone raised their hand and they said, what is this series going to be about?

And we said, well, it's going to be about our Seventh-day Adventist message.

Does that mean we're gonna be talking about beasts and animals and kingdoms and timelines?

And they said, can't we do something else?

I'm so sick and tired of the beasts and trying to scare people and all the rest.

In fact, when Clouset came here not that long ago, the same question arose.

Are we going to talk about all these beasts again?

And I thought he had a very interesting answer.

It's not me, the evangelist, that came up with this idea of all of these beasts and to put them on slides and all this kind of thing.

It really is God's idea in his word to have a beast represent powers in scripture and so on.

And so it's part of our message and so yes, I'm gonna be using the marketing tool that God came up with to explain our message.

And so when I hear, are we gonna preach something else, I'm thinking, well do we want a different message?

But sadly, I think there's a shift today in many of our churches, and the shift says, well, let's just take out the beast.

Let's take out the harsh messages of the destruction of the wicked.

We don't wanna talk about what happens when you die, the 2, 300 days.

Well, I got news for you, it's really not about you.

And if you bring a guest with you, it'll be far more exciting than if you're just here to hear it again.

They wanna take, you know, the 10 commandments, let's not, it's just such a legalistic approach, let's leave that to the side.

But friends, again, these things are not my idea.

This is part of our message, the everlasting gospel that we're to take to the whole world.

If they weren't important, they wouldn't be here.

But too many in our Adventist church wanna minimize and water down important aspects of our prophetic message.

Many churches have stopped giving the prophetic message, if you will, altogether in favor of speaking simply about salvation and forgiveness and love and the grace of God.

Don't get me wrong, without any of those things, without the love and grace of God, we're all hopelessly lost.

But you know, many churches, although they're coming up with new innovative ways of evangelism, I have yet to see an innovative way that works better than the traditional evangelistic series.

Now if you can find, I'm not against innovation, I'm not against trying new things.

When they started putting slides on the screen, that was a new thing.

Before that it was these pieces of cloth that they would draw on, they'd roll up and that whole thing.

And so people say, oh, we're trying this new thing over here, we're trying that new thing.

Well, tell me about what results you found with it.

Well, we're still, you know, it takes a little longer, and we're still working with people, and they keep working with people and working with people and working with people, but our message never gets delivered.

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How Can We Stir the People

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