This training is for new deacons and deaconesses. The class will provide a job description and discussion about the history and basic work of deacons and deaconesses, and how to manage regular Sabbath morning duties.

Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

<p>This training is for new deacons and deaconesses. The class will provide a job description and discussion about the history and basic work of deacons and deaconesses, and how to manage regular Sabbath morning duties.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Elders Basic Training- Part 1

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training - Part 2

Managing Theological Conflict in the Local Church

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you for a new morning and for this opportunity to meet together in this class.

We pray that you will bless our purpose here and that you will guide our thinking and that your Holy Spirit will help us to understand the responsibilities that come with an assignment that a church gives to us.

I pray that you will direct what I say and what we hear today, and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

We want to first start out by looking at, in this book, the first chapter deals with Jesus, the model of servant ministry.

A deacon or a deaconess or an elder or a personal ministries leader or a pastor, we're all servants.

But especially is the deacon and the deaconess ministry a ministry of servanthood.

When you look at the scriptures, you find that in Isaiah 61, verses 1 and 2, that Jesus looking at that identified his ministry as a servant to the meek, to the brokenhearted, and to captives and those that mourn." We live in a broken society, correct?

Our society is broken and it's getting more and more broken as the days go by.

As a Matter of fact, Ellen White, looking at the future from her time, said that things like mental illness would be even more prevalent in the day in which we live.

And that mental illness and that brokenness and I'm not here to tell you that you are now counselors to the mentally ill and all that but that we all need to find ways of caring for people is my point.

But the brokenness of this world is showing up in a lot of awful ways today, and the violence that we see and almost now becoming used to, oh, it was another shooting of a mass, you know, mass shooting somewhere.

And it, I mean, that's almost the way you react when you look at your cell phone or hear the news or somebody tells you about it because you're ignoring the news, bless you for doing that.

It is just the way society is today And 1 of the reasons for that is because the Spirit of God is being withdrawn from this world.

It's very clear that it is, and the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy make it clear that that's exactly the way it would be in our world today.

And this is in the church and out of the church.

And deacons and deaconesses are servants of people, not just the church.

In Isaiah 53 verse 11, Isaiah spoke of Jesus as my righteous servant, looking to the future, recognizing that.

And Ellen White says in Ministry of Healing, pages 19 and 20, during his ministry Jesus devoted more time to healing the sick than to preaching.

His miracles testified to the truth of his words and he came not to destroy but to save.

The Savior made each work of healing an occasion for implanting divine principles in the mind and in the soul.

He imparted earthly blessings that he might incline the hearts of men to receive the gospel of grace." The ministry of Christ was less preaching and more direct hands-on ministry and caring for people.

You and I are called to that same kind of ministry.

In our book here, and you see the abbreviation on the screen here, it says TTFCDD, it's an abbreviation of this title up here, alright, so it's referring to this book, but the author Vincent White said, Jesus taught his disciples that being a servant is more important than the power of demons.

Jesus wanted them to recognize, than power over demons, Jesus wanted them to recognize the self-destructive danger that comes with a love of power.

You and I are called to servanthood, not to authority.

Do you understand the difference of what I'm saying?

Going on, I want to share this with you, a desire of ages speaking of Christ, rejoice not, or speaking of power, she says, rejoice not in the possession of power lest you lose sight of your dependence upon God.

Be careful lest self-sufficiency come in and you work in your own strength rather than the spirit and strength of your master.

Self is ever ready to take the credit if any measure of success attends the work." And then Vincent White says, the concept that Jesus was trying to instill in his disciples that ministry is not about power, control, and greatness as viewed by worldly standards, but it is about service to God and humanity.

That is because the biblical concept of a deacon or a deaconess is the concept of rendering service to people.

In the Greek, to minister comes from the root which is derived from the word for deacon.

So the word for a deacon carries this connotation of ministry and servanthood.

It means 1 who renders service to another, an attendant servant.

So that is the foundation for what we need to talk about today.

I could give you a job description and you could say I don't want to do any of that or you might see that job description as being an opportunity for authority and power in your church, but God is calling you not to power and authority, God is calling you to servant ministry.

Servant ministry means selflessness, It means being willing to take time out of your schedule for the service of others.

That means making priority the work that needs to be done in the church.

It will make the difference between the success of your church in its ministry goal and purpose or failure thereof.

The success of the church is dependent upon the strength of its leadership.

Elders, deacons, and deaconesses provide the leadership structure for that church.

Where that church goes, where your church goes, is not dependent upon whether or not you have Dwight Nelson as your pastor.

It is dependent upon whether or not you have Dwight Nelson as your pastor, it is dependent upon whether or not you as elders, deacons, and deaconesses are fulfilling the purpose for which you were called, and you are called.

It is not a nominating committee calling you on the phone.

It is the God in heaven calling you to service.

You thought you were just getting an invitation from the nominating committee to take up the offering on Sabbath morning or to prepare communion bread.

No, that happens to be a task that might come on with the job description, but it is only 1 small tiny itsy-bitsy little piece of what it is God has called you to do.

It should take you on those duties no more than a few minutes on Sabbath morning and a little bit of time making the communion bread and that's all you would do.

Now you understand what I'm doing here right?

So let's understand what this means in terms of servanthood.

Ellen White says in Desire of Ages, page 550, among his disciples, Christ was in every sense a caretaker, a burden bearer.

He practiced self-denial on their account.

He went before them to smooth the more difficult places.

And soon he would consummate his work on earth by laying down his life.

The principle on which Christ acted is to actuate the members of the church which is his body." God is calling upon us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus in ministering to the needs of the congregation.

Ministering to the congregation is not just taking their money from them on Sabbath morning.

It means actually caring enough about them to go into their homes and talk to them and pray with them.

It means also sharing the gospel with people who don't know about the gospel.

I want to warn you that if you've not sat in 1 of these classes before, you will find that I'm going to share some things with you that will excite you just with the idea of the possibility of what can happen in ministry.

Or it will overwhelm you with, seriously, this is what I signed up for and then if you get to that point here's my suggestion to you don't get to that point understand that when we you start thinking that way that really it is an opportunity and that God simply wants you to take the next step.

You didn't start school in first grade and realize, you know, talk to some neurosurgeon somewhere and in first grade, wow, I've got to learn all of that by then and do all of that.

I'm going to quit now before I even have to." No, you start where you are and you take the steps along the way in order to be able to do the work that God has given you to do.

Vincent White again in this textbook said, therefore it is evident that Jesus' ministry as a servant provides the theological foundation for the ministry of deacon and deaconess.

As deacons and deaconesses follow Jesus example they are to enlist the members of the church into a life of service.

You see the truth is everyone from the pastor to the, that almost sounds right, from the from the members all the way down to the pastor, I like that better, Don't you like going that direction?

Not just so that ministers could be servants, not just so that elders can be servants, but that we could all be servants.

When we all serve others, the world's a better place.

Of course, Satan doesn't want it to be that way for sure.

By the way, there is a sign up sheet, couple of them coming around on clipboards, and I wanna make sure they get around to everyone, and so far they seem to be doing good.

I'm gonna have to come up with a reward for you of some sort, I don't know what it is.

Servant ministry, that's it, he's an example of servant ministry, there, that's it.

So I want to talk a little bit about the role of the deacons in the first century Christian church to begin to help us to understand what the role of a deacon is.

By the way, again, that was the first chapter in this book.

I put it up on the screen so that we can move ahead.

I encourage you to read this book and to look through it and see that.

I'm moving into chapter 2 now, the role of deacons in the first century Christian church.

I want to talk about this a little bit and be able to identify what the whole situation there is about.

Series

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

WYC 2009 Plenary Sessions

No Reputation... Form of a Servant

25m

We Can’t Help but Tell

52m

The Pathway to True Prosperity

3. Meiste & Nephew- Saving is Smart

1h 12m

Fall Week of Prayer 2012

The Good Soldier

54m

How to Study the Bible- A Contextual Analysis of Psalms 1

50m

Identity Theft

5. Pioneer Stories

46m

ECYC 2012: Plenary Sessions

The Mind of a Servant

55m

From the Weed of Death to the Word of Life

1h 12m

The Early and Latter Rain: Our Need of the Holy Spirit

Six Reasons Why the Early Rain is Needed

57m

We Believe

We Believe - Who is God? Part 2

1h

Plenary

Shopping for Pearls

53m

Examining the Laodicean Message

How to Lose the Kingdom

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine