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Grand Rapids SDA Church

Richard Reinstra

All’s I Ever Wanted Was a Doughnut

When Pastor Stewart first came to Central to meet with the elders and our wives, he mentioned that he would like the elders to preach from time to time.

Surprisingly enough, despite those wishes, he is now our pastor.

Then at 1 of our elders meetings, he gave us elders some potential dates for preaching.

Now I'm thinking this is not how you get elders to attend elders' meetings.

Then he sends out an email with this included.

I am scheduled to preach at Lowell on the 9th of May, so if any of you would be willing to preach at Central that Sabbath, it would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I had a hard time opening this email up, so I had to send it to work and read it there, think about it, and then reply.

But I replied with, Pastor, after shuffling this around with other computers, I was finally able to open it.

I'm sure someone has already volunteered for preaching on the 9th, so I'll look forward to doing a sermon in the future.

Much to my surprise, I received the reply, actually, no 1 has.

Well, Jackie is very much interested in this dialogue because apparently I become stressed over preparing for such things as this.

So despite my own procrastination, my own doubts, my family's reservation, here am I.

I really believe that God has given me this message for you and for me today.

I do take this opportunity extremely serious.

I am humbled at my lack of ability to give this subject its due place and importance in our lives.

President Kennedy once quoted a supposed Chinese curse.

In the light of the times we are living, with the storm clouds of the end of times on the horizon, we do in fact live in very interesting times.

John 9.4, I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day.

He calleth to me out of sire, Watchman, what of the night?

The watchman said, the morning cometh, but also the night.

When I was telling a friend of mine that I was going to be giving the sermon, he said that when I was giving the sermon, he will be taking his son to the Air Force base for deployment to where He does not know.

My friend has said to tell you, take advantage of the time that you have.

He said to me, give this message a sense of urgency.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank You for the promise of sending Your Holy Spirit to us if we ask.

We ask that You prepare our hearts now for the receiving of Your Word.

When I began thinking about giving this sermon, I had no idea that it would fall on Mother's Day.

Now I really don't know nothing about the first, But I know something about the second being a parent.

What is my greatest desire for my children?

Phil say, you can keep your mansion, you can keep your crown, please let me have my children in heaven.

From why our teenagers are leaving the church by Roger Dudley, as a baptized Adventist since my mid-teens, There's a 50% chance that I'll drop out of the church completely by the time I'm 25.

1 in every 5 Adventist churches in North America doesn't have a single child or a teenager, much less anyone my age, early 20's.

In fact, the median age in these churches is nearly 60.

That's 20 years older than the average American.

Allen Martin Ministry International Journal for Pastors, July 2008.

If a young person is looking for a new church, they tend to only visit 3 times before they decide if it is needing their needs.

If not, they will go elsewhere or nowhere.

This is according to Ron Whitehead at the Center of Youth Evangelism.

This is not just happening in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In a recent article about the coming evangelical collapse from the Christian Science Monitor, we are on the verge within 10 years of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity.

Their point number 2 was, we evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught.

Ironically, the billions of dollars we spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it.

Our young people have deep beliefs in the culture war, but do not know why they should obey Scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community.

Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

Point number 6 in the article says, even in areas where evangelicals imagine themselves strong, like the Bible Belt, we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of faith.

Family Life Council says it's time to bring family back to life, 2002.

In the course of researching family life in America, the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life uncovered such gut-wrenching statistics that they were driven to their knees.

Among the facts they found, 88% of the children raised in evangelical homes leave the church at the age of 18, never to return.

Approximately 2 thirds of the members of the Southern Baptist Churches attend church only sporadically.

The majority of children in America have less than 10 minutes of significant and meaningful conversation with their parents each week.

If you remove the mother, you can measure this statistic in seconds.

A new study from LifeWay Research reveals that more than two-thirds of the young adults who attend a Protestant church for at least a year in high school, will stop attending church regularly for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22.

College has become a spiritual graveyard for many Christian students, a place where they wander from their faith.

Students coming from the Assemblies of God are no exception.

As many as 66% of our youth leading up to and shortly after high school graduation turn their backs on Christ and their faith.

Culture shock, loneliness, a party environment, and peer pressure result in students leaving their family foundations when on their own.

Researcher George Barna maintains that if current trends in the belief systems and practices of the younger generation continue, in 10 years, attendance will be half the size it is today.

Dawson McAllister, National Youth Ministry Specialist, remarked that 90% of the youth active in high school church programs drop out of the church by the time they are in sophomores in college.

In a book called The Great Controversy, 1911, the chapter entitled Modern revivals comes the following quote, popular revivals are too often carried by appeals to the imagination, by exciting the emotions, by gratifying the love for what is new and startling.

Converts thus gained have little desire to listen to the Bible truth, little interest in the testimony of the prophets and apostles.

Unless a religious service has something of a sensational character, it has no attraction for them.

A message which appeals to unimpassioned reason awakens no response.

The plain warnings of God's Word relating directly to the eternal interests are unheeded.

With every truly converted soul, the relation to God and to eternal things will be the great topic of life.

But where in the popular churches of today is the spirit of consecration to God?

The converts do not renounce their pride and love of the world.

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All’s I Ever Wanted Was a Doughnut

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