ASI 2010: Inspired to Finish Strong

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ASI 2010 Seminar: Evangelism

Brandon Westgate

Truth Be Told

Hey I'll tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna pray because I always find things go better when I pray.

So I'm gonna pray and I just ask the Lord to bless us and just be present with us.

If you guys want to bow your heads with me, we'll get started here.

Hey, Father, we just want to pause here on a beautiful afternoon and just thank you for your blessings, for your leading in our life, and I pray, Lord, that you would indeed send the Holy Spirit to tabernacle within us, that you might, Father, help us to be able to glean some things from our time together.

May it be time well spent and not just a wasted hour and a half.

We pray, Lord, also that you would just continue to guide us in our lives.

There's so many distractions out there trying to pull us away from you, trying to pull us away from time in the word and time on our knees.

And I pray, Lord, that we might, as your people, prioritize our life in such a way that we put you first.

Bless us as we're here with your guidance and with your love, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, my name is Brandon Westgate, and I am currently serving as youth director and camp director for the Arkansas Louisiana Conference.

Anybody here ever been involved in youth ministries?

I'll hold your hand up because I got something for you.

If you've ever been involved in youth ministries, you'll appreciate this.

Cameraman coming back there right at you.

I may give them away to a couple of volunteers in a minute.

It's fun working with youth, and youth has, they've really been a blessing for me, just being involved with the youth.

And so I'm gonna talk about youth just for a couple of minutes, and I wanna share a couple of things with you because some of this stuff is just too good to keep to yourself.

And I go around and I do week of prayers and I do special youth rally weekends around our conference and some of those things and it's just really a fun thing for me.

1 of the things I do during my week of prayers is I have them I do an ask the pastor day where they can ask me literally anything they want to ask me.

And I usually separate that into an everybody session and then I separate and make a PG-13 session because some of our young adults, tweens, our early teens, they've got questions that they're afraid to ask their teacher, they're afraid to ask mom and dad, they're afraid to ask even their pastor sometimes.

But after I spent a few days with them, I do this on Thursday, by the way, there's a trust that we build and a rapport we have with each other by then, and they're really able to ask me questions that are really serious about just all kinds of stuff.

Some of them are just kind of a gateway into what's going on in some of these kids' lives.

I thought I'd just share a couple of these with you.

How do you know that you're going to heaven or not?

Yeah, I answer these by the way right when they ask them.

It takes a couple hours sometimes, but it's worth it.

I have an addiction to something that I don't want to do, but I can't stop.

Do you think of, What do you think of witnessing to Muslims?

You never know what kids are thinking, huh?

Is having babies a gift from God because I think it's disgusting?

Question 2, why does having babies have to be so disgusting?

And question 3, something actually when we talked about this that 1 of her friends was dealing with, is it bad to get pregnant in your teens?

How can we get Satan to stop tempting us?

Where will Satan go when the world ends and why are women bossy?

I thought that was an interesting progression.

If you're sinning on the day Jesus comes, are you going to heaven?

You'll find different questions, I probably got 3 or 4 in here that are really kind of the same thing.

This was cute, how many animals are there?

Why do people that were raised as Christian from childhood do more wrong and tend to get away from God than people that found God older and had problems in their life?

That's a perception, I don't believe that that's true, but I think that's a perception that some people have.

Yeah, some of these are fun questions that they ask.

Who put it in your mind to become a Christian?

Why are there shows on TV about ghosts and they show that it's real?

And then the other side of that is why do bad things happen to good people?

Viriato Ferreira

Reaching Hearts in Secular Nations

Our Father, we gather in this room, in a world where there's so many, many people, many of them suffering like we cannot imagine.

And here we are, Lord, in this quiet place, this beautiful place, with family members, to learn more about You.

And I pray that it may be you talking this morning.

It won't be our thoughts, but just Lord, let us sit at your feet.

And may your Spirit speak to each person this morning, including my heart, Lord.

And may we leave this place refreshed, but more than that, closer to You.

A few years ago, quite a few years ago, I was at the Youth Congress.

I was about 15, 16, and I was getting ready to be an architect.

I loved art and beautiful buildings and all of that.

I was watching some slides on a mission spotlight or something like that at that youth congress.

And suddenly it was as if I was alone in that room where there were probably about a thousand people and I did not hear any voice but it was just an inner conviction, what are you doing?

When there are so many people in need of, I didn't even place words there, in need.

So at that moment, I had a conviction that I needed to switch courses, which I did.

I went home and I said, mom, dad, my grades are good.

So I told them, look, I'm quitting that and I want to be a missionary.

So they said, well, I said, look, maybe a doctor.

So they were happy, It was okay, comparable.

But, you know, they thought that pastors were people who didn't have anything else to do.

So I, very cautiously, I didn't mention that possibility because I knew that there would be a lot of opposition.

So then, but in my heart, it was either to be a minister or a pastor somewhere in Africa.

We had become Seventh-day Adventists at that stage.

We left because of the war and I wanted to go back to mission work.

I went to South Africa and I took medicine in Cape Town and the purpose was to go to the mission field.

And then I met Marianne Wright at that time and we loved each other and she was also at medical school training to be a doctor and everything we did was to go to the mission field.

I thought, well, somebody has to put the people to sleep.

So I never wanted to do anesthetic, so I did anesthesiology.

And so we've been working together since then.

And then there was a call that came from the South African Union And they said, look, we need to start medical work with a tribe of northern Namibia called the Himba.

Now, if you want to see some interesting people, go to Google and just place the Himba, H-I-M-B-A.

Some of you probably received the AFM magazine and there's a project in Namibia with Pam and Gideon Peterson.

So that's the project we got involved with.

People who are not naked, but for our standards they are.

They don't wear almost anything, some skins and coverings, yes, they otherwise just open, Okay, and live in little huts.

In our standards, they live very poorly, okay?

And so we went over, afraid of malaria, afraid of all of that, but we went over and we stayed about 4 years.

We had many refugees from Angola that came over the border, running away from the war.

And so, you would go into the slum areas and it was filthy.

And it was not with the Himbas, but you know, the slums with the refugees and very poor people, and so we were in the mission field.

And the idea was to start up the work there.

The Himbas had always resisted Westernization and Christianity.

They looked at what happened to the fellow tribes around them with Westernization.

So they said, we're not interested in this.

We're not interested in alcohol, we're not interested in prostitution, we're not interested in that.

And so they're very comparable to the Maasai's, in Kenya, in Tanzania.

They lived in a way that I've described to you.

And life went on, very stressful, 75 bed hospital, 9 peripheral clinics, 3 doctors.

And some of you probably have been to the mission field and know what I'm talking about, either on a long term or on a short term.

You know, some of you have had that experience.

We were there and I believe the Lord used our hands and our hearts, our inefficiency and our mistakes to bring hope to the people.

AFM has taken over that project and it's a good project to support because those are very, very close friends.

After about 4 years, there was the idea of continuing further education in the UK, so we applied to Cambridge and I was accepted to do a residency program there in something different, in pediatrics, and in the process of transition, we came over to visit some friends at Wildwood.

I had some relatives at Wildwood, I'd heard about Wildwood and I was very skeptical.

That's where I met you for the first time at 1 of the health seminars.

So I came to Wildwood watching everything.

Weird people I'd heard about, you know, and all these things.

And so my first week there was 1 of scrutiny, yes, not shock, no, scrutiny.

I was shocked, but for good reasons, you know?

And then I saw things that I'd never seen before.

Louis Torres

Gaining Decisions for Christ

Now, just to give you an introduction into the program, when you're talking about gaining decisions, it's science.

And any science has its rules, laws, and principles that govern it.

And the closer you come to understanding the principles that govern the science, the more success you have.

Most of the time, when it comes to this area, people have different notions or ideas that they feel militate against what we're teaching.

For example, 1 time I had a, I was teaching a group of homeschoolers in Leo Meadows, California, and there were 2 ladies who were standing in the back that seemed to be pretty agitated.

I wasn't sure what they were agitated about.

When I finished with the kids and dismissed them, both of them came up to me and said, who do you think you are?

How dare you think you could teach these kids to do the work of the Holy Spirit.

They had preconceived ideas and they thought that to teach somebody how to lead people to Christ was wrong because that's something that the Holy Spirit does.

It isn't something that a human agent does.

So there are a lot of preconceived ideas, a lot of misconceptions, and I just wanted you to know from the off start so that as I begin to knock those down you won't get upset with me, but rather you'll understand that soul winning is a science.

And the closer we come to understanding His principles, the quicker we'll become successful in winning souls to Christ.

I'm not sure if they're still recording it or yet recording it, but as soon as they're ready, we're ready to roll.

Shall we have prayer together to begin with.

Our Father in Heaven, thank You that we can gather together to discuss this particular issue.

We pray that Your Spirit will guide and direct us and we thank You for hearing us.

Now I'm going to ask Jeffrey if he could come up here for a moment.

Jeffrey just came into the seminar to begin with before everybody was here and He said, Pastor, I got these 2 books.

So I said, well, what did they do for you?

He said, well, I was trying to hold evangelistic meetings, I was trying to figure out what to do.

And he said, fortunately I had your books and I was able to read them and they helped me.

And Jeffrey, why don't you come up and just tell them what you discovered and how the books helped you?

Because the reason I'm doing this is because there's no way, shape, or form I'm going to, in a seminar, tell you all the gamuts, cover the whole gamut as to how to reach or get people to a decision.

Oh, Jeffrey, you're going to have to bend low, and I'm going to have to stretch here.

Well, I was holding some meetings in Orlando this past 2 weeks.

And before I had the meetings, I was like, Lord, you know, I was afraid to make appeals.

I was very afraid because of the fear of you standing up, making an appeal, and nobody comes up or make a decision.

And so I went online, trying to look for some things, trying to help me out, and I went on this website called rightlytrained.org, and I saw Pastor Lewis Torres speaking about how to gain decisions.

And during that time, he talked about his book.

And so immediately, like the next hour, I went to the ABC, got the book, and started reading it.

And I tell you that those principles in his book really helped me out and gave me confidence on how to make decisions for Christ and how to gain it.

And in our meetings, we had about 40 people come out every night, and 20 of them were visitors.

And at the end, we had 18 out of those 20 make decisions for Christ.

And so it was a good investment and it really helped me out.

And I really appreciate it because, you know, not only are those souls wanted in the kingdom but also because of your effort and you put the time into that book so it's really good so I encourage you to really invest into it and really try it out.

Man if I started Evangelism and I won 18 out of the 20 of my people attending I would say amen what do you say?

So praise the Lord, I should have written the book a long time ago.

And so I'm not going to be able to cover everything.

This book, I don't know how many of you are acquainted with it, it's called, Bottom Sermon disturbing Bible passages.

The reason I wrote this book is because there are a lot of you who are afraid to give Bible studies because somebody may throw you a question that you can't answer.

So what I've done is that I've taken all the difficult texts that I could find in the Bible and from Genesis to Revelation I put them in here with the Bible answers.

So that if somebody throws you a question you can go to that text, go to the page, look up the answer, and give the people the answer.

The next book is Gaining Decisions for Christ.

This 1 I've written, it's been out for a while now, Review and Herald publishes it, and I've had evangelists, pastors, people who've been in ministry for a long time who didn't just understand how to do it, and when they read the book, all of a sudden it changed their ministry and they became very successful soul winners, gaining decisions with Christ.

Then I've had some young evangelists say, Pastor, every time they hold a meeting they call me up and say, Pastor, do you have a story for this particular presentation for the appeal.

And then finally they said, you should put them in a book.

So that's what I did, I put them in a book.

So it's called Grace Stories for Gaining Decisions.

What I've done is in the first few pages, I put in the whole dynamic of making public appeals and then inside I've divided up the topics that we have, the market of beast, the savvah, the law, etc.

And I've placed stories for appeals, okay?

Stories for appeals with the verbiage of the appeal.

Because sometimes you may make an appeal but say the same thing every single night.

Here you actually have the verbiage, the wording so that you can know the story and then make the appeal appropriate for the particular subject that you are preaching that particular night.

So I've written some other books but I just wanted to bring these books here because they're more germane to the topic of gaining decisions.

Now, having said that, by the way, some people have wondered, since I've become president of Guam Micronesia, what happened to Mission College?

Well, as you can see, it's still there, and still running the program.

And for those of you who may not know, Mission College is actually the pioneer of the 3 and a half month training program.

All the other schools that you have here, Life, Arise, AFCO, all of those are offshoots of the Mission College.

So offshoots in the sense that they spread it out from Mission College.

There's 1 in Switzerland called Mission College of Evangelism.

And they're trying to start 1 also down in Australia.

So the Mission College started out in the Black Hills and it's the originator of the program.

The Youth for Jesus that you run, we started also when we were ASI many years ago.

In fact, I'll tell you, it's interesting.

We started Mission Youth for Jesus right here in Orlando.

The first youth for Jesus was here in Orlando and in that meeting, huh?

12 years ago and in that meeting David Asher was the first speaker.

He was a young punk rocker, whippersnapper.

I was trying to coach behind the stage and In that particular meeting we had 147 baptisms, which shocked the whole conference because they didn't think that it could be done.

And the next meeting was in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I think there's some information floating around that the first euphagesis was in Grand Rapids.

Well, I'm the father of it, so I can tell you that it gave birth right here in Orlando, not in Grand Rapids.

And so we've been focusing and training in evangelism and the school's still going.

For those of you who are interested, the next class is in September and it'll be in Guam.

So we're taking all the students to Guam to participate in the evangelism.

By God's grace going to your school there in Guam.

Series

ASI 2010 Seminar: Evangelism

Truth Be Told

Transcript

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