Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data

Larry Blackmer

Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data - Part 1

Father, we're so thankful that you have promised that you're in charge of all things.

And so, we this morning give you our time together.

We give you our educational system, our teachers, our principals.

May we, Father, this morning, understand your role in our educational system.

And may that, Father, bless each of us and our families in this conference.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, and say that we love you in Jesus' name.

I am most recently Vice President of North American Division for Education, and we spend $25 million a year in Adventist education.

Why in the world does this church spend $25 million on Adventist education?

But there's no reason for us to spend 25 million dollars to have strong academics, right?

Do we do it so our kids have a safe environment?

Do we spend $25 million so that our kids know Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

It is not why we do it, because we could send them to a Baptist school and they'd know Jesus.

We could send them to a Catholic school and they'd know Jesus, but they come out the other end a Baptist or a Catholic They wouldn't come out the other end most of the time as an Adventist the only reason that we have the right to spend 25 million dollars as a church on an educational system is so that we have strong academics in a safe environment for our kids, emotionally, spiritually, physically safe, in an environment where they know Jesus Christ is their personal Savior, where they get the opportunity to give their life to Jesus Christ in the context of the Adventist church.

And if we leave that fourth piece off, we have no right to exist as a system.

And too many times we focus on the academics, and we focus on the safe environment, we focus on...

Are we minimizing that in this four-point thing?

But if they know Jesus as a general Christian, then we lose them to the church.

So, Ellen White, the most important thing, the all-important thing in our education should be what?

What should be the most important thing in our educational system?

Not that they just know Jesus, but they know the Adventist church and they're grounded in the church.

Because, and we'll talk about this, probably, it's a real burden of mine, so I'll probably end up spilling it this time and next time.

So we're going to talk about baptisms into the church.

Worldwide, we baptize about 43, 000 young people a year.

What's the membership now of Michigan Conference?

So we double the Michigan Conference every year in baptisms worldwide.

So we baptize a large conference every single year worldwide.

So we've had almost a half a million baptisms in the last 10 years.

Those are when you do the reports at the end of the year, how many students were baptized.

That's the number we use for that statistic.

Just number of kids enrolled in the school and they were baptized every year.

And so if they're baptized at summer camp, who gets credit for that baptism?

Not that there's a credit, but you understand my point is, that's a conservative number.

Because lots of kids want to get baptized at camp.

They give their heart to Jesus in a week of prayer or through a Bible class or something, and then they go to camp and get baptized because they want to be baptized at camp.

And then the camp says, we baptized, like we say we baptized a half a million, they say, well, we baptized 200, 000.

So, much of that training happened in Adventist education, Pathfinders, and Sabbath school.

Those are the 3 areas that we are keeping our kids.

We're gonna have a lot of these kinds of slides.

I want to explain before we get started what they mean.

So we're going to look at the statistics of baptized or never baptized.

If you never went to Adventist education, if you went 1 to 10 years in Adventist education, or if you went 11 plus years in Adventist education, and see if there's a difference, a statistical difference between those 3 categories.

For instance, we say here that if you have no Adventist education at all, 60% of those children by the time they are 18 have been baptized.

I think that's a wonderful number because that's saying 60% of our kids that have no Adventist education are finding some way to get involved in the church.

We talk about these, nobody's slamming somebody else in order to...

I wasn't raised into a Seventh-day Adventist, but I was a Methodist before I became a Seventh-day Adventist.

But I actually became a Seventh-day Adventist through Bible studies, and became a Seventh-day Adventist, and then I've been baptized through a Seventh-day Adventist church.

I went all 12 years through public education.

I was 20 minutes from Adelphian, but we had 5 kids in the family.

My dad wasn't an Adventist, and there's no way he was going to pay for something he'd get free.

And so none of us went to Adventist education.

At the same time, I worked at summer camp.

And I went to my dad after I graduated and said, I'm going to Andrews University.

You're going to the University of Michigan-Flint.

And I says, no, I'm going to Andrews University.

I'm the only of the 5 kids, I'm the only 1 that went to an Adventist school, even in college.

I'm the only 1 that's still in the church.

Adventist education does make a difference.

And I believe in my heart that working at summer camp made a difference in my life.

Working at Campus Hobble 5 summers made a difference.

And I'm an Adventist educator today because of that.

If you have 1 to 10 years of Adventist education, it jumps from 60 to 85%.

If You go all 12 years to Adventist education, it goes up to 97% of those young people are baptized.

Is there a difference between 60 and almost 100?

It does because those are souls we're talking about, not statistics.

Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data - Part 2

Father, we're so thankful that You not only shine the sun on us and warm us, but You shine Your face on us and help us, Father, that we may be a reflection of that light in our society today.

As we talk about Adventist education, we ask your blessing on our teachers, on our families, on our schools.

May they continue to be a lighthouse for you in our community.

Again, the only way, the way this is gonna work the best is if you ask questions.

There's no way I'm gonna get through my presentation anyhow.

So you might just as well ask as many questions and let's talk about some of the issues because that's what's really most helpful if you say, well what about and how does that work and what are we doing about that?

Getting through the slide presentation is not the most important.

I can do the last slides in 31 seconds if we have to.

North American Vision spends 25 million dollars in Adventist education.

South Pacific Division spends $120 million.

We have 60, 000 students, they have 13, 000 students.

And so they spend 3 times as much, 4, almost 5 times as much on Adventist education as we spend in the North American Division.

Part of that is because of the tithe distribution.

We pay 8% of our tithe to the General Conference.

They pay 2% of their tithe to the General Conference.

So they have a lot more money left that they can use for things like Adventist education.

But $25 million, why in the world do we spend, as a church, that's the largest part of the North American Division budget.

So lots of people say to me all the time, why can't we take some of the evangelism money and use it to support Adventist education because we're pricing ourself out of the market and we need more money in Adventist education, right?

Adventist education, how much do we spend?

Well, how many schools is that supporting?

Because it sounds like a big number, but when you break it down, It's probably not as big as you thought.

So that $25 million is really what goes back to conferences for subsidies.

So we split that between the 56 conferences, and they use that for about 1, 000 schools.

So that $25 million is split 56 ways, depending on the size of the conference.

And that's what's used to pay the conference.

And then the conference puts more money in.

Tomorrow we'll talk about, how much money do you think, yeah.

No, tomorrow we're gonna talk a lot about that per pupil, and I'll break it down and have it ready for tomorrow.

So we spend that $25 million just on K-12.

How much money do you think the division spends on evangelism?

All the evangelistic series that we spend from the division, how much do you think we spend?

No, no, we spend $25 million on Adventist education.

So we spend twice as much on Adventist education as we spend on evangelism.

So should we take money out of evangelism to support Adventist education?

You don't go out and evangelize a church member.

If you want a strong second and third generation, research, and we'll look at that today, tells you that Adventist education is the best way to get a strong second and third generation.

Is it so that we have a strong academic environment for our kids?

Do we do it so we have a safe environment for our kids?

Safe environment's important, but that's not why we do it.

Do we do it so that our kids know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior?

No, It's not why we spend $25 million, because we could send them to a Baptist school and they'd know Jesus.

We could send them to a Catholic school and they'd know Jesus.

But they come out the other end, a Baptist or a Catholic, right?

The reason we spend $25 million is to have a strong academic environment where our kids are safe spiritually, socially, emotionally, physically, where our kids have a personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus Christ, where they know that He loves them and cares for them and His grace is sufficient for them, in the context of the Adventist church.

And if you leave that last piece off, we have no right to exist.

Because we can send them to a Baptist school and they can get the first 3.

We can send them to a Lutheran school and they can get the first 3 in a Lutheran school.

So the only reason that we have the right to exist as a system is that we have all 4 pieces, and we have to be distinctly Adventist.

For the last 10 years I've been the president of an international accrediting agency, and now work for them part-time in retirement.

18 organizations, Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Islamic, Montessori, Quaker, Friends, all the different independent schools, all the different organizations, 18 organizations.

I am really good friends with all of those, the heads of all those school systems, and the Dan Jacksons, the presidents of all of those associate, you know, Richard from Wisconsin Lutheran Synod of Lutherans, very good friends, and we talk a lot.

So I understand other systems other than just the Adventist system.

Do you know that that organization sees the Adventist system as the system to emulate?

I'm asked all the time, I've spoken to assemblies of God and Church of Christ and Catholic and Baptist and Lutheran, they ask me to come and speak in their teachers' conventions.

How can we be more like an Adventist system?

But yet we, we, the church, parents, say, I want something better for my kids than Adventist education.

And they send them off to non-denominational and to charter schools and to public schools for education.

We'll talk more about that as we get going.

Ellen White said that our most important matter in education should be the conversion of students.

It's that fourth piece that we connect them to the church, not just general Christian.

If you look at Pew Research and Barna Research, and you look at value genesis, our kids are getting more and more spiritual.

They say they're reading their Bible more, they're praying more, they're having more personal Bible study, that they believe Jesus Christ is real in their life, but they're getting less and less denominational.

They can care less about going to a particular church or having membership in a particular church, they're more interested in being general Christians.

And we in the church have to fight that battle.

Conversion of students means baptism, right?

In our church, are you baptized into the church, or are you baptized into Christ?

Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data - Part 3

Thank you, Father, for giving us a good night rest.

We appreciate the watering of nature, but we also ask that you be with those that are dealing with flooding and with storm damage this morning.

Too much of a good thing is not always the best.

So, Father, we ask You to continue to be with us this morning as we talk about Adventist education and its role in the Seventh-day Adventist church.

We want to say as a group and as friends that we love you in Jesus' name, amen.

So The question is, is Adventist education a church imperative explanation point, or is it a church imperative question mark?

And that's really the issue that we're going to talk about.

We talked about cognitive genesis, that we are above the national average in all subjects, all grades, all sizes of schools, and all years tested.

Which group of schools, large schools that are K-12 schools, or large elementary schools, or medium-sized schools, or small schools, one-teacher schools, scored the highest as a group.

One-teacher schools scored the highest as a group.

And that's the group that many parents say, I'm not sending my kid, there's only 1 teacher, and there's no way they can have the better curriculum.

Those kids scored higher as a group than anyone else.

I started to say this and didn't finish my sentence and somebody asked a question.

We took this test and everybody said, well of course you do better because you get just the best kids that come to private schools.

You get just the best kids that come to private schools.

And so those parents are motivated and they pay for it, and so they're going to have an advantage over the students from our public school.

So what we did, just to make sure, we gave a cognitive ability test to every student, 50, 000 students, so that we could say the cognitive ability of our system is here, the cognitive ability of the national test is here, we're going to control for ability.

We're going to take away that argument by controlling statistically for ability.

And we still outscored the public system.

Now, we know in the system that we don't get all of the just the smartest kids on the block.

Because many parents send their kids to an Adventist school because there's only 8 kids and they want more attention for their student.

And so we sometimes get students that need more personal attention in our schools.

But we have scored, above the national average, 50, 000 students over 4 years.

Our students on cognitive genesis say that they think that our Teaching is good, 89%.

We're the only religious system in the world which 100% of our schools are accredited.

You cannot be in Adventist school and not be accredited.

The Catholics have more schools, they have more kids, but we're a system.

The Catholics are not a system, they're diocean-based.

And so this diocese never talks to this diocese.

And the bishop of the diocese has total control over the educational system.

Even though he's not an educator, he has total control.

He chooses the textbook, he chooses the teachers, he chooses whether or not you're accredited, he chooses the curriculum, etc.

So each bishop in the diocese is an island upon themselves.

We're seen as technology leaders in private education.

There's a committee called TDAC, Technology and Distance Education Committee, from the North American Division, and that committee at the North American Division has written the standards for technology in private schools across every private school across this country.

They're using our standards for technology.

And that's being done across the division in Catholic, Baptist, Jewish.

I've been president of an international accrediting agency now for 10 years, NCPSA.

And When I left, that Catholic Baptist, 8, 000 schools, 18 organizations, they see the Adventist as the system to emulate.

And when I left, they hired me to replace my position on the board, they, Arnie Nielsen, the new VP at NAD, they voted him as the vice president and they'd never met him.

They'd never met the man, but they said, we need an Adventist on our board.

And so we're going to vote a man we've never met to be our new vice president for 2 years, and in 2 years he'll become the president of NCPSA.

They think so highly of the system that they would rather have an Adventist without even knowing them.

And I think that's a really strong statement.

I get some criticism because I work with the Catholic Church and I help the Catholic Church work on getting accreditation for their schools from NCPSA.

I help them, they've had me speak at their national conventions on how they can get 30% of their kids in Adventist education.

And so they've asked me to come and speak to 5, 000 Catholic educators on how to get their kids in Catholic education.

But it's important that we interface with people from other faiths.

It's been so uplifting for me as an Adventist to be able to spend time with this group.

I'm going to tell you a story that might get me in trouble, but I don't think so.

You're all friends, you're not going to tell anybody, are you?

So this group, there are 12 or 14 on the executive committee and we meet twice a year.

Twice a year we go out to dinner and 1 of those times I would pay for it and 1 of the times the executive director of NCPSA would pay for it.

And so It got to a point where people would always ask, who's paying for supper tonight?

That would be the question when we went into the restaurant.

And if Clay Petrie said, I'm paying tonight, every single person except me would drink.

They would have alcohol, they'd have beer, they'd have hard whiskey, whatever.

If I said, I'm paying, without a word being said, no 1 except 1 person drank.

It was out of respect for the Adventist church.

Nobody drank except the Jewish rabbi always had a Sam Adams.

It was interesting to me that the Jewish rabbi was the only 1 that would drink.

But, I think it was interesting, it was affirming that they cared and thought that much of the Adventist church that that night they chose not to drink, rather than the General Conference has a policy that if you have meat, alcohol, or caffeine on your bill, they don't reimburse you.

North American Vision does not have that policy.

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Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data

Does Adventist Education Make A Difference: Retention Data - Part 2

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