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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points: Advent HOPE Sabbath School Training Series

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

02 Preparing to Teach Sabbath School

It's good to be here again in the beautiful Loma Linda area here with Admin Hope And we have our second of several, as it was mentioned.

My wife, I talked to my wife just before we started tonight and she was telling me about the snowstorm.

It's hard not to bring that up when we're from Michigan.

But the Lord has got blessings for everyone.

I'm not trying to gloat, I'm just saying.

And we're, anyway, we are at another presentation here tonight about Sabbath school, bringing Sabbath school to life and all the different ways that Sabbath school can be a blessing individually and collectively in the local church.

Well, and we had said last night that we also are wanting this, you know, if you're watching and you're like, well, I'm not involved in Sabbath school, I don't teach Sabbath school, don't think it's not going to be very applicable for you as well.

What we're talking about tonight really is how to get more out of studying the Scripture.

Well, and we've got a lot to cover, but before we do that we should probably begin with a word of prayer and then we'll jump into our conversation.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for yet another opportunity to talk about this important ministry of Sabbath School.

And Lord, tonight is our specific area of focus will be the Sabbath School lesson study, actually the Sabbath School Bible study that the lesson is built to help us do.

Help us to know how to get the most out of our own personal and our corporate reading of Scripture and study of your Word.

I want to say something as we're starting tonight.

Yeah, well, you know, it's 1 of the reasons that we really were looking forward to coming out here and doing this is we've talked about doing a, at least an additional segment for Talking Points each quarter where we fill in some gaps of things, you know, because we do Talking Points there are things that we discuss and we're like, oh cut that out and then we always afterwards and this happened last night afterwards Cameron's like I don't know if that went really well and we always do that with it.

I wanted this to be more like, you know, not as much a production.

Like, here it is, and here's our 30 minutes, and we're polished, and oh, cut that out, because you're getting everything here that isn't maybe ideal, the pounding on the table, which we're going to try to approach.

But it's a lot of the discussion that we have in the interaction is how we prepare for talking points.

And so you're just maybe getting a little more of the real.

Well, let's talk tonight about Sabbath School.

Almost when you say the term Sabbath School, it comes across to a lot of people as an antiquitous term itself.

It's old fashioned, it's a generation, it's not now, right?

And Sabbath school attendance is essentially, at least in our North American context, probably at an all-time low, if we're being honest, looking at the landscape.

Now, to be clear, there's 2 things I want to mitigate that with.

I'd like to add, As you explain that, you did something when you were in at least in the Kalamazoo Church, where you had your attendance.

Well, let me give you a little background about that.

We sometimes in ministry have a joke about like, like if someone says, can I have 5 more minutes?

And then somebody say, is that prophetic?

Cause they mean they're going to go over 5 minutes.

Or if someone's going to, you know, doing it, how many were there?

And they're like, well, is that evangelistic numbers?

When that really means 10, you know, and we joke about that sometimes, but the same thing happens like when I was in the, well you already outed it when I'm using the word Kalamazoo, I usually say it's, I won't name the church, but it starts with a K and ends with a Kalamazoo, but the point being, at the most recent church that I pastored, there was on the books, I think the number was 390 or 370ish, upper 300s, right?

And as a pastor, if somebody asks you, hey, what size church do you pastor?

Right, kind of rounded up evangelistically.

But the reality is you look around the church and it didn't take long at all to realize we might have almost 400 other books, but we've got nowhere near that many in the pews, right?

And so we started doing a thing about taking attendance.

Now we weren't doing it by the people's names, we weren't counting the front of their faces, but just at the back of the heads, how many people are actually there in attendance on the Sabbath morning.

And so we asked the deacons to start keeping a running track of that.

And what was interesting is, We did this for weeks or months at a time.

You can start to see trend lines develop, but an average pretty much came out that we had on an average attendance at the worship service about a hundred and 60.

Now, and I hate to say it, but that is very typical.

Book membership and attending membership and that's the worship service.

Then you start learning like if we're going to take, we want to make sure we get the most, squeeze the most out of that attendance as possible.

So we learn not to take attendance at, you know, even 11, even 11 o'clock.

The few minutes right before the sermon starts is peak attendance.

And as that deacons deploy, counting the numbers here.

But if we did it at announcement time in the morning, you'd miss a certain section of that.

And so, and I wanted to communicate to people why we have this many people in the books, we only have this many people in the pews, and how do we do that?

So I started actually posting, just like we do with tithe dollars and offering giving and whatnot, you have a thermometer for a fundraiser or something, everybody knows what our status is, why don't we do that with people too?

And just say how many people actually came to church last week and started putting the bullets in like last week's attendance was such-and-such.

But then it dawned on me that attendance at the sermon time is not necessarily representative of all the church life and there's this whole other thing happens it's equal time by the way most if not all Seventh-day Adventist churches have 2 elements to the Sabbath day the community worship time addition to the worship service itself which you know on average is going to be you know the 11:00 service let's say And then you have the Sabbath school, which is, say, 930.

So between 930 and 1230, you have 3 hours, and exactly half of that is Sabbath school, and the other half of that is the worship service.

Except Most people only attend the worship service, and only then, they only attend the last half of the worship service.

Only gonna be a quarter of what's actually offered all Sabbath morning long.

So we started taking attendance during Sabbath school.

And wouldn't you believe that when we started taking attendance during Sabbath school, it was significantly lower than that in the worship service.

To the tune of, say, I think it was about 90 or so.

And that was all the kids' classes and all the various lessons, studies, all around.

And I said, What can we do to get the word out?

We started printing in the Sabbath bulletins.

And then we went the ultimate route and said, you know, there's this other thing that we're told is, you know, the prayer meeting is like breath through the soul and it's the heart of the church And the true, what is the phrase she says that the real attendance, the real participation of the church when we see them in prayer meetings.

Prayer meetings is the pulses to the body.

Folks in Loma Linda can understand that 1.

So yeah, a good medical reference, that's good.

And so, started taking prayer meeting attendance, and that I think shook out to usually around 13, 15 or so.

And then the question is, yeah, how many people go to your church?

So Sabbath school used to be in the Seventh-Diavolus Church not in a terribly long ago and even right here in North America, it used to be the big thing that would be, it was the central part, it was the heartbeat of the church.

There was a time, I think in the 19, it transitioned around the 1930s to 50s-ish, where church service, the worship service would catch up and actually eclipsed the Seventh-Diavonist Church.

03 Avoiding the Sacrifice of Fools

Well, thank you so much and good evening everyone.

This is our Talking Points live Sabbath school training here in Loma Linda, California.

And tonight we were actually gonna, I heard mention of the upcoming date tomorrow.

We're actually, we've been doing each night at 7 p.m.

But tomorrow We have 4 different, if I'm not mistaken, presentations of the day.

We have Sabbath school in the morning time at 9 a.m., followed by a continued expansion of our Sabbath school training at 10 a.m.

Then there's the afternoon, which I should have the schedule right in front of me.

And anyway, it's a full days of events and we're gonna have Q&A, we're gonna have training time, we're gonna have preaching and Sabbath school lesson cover.

There's just a lot of stuff, you don't wanna miss it.

So join us live and in person tomorrow morning at regular Advent Hope time and place, but we're gonna continue our Sabbath school training then.

This evening, however, Brother Mark, Yes.

We have a fun feature to introduce tonight's discussion.

It's particularly suited for the scholars, right?

They're in classes and they like to have tests and exams and quizzes, right?

It's not really that complicated of a quiz.

But it is a quiz and I'm excited to get into the quiz tonight.

In fact I was fidgeting around there because what I was trying to do is you were commenting about the Balmy.

And somebody had sent me a picture of back in Michigan and I was trying to get it over to Ryan to maybe post it.

They may be like, you know, hey, that'd be, of course, here you want snow, you just drive up into the mountains.

In Michigan, you just got it whether you like it or not.

Heavenly Father, we are thankful, especially for the hours of the Sabbath.

And Lord, as we are having this time together this evening, to reflect upon your will and your word, We pray your Holy Spirit would guide us, not just this evening, Lord, but throughout the entire Sabbath day.

We pray that it would be, I don't wanna say that it would be the means, you've designed it to be the means of drawing us closer to yourself.

I just pray that you would help us to experience what it is you've intended for us in the Sabbath hours.

Bless us to this end, for we ask and pray it in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

In fact, you'll catch on after the first question.

And I thought about this, Cameron, and I was thinking, you know, I'm sure there's an ornithologist out there's like well technically it's not a technical answer so I'm gonna give you the first answer and it'll help you into the next 1 what kind of bird doesn't fly a jailbird that's what kind of bird doesn't fly okay okay now you have that 1 the next question question number 2 is what kind of dog doesn't bark?

So isn't that, isn't that, now here's the 1, here's the 1, here's the 1 that I really want you to focus in on.

Tonight we're talking about how to teach Sabbath school effectively and the- Well, maybe if people were just joining us they should know, remind where we've come from.

The first night we just talked about talking points at all, like our ministry in the Sabbath School Department, why Michigan Conference even has the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department the way that it does and how we came to be part of it.

And then we looked last evening at how to prepare for a Sabbath school lesson.

Whether you're just a member of the class or especially if you're the teacher of the class, how to study and get the most out of the lesson, which of course the ultimate lesson is the Bible itself, and how to really prepare for the study.

But now tonight we're transitioning to the in the class, live realm.

What do you do in the room on the day, especially if you're a teacher?

So we're taking a lot of what we talked about last night in lesson preparation and preparing the lesson is not merely the same as teaching it.

And this is where the rubber meets the road.

Not just for the teachers, but for the students.

I'd like you, if you're following along with us, to turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes 5.

Now I'm gonna read a passage here, and I'm gonna tell you that the first time I read this, I don't wanna say the first time I ever read it, but I read this a few years back, and when I read it, it doesn't say Sabbath school in here, But the very first thing that came to my mind was, this is adult Sabbath school.

And you'll see what I mean in just a minute.

Ecclesiastes 5, starting in verse 1, the Bible says, Walk prudently when you go to the house of God and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools for they do not know that they do evil.

So right off, let's just get clear the setting.

The wise man is telling us that we need to walk prudently when we go to the house of God.

Okay, so when we go to church I want you to notice what the scripture says here.

What does he tell us right there in verse 1 that the purpose is?

Draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools.

Okay, so now there's a contrast being drawn here.

The sacrifice of fools is going to take us a few verses there, but I want you to notice the thing that he says we are coming to the house of God and drawing near for is to hear.

Now, verse 2, he says, do not be rash with your mouth and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God.

You know, just don't be spouting off stuff that you haven't given a lot of thought to.

Therefore let your words be few, for a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words now It doesn't take a lot as you process through that to realize that when Solomon says the sacrifice of fools in verse 1 he's talking about doing a lot of talking instead of doing a lot of listening.

He said, when you come to the house of the Lord, you're not going there to do a lot of talking.

You're going there to learn and to listen.

And when I read this, as I said, a few years ago, it hit me as I went through this passage.

Like, this is Sabbath school class in so many places.

01 The Birth of Talking Points

My name is Cameron DeBasier and I happen to be the director of the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department of the Michigan Conference.

And I'm Mark Howard And this is talking about talking points.

Yes, we're not actually doing a talking points right now, but we're gonna be talking about talking points and what really that is and kind of the background of it.

And I'm guessing, Mark, there's a lot of people don't even know what talking points is or what it is we're talking about right now.

So what we're gonna do tonight is kind of pan back a little bit and give you an overview.

And before we dive into specifics about the importance of Sabbath school and ways Sabbath school can help you benefit your local church and your own personal life and all those kind of things.

Tonight we're just gonna talk about where we come in connection with Sabbath School and our own personal, you know, what brings us here.

Father in heaven, we are just so thankful for the many blessings that you show upon us, Lord, all of which we are undeserving.

We pray, Lord, that you would bless our time now, this evening, and throughout this week and this weekend.

We pray that it will be time that would help to draw us closer to you, would help us to glorify You more in our daily lives and would enrich our walk with You in every way, Father.

Thank You for hearing and answering for we ask and pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

So maybe we should say a little bit as we're leading into, for those who don't know what Talking Points is, it's...

And as Ryan had mentioned, we both work for the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department of the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

And so what we want to start with is to tell you how we got into the positions we're in, a little bit of our backstory, and what that is.

Some of you may be like, what in the world does the Sabbath School of Personal Ministries Department do?

Yeah, which is a fair question because there's a lot of conferences who don't have a Sabbath School of Personal Mysteries department, or at least the way it's arranged, like we have it in Michigan, and I really believe the Lord is in what's happening with Michigan and the General Conference, they have a Sabbath School of Personal Mysteries department, but why is it that way, and how do we have any part of that?

And that's kind of our burden, at least for the beginning here this evening.

I'll go first and then you'll know how with the mic.

I kind of conceptualize this part of the backstory personally, Because I want you viewers to know how we got involved, not just in our position in the conference office, but in ministry.

Because I think it will help you to realize that no matter where you're coming from, God can use you in ministry.

As for myself, I was raised in a Seventh-day Adventist home.

My mom and dad were first generation Seventh-day Adventists.

They became Seventh-day Adventists through personal Bible studies.

They didn't go to evangelistic meeting or something, so they had a couple of young friends that met with them and gave the Bible studies, and they became Seventh-day Adventists shortly before I was born.

My mother and father then divorced when I was about 6 years old and I lived with my mother and that's significant because as my father stayed in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, my mother left the church about the time I was 14 until I was about 26 years old.

And so as much as I grew up knowing things about the Adventist church, I was never baptized.

I married a girl who was not a Christian and that we're still married and we're both Christian.

But I mean, so we went through that experience before I was 26 years old and through a series of events, as a jet flying overhead, you don't get this every week on Talking Boys.

So anyway, my wife and I, after a series of events when I was about 26 and she was about 24.

The Lord converted us both, which I praise His name for because it doesn't always happen that way with husband and wife.

We were baptized together on the same day with my brother Jim.

And from that point on, I felt immediately like I ought to be telling people about this stuff that I'm learning, about Jesus, about the Bible, about prophecies.

And taking a long story and making it short, I looked at different avenues.

The time that I was in college, I was actually working as an electrician, I was taking night classes and I was majoring in computer programming and accounting and we were learning COBOL, if anybody remembers that back with computers.

Just going to smile and nod for you younger people.

Anyway, came in real handy around Y2K, but that's a whole other...

Anyway, but when I was converted, and I knew that that wasn't the path that I was gonna go on, I just wanted to find the quickest avenue to ministry.

And I looked at going and getting my religion degree, switching majors and what have you.

And I ended up going to a mission college to train to become a Bible worker.

And from there I became a bivocational pastor in Ohio, in the Ohio Conference, which meant I had a full time job and I worked on the side as a pastor and I did that for about 3 1⁄2 years.

And then from there I was called to ministry in the Michigan Conference as full-time pastor.

And that was 2003 and I've served there, well, I shouldn't say that.

In 2009 I was asked to direct their evangelism training school.

And so that's where I had my roots is in evangelism.

You're going to that training school when I first started.

And then from there I was asked to come into the conference office in the Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department.

And as you fill in your side of the story, there are a couple things I want to add into that, and then why that experience helps me or helps me.

Yeah, The only thing that's probably similar in our stories is that our parents, like my parents became Seventh Daven before me, like your parents did.

But the rest of our stories are widely different.

I like to joke that I'm the most Seventh Daven person ever.

Exactly, like 19th generation or something.

I'm actually only second generation, but my parents were both in their younger years, like teenage or 20s, whenever they converted and they stuck with the faith.

They got married to each other and had me.

And then, so I was born in an Adventist hospital, you know, to Adventist parents across the street from the church that they are still part of to this day, and went to Adventist schools all my life, never had the, you know, the family leave.

I didn't have a broken home, and none of those experiences...

We don't believe that doctrine, by the way.

Yeah, just clarify for whatever margin of it.

But the reality is I stayed either personally convicted or just culturally connected to the Seventh-day Adventist Church for my entire life.

And so I went through Adventist schools, elementary school, through Academy, went to college, and appropriately enough I got a degree in religious education, which is something I was very much steeped in.

And then I got a job working in an Adventist institution, Adventist school and church.

And I went actually to be a chaplain of a church, a boarding academy, which had a church on the campus.

So you're doing kind of double duty there.

You're the pastor of the church and you're also the Bible teacher and chaplain at the campus, which means you just work 7 days a week.

We both have had connection to academies, yes.

You were talking about you went to a mission college.

I went to an accredited denominational school, went through, I got my, what was my?