GYC SE 2010: Infinity - The Pursuit of Excellence

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GYC Southeast

GLOW: Giving Light to Our World

Nelson Ernst

GLOW Part 1: Human Purpose and Prophecy

I came out here from California because something amazing is happening over there.

This GLOW program is something that started about 3 years ago and we had very small beginnings.

Over in Central California Conference, every year at camp meeting they take up a big evangelism offering.

And it's been around upwards of $3 million for the past few years.

And 1 of the initiatives that came out of that was this GLOW project, which was how can we get adults involved in doing literature evangelism?

Because, I don't know about you guys, but as you look across the North American Division, there's not much literature evangelism going on except for the students who go out during the summers and they sell these soft cover books.

Well, we wanted to get the adults, once again, activated and getting into doing outreach through literature.

And so that idea trickled down to our department in Central California Conference, and they said, hey, start thinking about a program.

I happened to be living in a garage at the time, a renovated garage, that was a little studio apartment, and I didn't have anything to do, lots of time on my hands.

And so I picked up this book called, and I was working for the conference at the time, I picked up the book called Publishing Ministry, and as I began to read that book, this, the blueprints for this program just started coming out.

And GLOW is basically a program that's based off of the blueprints of the Spirit of Prophecy.

It's something that our church has done in the past, but it has a new name and it has a new face.

You know, in the Bible it says, believe his prophets and ye shall prosper.

We've built this program off of the counsel of our prophet.

Since the program started about 3 years ago, we've printed about 10 million tracks.

And it started in this 1 garage and now it's spread to about 13 different conferences across the United States.

We're getting the program going in, hopefully, in Scandinavia pretty soon here.

In fact, I have some tracks I just got this last week that have been translated into Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

I can't read like 1 word of them except for the glow on the front, but the people over there can.

The Lord is His blessing and it's a very simple program.

So that's what we're going to be talking about today, but let me just give you an overview of the 3 sessions.

Session number 1, we're going to talk about why we do evangelism, the reason, the big picture, and then we're going to hone in on the details.

Session number 2, we're going to focus on literature distribution, which every 1 of us can do.

And then session 3, the last session, we're going to talk about how to get involved in literature sales.

And because those are the 2 different modes of doing literature evangelism, literature distribution, literature sales.

But first, today we're gonna talk about literature and why we do that work in general.

Because we need to have the reason why before we actually go out and do it.

So without further ado, let's have a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, I just thank you so much that we can meet together and we can discuss your word.

And Father, that we can glean wisdom, not only for our own benefit, Lord, but for the benefit of the unsaved, Lord, who live in our communities and in our hometowns.

And Father, I just ask that Your Spirit would speak today in this seminar, and Lord, that as a ripple effect of this seminar, your people might be equipped to better reach out to the lost.

And Father, we pray for these things in your name.

Well, turn with me in your Bibles, if you have them, to Jeremiah chapter 9.

And as you're turning to Jeremiah chapter 9, I want to share with you something interesting I found the other day.

Jeremiah chapter 9, As you're turning there, if you can look at the screen here, in 1707, there was a man born by the name of Jedediah Buxton.

Jedediah Buxton was a farmer and he was a simple farmer.

In fact, he couldn't read and he couldn't write.

But the interesting thing about Jedediah Buxton was that he was a genius when it came to math.

It's said that Jeremiah, when he sat down 1 time, he took a farthing, and he squared it 139 times in his mind.

You guys know what it means to square a number, right?

Yeah, now we're running into a problem, right?

We only squared that number 2, what, 3 times?

Jedediah Buxton squared a number in his mind 139 times.

And then he took that number and eventually squared it by itself.

It's said that 1 time they took Jedediah to a person's property and he walked the acreage.

And as he was walking it, he paced every step and counted the amount of steps and measured the entire perimeter of the property.

And then in his mind, he broke down the acreage into hairsbreadths and told how many hairsbreadths square that property was.

1 time Jedediah was taken over to a play in Europe and rather than focusing on the theme of the play he sat there and he tried to count the amount of steps that all the dancers took on the stage and he tried to count all the words that the people said.

His mind was constantly wrapped in numbers and he was a genius he was a savant.

The Second man that we have up here, his name is Leslie Lemke.

And it sounds like some of you have heard of him.

Leslie Lemke was born prematurely in 1952 with glaucoma, cerebral palsy, and brain damage.

The doctors, actually, when he was born, they had to remove his eyes.

His mother thought, you know what, I'm just gonna get rid of this kid.

She abandoned him, and he was adopted by a nurse at 6 months old.

Leslie lived for 7 years without making any sounds and no movements, and he made no signs of emotions.

In fact, it took him until he was the age of 12 to actually learn how to stand.

And then he finally learned how to walk when he was 15.

But when he was 16, something amazing happened.

His adoptive mother had left him in a room by himself, and as she walked into another room, she all of a sudden heard beautiful piano music coming from the room that she'd left him in.

She came back in, and to her surprise, she found that Leslie was playing a beautiful piano piece that he had just heard on the radio.

Come to find out that Leslie was a savant.

He could duplicate anything that he heard and put it on the piano.

Some people doubted that Leslie was real.

They thought it was a trick, and so they took him 1 time to an auditorium where there was this famed piano-playing lady, and she had created this original piece which nobody had heard before.

And so they set her at 1 piano on the stage, and they set Leslie on the other piano on the stage.

And as she began playing this original piece, which he couldn't have seen beforehand because it was an original piece, the sound from the notes of the piano went into his ears and registered out on his fingers.

And he was playing just a few seconds behind her.

And then as the song progressed, he happened to get closer and closer time-wise until they were almost playing simultaneously.

How many of you guys would like to be able to play the piano like that?

I took 10 years of piano lessons and I have to read those notes.

The third person we have up here and the last that I'm going to share this morning is a man by the name of Kim Peek.

GLOW Part 2: How to Fit a Preacher in a Pocket

Father in heaven, thank you that we can come together and that we can learn how to be more effective witnesses for you.

And Lord, I just wanna pray that your spirit would be here to speak not only through me, Lord, but to be in the hearts of everyone who's in this room.

Father, so that we can learn to be, as I said, more effective witnesses for you.

Lord, may a few more souls at least be in the Kingdom of Heaven as a ripple effect of what we're talking about today.

Father, we ask for these things in your name.

Alright, well, the title of our seminar today is How to Fit a Preacher into Your Pocket.

How many of you guys have ever been in a situation where you've been maybe in the grocery store in line or something and you're like, you know, a perfect opportunity opens up to witness to the person standing next to you and you just don't quite know what to say?

And you just wish that you could pull Mark Finley out of your pocket and add some water and voila, you know, a beautiful sermon and a baptism, right?

Well, we're going to talk today about how to fit a preacher in your pocket because Mrs.

White says that our little Bible tracts are silent preachers.

So you can put a preacher in your pocket just like this 1.

This one's David Asherick and then the other one's Mark Finley.

So I'm gonna start off with a few quotes here from the Spirit of Prophecy.

She says, the best help that ministers can give the members of our churches is not sermonizing.

The best help that ministers can give the members of our churches is not sermonizing, but planning work for them.

Give each 1 something to do for others and let all be taught how to work." Now she's not talking about how to like go out and you know rake the leaves in the front yard.

She's talking about work as in work for saving souls.

So the best help that I can give you today is not to sermonize but to give you practical ways to do outreach.

The work of God on this earth can never be finished.

The work of God on this earth can never be finished until the men and women comprising our church membership rally to the work and unite their efforts with those of the ministers and church officers.

It is training and education that is needed.

Those who labor in visiting the churches should give brethren and sisters instruction in practical methods of doing missionary work.

So by the time we get done with our seminar today, you ought to be able to know how to practically do a little bit of missionary work.

And I hope that that's what's gonna happen.

All right, moving on to the next quote, you're thinking to yourself, man, how many times is he gonna read quotes to us?

Don't worry, we don't have too many more.

I just want to let you know, when I read this quote for the first time, I was flabbergasted.

I didn't even know that this quote existed.

Now, I'd be interested to see how many of you have ever read this quote before.

She says, There will be times when it is fitting for our ministers to give on the Sabbath in our churches short discourses full of life and love of Christ.

But the church members are not to expect a sermon every Sabbath.

What would happen during the divine service?

In context of this quote, she actually says that during the divine service, if churches are running as they should, we should open up the floor for the church members to give testimonies about how they have been reaching out to souls the previous week.

She says that those kind of services will be as meet in due season to everybody, visitors included.

Now that, somebody here might have actually read this quote, but I am wondering, has anybody ever seen this kind of a church happening?

If you have, I want to talk to you afterwards.

I want to find out where that church is and move my membership.

Just joking, actually I go to a pretty evangelistic church.

It only happened 1 Sabbath, but I was not there very much.

This is from Pacific Union Recorder, January 29, 1903.

The PUR stands for Pacific Union Recorder.

So the question is then, how can we all get involved in doing practical outreach?

By the way, I really like my PowerPoint slides.

Microsoft Office 2010, it's got some good graphics.

None of that bitten apple serpentism on my computer.

Anyway, you'll find that these slides are really cool.

In fact, I'd just show you the slides and they'd be great enough for you except audio verse is on So I need to say something.

Yeah, so the question is, how can we all get involved in practical outreach?

Not only that, not only how can you get involved, but how can you involve your church?

And how can we get our church members involved in practical outreach so that we can actually have services like that?

And we can be winning souls left and right.

White actually asks the same question, then she gives us an answer.

The next quote, she says, let every Seventh-day Adventist ask himself, what can I do to proclaim the third angel's message?

Then she finishes by saying, the Distribution of our literature is 1 means by which the message is to be proclaimed.

Let every believer scatter broadcast tracts and leaflets and books containing the message for this time.

So 1 way that we can all get involved is by passing out tracks.

If you have a thumb, you can be a literature evangelist.

Because if you have an opposable thumb, you can grip a piece of literature and go like this.

GLOW Part 3: To Sell or Not to Sell, That is Not a Question

Father in heaven, I want to thank you again that we can come into your presence and we can once again we can learn about another method In literature of angelism that you have given us to reach out to this lost world father I pray that your spirit would be with us once again for our third and last session and Lord that your spirit would be here to speak to our hearts.

Lord perhaps there are some in this audience that you are calling to be full-time call porters like they were in the olden days and Lord I just pray that you would speak to them personally.

Lord I have no ability to just communicate adequately.

Lord, the high and holy calling that you have given us in the literature work.

So Father, I pray that you would make up for my deficiency and Lord may your strength be made perfect in my weakness.

And we ask for these things in your name, amen.

Alright, quickly 2 things before we actually get into the seminar.

I think I shared a little bit about that in the first session.

I'm forgetting just because I've been speaking for so long my mind is getting dim.

But let me just summarize it 1 more time.

3 years ago in Central California Conference we had a lot of money from an evangelism offering and they said, hey, how can we use this money?

The idea came up, let's start getting adults involved in literature evangelism, not just kids out there selling books during the summer, let's get adults involved too.

And so the idea, that idea trickled down to the literature ministries department where I was working with that, I was working at the time and I happened to be working at, not working, living in a renovated little garage, a studio apartment where I had nothing to do other than sit around and read spirit of prophecy books and play my guitar.

So that I did, had a thought in mind, read Publishing Ministry, and from the blueprints of that book, really, GLOW began.

We started it with a few churches, some other people were there to help out to begin with as well, Heidi Bryant, Bill Crick, and we just started spreading it around and soon we found ourselves with a whole waiting list of churches that wanted to start the program and then we had a waiting list of conferences that wanted to get it going, yada yada.

So we've printed about 10 million tracks in the past 3 years, It's spread to 13 different conferences and we're constantly getting inquiries from people outside of the NAD, the North American Division, which is the United States and I think Canada too.

It's not because of the talent or the genius of the people who are pushing the work forward, it's because of the Holy Spirit and because He wants this to happen.

He wants His people to be equipped and He wants the people outside to be saved.

By the way, you know why we do evangelism right now?

Yes, it is to save some souls, but I believe 1 of the biggest reasons why we do evangelism is because it helps prepare us for the latter rain.

We aren't gonna be ready for the latter rain until, as Mrs.

White puts it, the majority of God's workers know what it means to be co-laborers together with Him, with God.

And when we give Bible studies, it helps us to love those people more.

And that is the same love that Christ has for them.

So that prepares us to be more like Him, and in doing that, we then become ready for the latter rain, and that's when the big work is going to happen.

I tell you what, 1 person who has the latter rain power is going to convert more souls to the kingdom than probably any 1 of us during a whole lifetime.

So evangelism today is just like a boot camp or small training for the big stuff.

And last thing before we get into the actual presentation is I told you guys that if you came back, for those of you who are here, that you're going to get the best stuff.

When a person calls in to request Bible studies from a GloTrak, They oftentimes leave voicemails for us.

What I do is I take some of those best voicemails I edit them take all the personal information out and then I put them on a little presentation So you can read the words and you can hear them requesting Bible studies and I have that available for you I'm actually going to show it to you.

It's been an inspiration to a lot of people.

So hopefully all the technology is going to work with us and the mics.

This woman, she found it in her glow tract in her purchase from a garage sale and it helped her find...

The way it explained this about the signs of the times, stagnant and don't talk, I really understood it and it was very easy for me to read and to understand.

A lot of things aren't easy for me to read and understand, but I did this.

I had a son die and I've always had people try to get me to go, you know, talk to people that haven't talked to me.

But I would like more literature on things like this.

Thank you very much and thanks for letting me.

She didn't go to a seance because she read the Glotrak on spiritualism.

This is a non-Adventist calling in to request literature.

Yeah, my name is Max Reinhardt, and I do chaplain work at 3 hospitals here in town.

I got to come across that 1, does God know that I'm really hurting?

I thought they'd give it to a couple of my patients where they're, somebody has died.

But anyways, I was wondering if I could get some of those.

I'll even pay for it, but I want to get their little pamphlets.

And just appreciate if I could get some more of those little copies.

Because God knows that I'm really hurting.

This is a non-adventist just calling in for Bible studies.

My name is Miguel and I would like to know if I can order maybe a packet of the sign of the times little tracts so I can pass out to people.

Also, I can order the free Bible study literature and whatever free stuff you have so I can grow more into God.

She called persistently to get Bible studies.

Hi, my name is Laura and yes I am very anxious to receive the Bible study and any tracts.

If you have any tracts available, I would appreciate it.

At the same time, if you can, can you donate me a Bible if possible?

If you have time, maybe you can give me a call.

Thank you so much and God bless you, bye bye.

This guy had a culprit or sell a book to him and then he got GloTracks afterwards.

I didn't know if I could get a study Bible mailed out to me.

My address is in Watsonville, California.

I picked up a flyer, a small 1, and I'm interested in reading more.

I believe I bought a couple or donated some money to some kids that were going to college and they came to my house and I was wondering if I could get some info mailed out regarding, you know, Bible study And I'm interested in reading more and learning about the Word of God.

I know life's too short, and we have to be ready.

This guy said only 19 words in his voicemail.

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Series

GLOW: Giving Light to Our World

GLOW Part 3: To Sell or Not to Sell, That is Not a Question

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

GLOW Part 1: Human Purpose and Prophecy

39m

GLOW Part 2: How to Fit a Preacher in a Pocket

44m

GLOW Part 3: To Sell or Not to Sell, That is Not a Question

48m

Sound Doctrine