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

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Sabbath School: ALIVE

Kameron DeVasher

ALIVE - Part 1

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for keeping us safe through the night, giving us life at all, and now giving us the opportunity to discuss the important work of Sabbath school.

Lord, in many of our churches, Sabbath school is ailing, if not dying.

But it is our prayer, through our diligent effort and your miraculous power that you would make Sabbath school alive.

Before we get started I want to make sure that I give you these 2 resources, digital resources.

You notice I don't have any handouts, We don't have a PowerPoint thing, but all of those materials are coming.

They're just not to the finished product.

I can put it in your hand today, but I'm going to show you where you can get good materials starting right now.

The first 1, as I mentioned, is the General Conferences Sabbath School and personal ministries page, especially when it comes to this Sabbath School Alive initiative, the website for that is alive.adventist.org.

And it's not case sensitive, so I just put it in capitals so you can see it clearly.

This, as I said, is the GC, the General Conference's SSPM Sabbath School page.

Now, I know, 1 of the things we're saddled with is the world's longest departmental title, the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries.

So it's not, how do you even come up with a website?

And then we have to say Michigan Conference Sabbath School and Personal Ministries.

So for what we've done in our department is for our website, we've done this.

Just the word Michigan and the abbreviation SSPM.org.

Well, I'd say it's the Michigan Conference, but it's in the name so you can see it already.

But it's, these are the 2 websites I'm going to be encouraging you to visit.

Much of the material we discuss is going to be found, in fact all of the notes from this seminar will be posted on this website.

Now they're not there now but they will be.

Much of the material we're going to discuss is already, if you had a little computer right now or smartphone, you could go to alive.adventist.org and you would get a lot of the information we're going to discuss.

Okay, just to let you know that this is not just gonna be stuck in the room here, and by the way I need to pass this around as I've been instructed by those over me.

Please just sign in real quick and pass it along throughout the room.

Yes, so alive.adventist.org and michigansspm.org.

This is the general conference 1, this is the local 1.

Mark Howard and I have exclusive control over this 1, so we get to put up what we want and make it what we want it to be.

This 1 we partner with the general conference.

Now, of course, the person who runs this 1 is Jim Howard, so Mark Howard and Jim Howard have a connection.

So you're going to see some striking similarities.

They're like, it looks like these guys are in cahoots.

And in all seriousness, though, this really is a blessing because 1 of the, obviously, Mark and Jim and I and different people had already worked together here in Michigan and so when you went, it's not like taking away, both of us view this as adding to the help, it's a help for Michigan Conference because for instance when we went to do, you'll find on the alive.adventist.org and another 1 if you like personal ministries it's grow.adventist.org but you'll find all these and also on our website you have the same videos posted but there's these training videos that we got to make.

Well the good thing is we got to put together the video material and then go to the Hope Channel studios and use their studios and they produced it and everything like that because it's from the General Conference Department but instead of hiring other employees Jim gets to work with us here as basically a research and Development Lab and we get to use their toys and tools over there and it's a good symbiotic relationship.

So basically what the World Church stuff gets to put together, Michigan gets to help develop and be on the tip of the spear.

So I would encourage both of those sites, Alive.Adventist.org and MichiganSSPM.org.

Today, the burden of our time together today, just so you know, is not to fix Sabbath school.

Now that's the burden of our time this week, but today we want to just do a little diagnosis, right, and try to get an understanding of where we are and how did we get here, a little bit, okay?

Councils on Sabbath School Work, page 115.

The abbreviation for that, if you're ever looking up in the yellow white app of the CD-ROM is CSW 115.

And I'll make a little plug right here for that resource.

If you've never read Councils on Sabbath School work, you are derelict in your duty.

I'm saying this needs to be a prerequisite of anyone who works in Sabbath schools to pick up a copy of that and go through it.

It's good, good material and we find this on this page 115.

The Sabbath school, if rightly conducted, is 1 of God's great instrumentalities to bring souls to a knowledge of the truth.

1 of God's great instrumentalities to bring souls to a knowledge of the truth.

But it does not say that the Sabbath school is that thing.

It says the Sabbath school and then it qualifies it saying the Sabbath school if, what was the phrase?

Which implies, anytime you have an adjective rightly, or if there's a true something, that means there's also the potential of a false something, right?

If there's a rightly, it means there could be a wrongly.

So it does not mean just if you have Sabbath school, you're welcome to come in if you want, just closing the door for sound, come on in, that any old Sabbath school is just going to be great.

I think that we are living in a time when we see some Sabbath schools that are poorly or wrongly conducted.

But the goal is to have Sabbath school rightly conducted.

It is 1 of God's great instrumentalities to bring souls to a knowledge of the truth.

Now, currently, in our day today, in many parts of the world field, now we'll pause right here.

When I say the world field, and I don't want to talk down to anyone, but I'm always a little bit flummoxed at how many lay people don't conceive of the structure of the Seventh Diabonist Church.

So for instance, you understand that the local church is the most basic, close to the ground, constituent body, right?

Now that has a relationship to other churches called the Sisterhood of Churches in a conference, yes?

Okay, and then those conferences, like for instance, everyone here has a local church in Michigan except for our, you know, our Alaskans and Ohioans and Virginia, but you have local churches there too, but here in the Michigan Conference, all the church brother Michigan Conference of Seventh Adventist, which I'm always have to say was the first conference in the world church.

You know that, but we have to say it every year.

But even having a general conference, like look at that Michigan conference.

Imagine if other states had conferences and all those joined together to make a general conference.

But as it currently stands, you have local church, then you have the local conference, and then a group of conferences together is a union, right?

And all the unions together make up a division.

Divisions are not their own constituent bodies.

We do not have division constituency meetings.

There's no division constitution and bylaws.

ALIVE - Part 2

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for another day of life and just what beautiful, sunshiny weather outside.

But thank you that for these next few moments we can be inside together studying this important topic of the Sabbath school.

Help it to be a benefit, not just an enjoyment in the room, but help it to be practical for when we go back, we can have the right thoughts and the right ideas and new perspectives on how to revive this vital ministry that is the Sabbath School program.

I think it's probably a good time to start up.

I don't have a pin for you today, but if you have a pin, please just sign in.

And Yeah, I've never quite understood that.

And this is a good thing to kind of talk about this here because in a Sabbath school group I hope you take attendance.

And we're going to talk about that when we get to the format of small groups, but why that's an important thing.

But I do notice that for some reason, like we have these upcoming Jesus on prophecy meetings, and we've had Unlock Revelation and all the different public evangelism series that we've done, And invariably, every single time, and rightly so, we track our interests, right?

And not just a raw number, you want to have a name and a face and an address.

We want to know how many nights they came to what meet.

Like as soon as you preach the Sabbath and they're stopped coming, what does that, that's an indicator, like oh, we touched on a nerve there, something's got to go visit them, you know.

So we keep track of those kind of things and why do we keep track?

But it's because we care about them enough to track, right?

And what's astonishing to me, we have no problem with people we've never met before walking on a night number 1 and handing them a barcode and saying, hang on to this, we're going to count how many times you came.

We're up front about it, as we should be.

If you come this many times, you get a free Bible, or we're gonna have a free drawing.

We wanna encourage that good behavior, right?

Yet in the Sabbath school, and in the rest of the local church, as soon as someone becomes a member, all accountability is out the window.

What if we handed a barcode to every 1 of our members?

We're gonna count how many times you come to church.

But we have absolutely no problem straight-faced handing a barcode to a complete stranger saying we're gonna count how many times you come to church.

We hold our visitors to higher standards of accountability than we hold ourselves.

Also, this is a little soapbox, and it's not on our topic for today, but it just got my mind going because we're passing around this thing.

But I would love to see, again, we should save this for tomorrow, but there should be some accountability, not for the sake of like, I'm checking up on you, see if you're not, but it's a benefit and a blessing to those people to be missed if something happens, right?

We'll save that discussion for Thursday, okay?

It's an important 1 but we could go too long and we got to get to our Bible studies.

Okay, now as I mentioned I do have a handout for you today.

If you want the full color copy, you go, well, I don't know, because I know that we're gonna run out.

If someone wants to stick around afterward and if you don't get 1, here we can just start these up somewhere, I don't know, and then if someone doesn't get 1, come see me afterwards, we'll run down to the copy machine and we'll make you another 1, okay?

So it's totally available, you just may not have it in the room today.

This whole week is about the whole Sabbath school program.

Today we're talking about Bible study and prayer, that Bible study class time, okay?

So all of it is in there, but we're specifically looking at the teaching of the Sabbath school lesson time, that thing.

Now, let's take out, if you don't have your Bibles, I've got some texts in there.

Why is, like for instance, remember our history lesson yesterday?

What was the very, who was the very first person to write a Sabbath school lesson?

Now it was particularly suited, he was aiming for what demographic when he was writing?

But for children and adults, it became the study guide.

But why is it important for children and adults to have a Bible study?

It makes, if we ask you, why do you have an evangelistic campaign?

You're like, so I can learn the truths, right?

But why is it important to have an ongoing study once you already know the truth?

There's spiritual growth, there's continued growth, you're still learning.

I wanted to show you passage here in Acts chapter 2 that kind of need that we need to revive in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Acts chapter 2, And it's just a really short discussion here, but I will say this.

I believe the Seventh-day Adventist Church needs to be more Pentecostal.

Now pause before you get all hyped up and start speaking in tongues on me, let's see what we mean by that.

For instance, when I say the term Pentecostal today, what images conjure up?

Speaking in tongues, rolling the floor, loud music, you know, big hand-waving kind of maybe faith healing, you know, be healed.

Every Sunday morning there was that kind of stuff on the TV, you know.

But when you look at the Acts chapter 2, when you look at the day of Pentecost, for instance, how much music was involved in the day of Pentecost according to scripture?

Now that's not to say they didn't sing some songs at all but clearly was it the big driving demonstrative thing that made everyone change?

No, didn't even make it in the Bible at all.

Now, the gift of healing is legitimate if the Lord wants to raise up the sick, praise the Lord, we should ask for that, but was big faith healing crowd?

How about speaking in unintelligible tongues?

In fact, the Bible goes out of its way, even though it says the gift of tongues, it lists out the languages that were spoken and they said they were confused, not because they couldn't understand, but because they could understand.

ALIVE - Part 4

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this Another Day at Camp meeting.

Thank you for these people in this room and those who might be listening that we want to do the work of Sabbath school well.

Help us to appreciate and understand the unique ministry that you've given to us and help us to lead it as your Holy Spirit leads us.

If we want to start passing those around, we'll maybe start a pile here, maybe start a pile over here, and while you're doing that, we'll briefly review what brings us to this point today.

Our 5 days here in the Sabbath School Alive seminar have covered distinct elements of the Sabbath School.

First of all, we looked at our overview, you know, the Sabbath School diagnosis, because the title Sabbath school alive implies that Sabbath school might be, well maybe not dead, but at least dying or ailing, right?

Okay, and that's what we covered on day number 1.

Day number 2, we began the section on the 3 distinctive features of Sabbath school.

What is the foundation of Sabbath school?

Now, a lot of Sabbath schools have made it just about that, but there's more to the Sabbath school than just the Bible study lesson class, right?

It's the 3 angels' message given to the whole world.

So you cannot appreciate the message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and somehow neglect to talk about the giving of this gospel to the world.

So our foundation is Bible study and prayer.

And the third distinctive feature of the Sabbath school class or Sabbath school program is its format of small group fellowship.

Each of these things is found uniquely, almost exclusively, in the Sabbath school class where you're not going to find it during the worship service.

You won't find it in the evangelistic outreach.

You won't find it in the board and business meetings.

Even the prayer meeting has its focus on prayer, which is distinct from the other things, right?

All of these things should be appreciated and built up as indispensable vital elements that drive people to appreciation of Sabbath school.

And then we'll end tomorrow with what I've been calling potpourri, but I think I'm going to title it, My Sabbath School is Dying.

You know, basically very practical things.

Let's talk about some issues that you might be facing.

The format of Sabbath School, which is that small group fellowship.

And for this, if you have your Bibles, you will need to do a little Bible study.

As you're taking your Bibles out, you're gonna go to Exodus chapter 18, but let me preface it by saying the idea of small groups is nothing new.

I don't know how it is that every church thinks that, oh, we got this brand new novel concept.

Friends, small groups have been around ever since God has had a people.

And to get the context of Exodus chapter 18, you recall of course that in Exodus chapter 12, God led the children of Israel out of the land of bondage miraculously through the Red Sea and it starts moving on towards the promised land.

And of course in Exodus chapter 19, they arrive at the foot of Mount Sinai, so that in Exodus chapter 20, the Lord can give the 10 Commandments.

Exodus chapter 25, He gives the instruction for the sanctuary, and basically the rest of the book is building the sanctuary and going en route to the Promised Land, right?

But before they get to Mount Sinai, before they get to the 10 Commandments, the giving of the law, and the instructions about the sanctuary, and all those structural things, all those big principle things, a fascinating thing is included.

This great group of people goes to Moses' father-in-law's house to camp for the night.

And it says in verse 13, and so it was on the next day that Moses set to judge the people and the people stood before Moses for morning until evening." Now the, I have a whole sermon about this, I'll just kind of hit a few highlights here, but have anybody had the privilege of going to the Secretary of State's Office?

All right, you know about standing in line.

And you, after into that hours and hours experience, do you feel refreshed and reinvigorated?

No, you feel exhausted and drained, even though you've been doing no mental taxing, no physical labor, or anything like that.

I'd far more rather sweat than have to be stuck.

You go through the line, in fact that last time I went to the Secretary of State's office, they had a line to get a number to get you into the next line, right?

They have now stacked lines upon lines, right?

Now, verse 14, Now look at Moses' response.

He's a very sincere, he doesn't say like, well I'm the greatest, they have to come to me.

And Moses said to his father, because the people come to me to inquire of God.

They come to me to ask me things about God.

When they have a difficulty, they come to me and I judge between 1 and another.

And I make known the statutes of God and His laws.

So I help them settle their conflicts, sort things out and I teach them the law of God." He is essentially acting as their pastor.

Which is exactly what we expect from our pastors today.

Verse 17, So Mother and Father-in-law said to him, The thing that you do is not good.

But somehow, if it wasn't bad, but it was still not good.

Well, verse 18 says, these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out.

You're not able to perform it by yourself.

Listen out of my voice and I will give you counsel and God will be with you.

Stand before God for the people so that you may bring the difficulties to God." And now notice verse 20 and please, if you can, compare it to verse 16.

What did Moses say were the 2 things he was doing for the people?

I make known the statutes of God and His law.

So I settle difficulties and I make known statutes and laws.

You shall teach him the statutes and the laws.

ALIVE - Part 5

Heavenly Father, thank you for this beautiful, sunshiny day.

Thank you that we can be together to study and discuss the important topic of Sabbath school.

Please, Lord, help it not just to be an interesting conversation and a warm discussion, but Lord, help it to be practical and applicable to our local situations, our local church families.

Lord, we need Sabbath School by the power of your Holy Spirit to come alive again and be the heartbeat of the church.

Please, Lord, help us to use what you've given us, not to reinvent the wheel, but to drive the car you've already built.

I was debating calling this Sabbath School FAQ, like Frequently Asked Questions.

I don't know exactly, we mentioned potpourri earlier, but this is not like the other ones, 1 topic and we're gonna follow it all the way through the end.

This is a list of several different things that might touch on something you're thinking about or have questions about and it is by no means exhaustive.

This is just stuff that came out of my head.

There's stuff that's in your head that I don't know yet.

I would love to save a little time, we'll see how that goes, for some conversation and so you can tell me some of the questions you might have or some of the experiences that are either positive or negative, but I do not want to open the floor to a rant session about how this is terrible and this is blah blah blah blah, but if you have a good idea succinctly stated or 1 particular question you'd like to see addressed, we can collect those so we can address them in further times.

The mission program would be the first part of Sabbath school, okay?

And it would be basically a quick welcome, song and announcement, right?

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Series

Sabbath School: ALIVE

ALIVE - Part 4

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sabbath School

The Life of Sabbath School

58m

The Cure for the Common Sabbath School

01 Whatever Happened to Sabbath School

58m

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sabbath School

The Death of Sabbath School

1h 2m

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2020: Making Friends for God

10-An Exciting Way to Get Involved

29m

The Cure for the Common Sabbath School

03 How to Prepare an Engaging Sabbath School Study

1h 1m

Adult Sabbath School: You're Teaching More than a Lesson

Adult Sabbath School: You’re Teaching More than a Lesson - Part 1

1h 5m

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sabbath School

The Resurrection of the Sabbath School

1h 1m

Sabbath School: ALIVE

ALIVE - Part 1

49m

Youth & Young Adult Sabbath School Planning

Youth & Young Adult Sabbath School Planning - Part 2

52m

A Ministry for This Time

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine