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

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 1

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 2

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 1

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 2

Current Issues Facing Local Churches & Their Leaders

Father in heaven, we pray that you'll be with us today, that you will guide our class through the working of your Holy Spirit.

We want to do your work, we want to do it to the best of our ability, and I pray that you will direct what we do here so that it helps us to be able to serve you better.

Okay, well, we're going to talk today about the nuts and bolts of deacon and deaconess work, and we want to identify what some of those responsibilities are.

And I want to remind you again of what I said yesterday.

Please don't be overwhelmed by what I'm sharing.

Don't go back and turn in your resignation because you thought that all you had to do was prepare the communion bread if you're a deaconess once a quarter or if you're a deacon all you had to do is take up the offering on Sabbath morning and now you're finding out that the 1 thing you thought you had to do is 1 of about 40 different things that you have to do.

And they are going to add up real quick because some of them, even some of the things that I'm sharing with you, has got a lot of responsibility with it.

Realize that this is something that we can grow into.

If you've never done any of these things before, you may say, I don't know how to do that.

Now I also know that pastors have a tendency to say, I can't keep up with what I'm doing, let alone take time to train leaders in the church.

My answer to them as the ministerial director is you cannot afford not to change your schedule and teach your leaders how to lead.

Because as soon as you do and get them leading, you'll find you'll have more time to do the things that are really important to do.

So at any rate, that's what we're going to be looking at today.

Let's talk about some of those responsibilities, because there are many in order for the church to function the way the Lord wants it to function.

It includes your involvement in the worship service.

And we don't often think of deaconess and deaconesses involved in Sabbath school.

This doesn't mean that during Sabbath school, a deacon or a deaconess is back counting the money or planning for what they're going to do for church service.

This means being involved in Sabbath school, and we're going to talk a little bit about what that involvement is.

This 1 almost every deacon and deaconess knows about, the communion service, what they're expected to do is there.

We'll talk a little bit more about that just to give some further picture of that.

Baptism, that 1 is also fairly well known because when those events take place, the first people that are called are the deacons and the deaconesses when it comes to the baptismal service.

Funerals, sometimes not as well known, but usually churches understand that they have a role to play when a funeral service comes along, especially if it happens to be at the church and not somewhere else.

And it's very common today for a funeral service to take place at the church or if not at the church, at a funeral home and then people coming to the church afterwards for a dinner or something like that.

So deacons and deaconesses know that they might be called upon to be able to do that.

Now those of you in smaller churches, the good news is that usually when those things happen it's not overwhelming.

But I know that There was a funeral recently at the Lansing Church when a little boy drowned, and very sad situation, but the church rallied around and the deaconesses were providing not only food for the funeral dinner, but also for the family as they were going through the recovery process before the funeral and even preparing for it and all.

There was a lot of ministry taking place and very important and key time in events like that.

Caring for the sick and the poor, this is 1 that's not always on a deacon and deaconesses radar today, but clearly is a responsibility for both from biblical background, as well as the spirit of prophecy and the church manual and the handbook for deacons and deaconesses makes this very clear.

This has been out there, but over, I'd say, the last 50 years or so, it slowly has faded away.

Just like Sabbath school is kind of faded into the background, personal ministries used to have a personal ministries time in front of the church every Sabbath morning and that's kind of faded away, though it's making a comeback.

Those kinds of things, this has kind of faded away in the thinking of pastors, deacons and deaconesses, and elders.

But I personally am anxious to see it come back with strength because it will impact your church in ways that you might at first not imagine.

Another 1 that is very well known is caring for church resources.

That includes taking up the offering, perhaps counting the offering.

That means working through various aspects of the church facilities and caring for those resources.

But the most important resource that a church has are the members of the church.

And we sometimes forget that our church is not just a building, it is the people that make up the church family.

And here's another 1 that's also gotten off the radar, and that is the teaching of God's Word.

When you look at Acts chapter 6, it's very clear and the passages that follow that the deacons were very much involved in sharing the Word of God.

Not always in a very public way, but sometimes in a very public way.

Public way as in preaching an evangelistic meeting.

I would say that what Stephen did was pretty public and in his circumstances, but then there was Philip, and we see Philip going and having a one-on-one Bible study with the Ethiopian, don't we?

The fact that he was taken away miraculously and all of that, We may not always get that, but you know we have divine appointments today that are every bit as miraculous as the experience that Philip had.

Maybe not transported from 1 place to another miraculously, but the contact is just as miraculous.

He puts people in connection with each other, and God has ways of doing that.

So let's put this all into a broad perspective and then talk about some of the specifics.

Deacons and Deaconesses are assistants to the pastors and to the elders.

They are complementing the work of those leaders.

If a pastor's running around all over the place, my wife came across a video here and she was showing it to me this morning.

The pastor's on the phone, he's vacuuming the church, he's, I don't know if he was fixing communion bread, and he was doing several other things all at the same moment.

I really should have brought that in here.

My mind just didn't click in at that moment.

That's not what's supposed to be happening out there.

The pastor is supposed to have a specific focus, and I don't mean specific as in so specific that he only does 1 thing a week.

The pastor needs to be providing the spiritual guidance for the church or churches, which most of you have.

The pastor has more than 1 church and needs to be providing that leadership, the spiritual mentorship and working with the other leaders of the church and the elders in doing that work.

You know, folks, I want to say this and I want to say it kindly.

Many of our pastors have 2 and many have 3.

If you stop and add up the number of members that are represented by those 3 churches, Typically when a pastor has 3 churches, each of those churches is somewhere around 50 members.

And if it's not 50 members on the book, it's no more than 50 people coming to church on Sabbath morning.

In some cases, it's more like 10, 15, or 20 in each 1 of those churches.

Now, let's just for argument's sake right now, on an average, every 1 of those 3 churches has 50 members.

And every 1 of those 3 churches has 25 to 30 people coming to church on Sabbath morning.

You do the math on that, that means that pastor is pastor for 150 members, correct?

The members that are actively involved in the church and coming to church are probably somewhere about 1 half of that, which means 75.

How long should it take a pastor to visit 75 members in a given year?

Now think about it, they are families, right?

So it's not just individuals, in some cases it is, but in some cases it's families.

So 75 visits in a year, is that possible for a pastor to be able to make that at least 1 time?

If it's families, you take that and reduce it more, it's more like 40, 45, 50 families for that pastor to visit.

Now, the reason I'm making this point is, how can a pastor who has 150 members be overwhelmed when some pastors have 1 church of 400 members.

So what is it that's keeping that pastor busy if it's not doing the outreach and those kinds of things that are going on?

And trust me, there's enough to do in pastoral ministry.

What I'm saying is, if we all work together, the pastor could be really focusing in on the important issues.

It does include visiting, but not visiting every week, the same people.

He doesn't have to visit every member of the church once a week, not even once a month.

It might be good to do it once a quarter, if that is reasonable, but there's so much else that needs to be done in advancing the gospel.

I'm just saying, sometimes our pastors are overwhelmed because they are getting bogged down with a little minutia in the local church just to keep it running, where that's where you as deacons and deaconesses come in and preventing that from happening.

That's why I want to remind you, your assistance to the pastor and to the elders in making sure that the work of the church is functioning the way it does.

The pastor should not be getting a call saying that the toilets are plugged and they need to be unplugged.

And the pastor shouldn't have to be worrying about it.

Series

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training - Part 2

1h 16m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 5 - Mining the Manual

1h 16m

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training- Part 1

1h 12m

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

1h 16m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training- Part 1

1h 11m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

1h 8m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training - Part 1

1h 6m

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

1h 6m

Financing Yourself

Financing Yourself- Part 3

1h 11m

Back to Christ’s Original Design

56m

Ignite Your Local Church for Mission

Mission of Attendance and Involvement

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine