ASI Scandinavia 2018: IT IS TIME – To Be About Our Fathers Business!

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ASI Scandinavia

Vincent Bujor

How to Revive Your Church With a Small Group

Father in heaven, Lord, we want to thank you so much for this beautiful day.

We want to thank you for waking us up today and just giving us the gift of life once again.

We know that this year has come to an end and we are so thankful for just to be a part of your church, to be you know, disciples and basically working for you wherever we can.

We wanna learn how we can do that more effectively and we pray that you may be present right now with your Holy Spirit so that we can understand things that you have shown us.

All right, so, we're gonna talk about reviving your local church, and there are many options how to do that.

You know, this is, you know, they told me, we want a title that starts with how to.

You know, did you see how all the workshops in this conference, they all start with how to, the do, do, do, how to, do this, that, and the third, right?

And so I was thinking about how can we put the concept that, or just the things that God has shown me the last couple of years into a formula that is really practical and that helps you get things going in your community, in your local church.

And Before we talk about that, I want to show you something.

Did you know we have a problem in our church?

62.55% of all young people leave our church today.

The General Conference did a survey in the last couple of years and they discovered that more than half of our people are leaving.

They did a study and they found out that the third biggest reason why they leave is because they don't have friends in the church.

And that is something, this is actually my personal story too.

I grew up in a small Adventist church in Germany.

The whole church was maybe about like 25 people, 30 people.

And so eventually we found other friends, so we didn't engage in church things anymore because we didn't have any friends in the church.

The first biggest reason is because there is hypocrisy happening all over the place.

This is the number 1 reason why people are leaving the church, because they see, hey, you call yourself a Christian, but you are doing something else.

So they blame God, they blame the church, and they leave.

The second reason is marriage problems that's very interesting actually because you know many people even in our church they are married to unbelievers and there's always 1 side that you know draws the other side to themselves right you know that maybe and and so this is the second reason the third reason is they don't have any friends and so I said okay this is crazy you know it gets even worse 80% of all Adventists who study at a secular university in the United States leave their church before they graduate.

We know we have a lot of Adventist colleges in the U.S.

This is about 80% are just taking from secular universities in the United States.

Another survey, they did that in Australia.

They said they found out that 36% of young people say that their local church services are quote unquote not interesting.

This is the workshop how to revive your local church.

And that's also maybe part of the reason why they leave.

And they also found out that there's a steady drop in loyalty to the church between the ages 13 and 18.

So I praise God that we're all here, you know.

And I mean, I told you that I grew up in a church with my brother.

He didn't have, you know, the privilege of finding friends in the church later on that I found, you know, or the privilege that I had.

And so this is happening and this is a reality.

And I think that we need to accept it and we need to find a solution.

And so if we, you know, I want to ask you, this is a workshop and we want to be, you know, communicating.

I don't want to just preach here, I want to, you know, get engaged with you guys.

So what do you think can be a solution or where do you think can we find a solution?

But I mean, how do you know how to run a youth church?

Friends, the solution, when you look at the history of Christianity, you gotta see like how Marcus was telling us last night, if you wanna know what's going on in the future, you gotta look back and see what was working or what is working in the past.

You don't know what has been working, I mean, you know.

So when you look back to Christianity, you see hundreds and hundreds of years of churches and how everything grew and how it all spread.

Where do you think can we start looking at?

I want to say, okay, first of all, the solution has to be here.

This is, if we ever find a way or a place where we can find a true solution to this problem, it has to be found in God's word and in the history of our church.

The history of the Adventist Church is not that old, right?

We're not that old, but the history of Christianity is 2, 000 years old, so we kind of know a little bit more how the church was, you know, built up and everything.

And so I want you, if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Acts chapter 2.

This workshop is not only listening it's also a little bit studying so I'm glad I hope that you brought your Bibles maybe you can look it up.

If we want to find the solution to the problem we need to look at the early church.

How people, because let me tell you why, because the early church was growing so rapidly that they actually, they started persecuting the people, you know, all the followers of the apostles, they started persecuting them because they were afraid that these Jewish Christians, they would take over Jerusalem, they would take over the entire country, the Roman Empire.

So apparently there was something successful there.

So if you turn to Acts 2, you know, this is a famous chapter.

You might know what you can find in there.

We are talking about, you know, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, right?

And I want you to turn with me to verse 42, and we're going to read 42 through 47.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers.

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How to Revive Your Church With a Small Group

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