ASI Conference 2023: Revived to Witness

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United

Norbert Restrepo

Ivonne Restrepo

Breaking Barriers & Building Bridges

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that we can come together this morning, and as we open Your Word and as we share from life experiences, we want to be inspired on fulfilling the promise we find in John chapter 17 and also in the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy.

You have promised that when God's workers comprised of men and women unite and rally with church officers and ministers, the work will be finished on this earth.

We know it seems like a daunting task, but you have promised and we want to be part of the fulfillment of that promise in these last days.

So be with us as we explore these topics and may your spirit be in our midst, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

I want to start by sharing, you know, it's challenging to step into a situation where there are long-standing barriers.

And often these barriers happen because of different circumstances.

For example, back at the beginning of World War I, when the government placed additional pressure on our leaders, Church leaders in Germany buckled and instructed church members to fulfill their military duties on Sabbath as other soldiers do on Sunday.

And our leaders in Germany had their reasons.

They looked at the Old Testament, they looked at Joshua, and they saw these wars going on and they believed that it would be appropriate and under certain circumstances even the right thing for Seventh-day Adventists to join and even participate in military combat on Sabbath.

Now this position on combat and service, as well as doing duty on Sabbath, was clearly an opposition to the traditional position taken by Adventists in the past.

When the German members were confronted with this new position, many began to protest vigorously, particularly in the city of Bremen.

The opposition became very vocal against church leadership.

This opposition and vocal protest caused a reaction from the church leadership, which eventually led to disfellowshipping the protesters.

The disfellowshipped from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and not only in Germany but in other countries in Europe, had no intention initially of starting a new church.

Attempts at reconciliation, however, with the main body were made, but with no positive results.

As the numbers increased, the Seventh-day Adventist Reform Movement was organized as a church separate from the main body of Seventh-day Adventists, with representatives from different countries which met at Gotha, Germany in 1925.

I share this story to mention a major significant event that we still are living with those consequences where differences between church members and church leaders led to a split.

More recently, in 2014, the 2 German Seventh-day Adventist unions apologized to the Reform Movement for their actions a century ago in disfellowshipping the pacifists who started the movement.

The declaration was welcomed by the leaders of the Reform Movement and was seen as a step in the right direction.

It made clear that the main cause of separation between the 2 churches was the military service and participation in World War I, a major event.

And at some point in your life and ministry you may have or you may confront a situation at your local church within a ministry, with your local conference, or in some other sphere where you're working, trying to do the Lord's work, where there's strong difference of opinion which could lead to a rift.

We want to explore from God's Word how to deal with these situations in a way that enables God to fulfill His promises as a corporate church.

I want to invite Yvonne, my wife, who's presenting with me, and if you would share a little bit about your background and then I'll do the same as we share here this morning.

Yes, it's a privilege for me to be here and for us to be here with you.

A little bit of my background, I grew up in a Catholic home.

It was so Catholic that I was raised going every Sunday, sometimes Monday, to the cemetery to pray to the souls.

So my mom took me and and my dad was a Seventh-day Adventist who had left the church when he was 14 years old.

So I remember he used to tell me many times, respect your mother's religion, but don't believe what you do because you cannot pray to any soul, because the death know nothing.

You know, he was telling me the whole doctrine even though he didn't go to church.

And when the moment of communion came, he said, okay, respect your mother's religion, but you don't confess to any man, only to Jesus Christ.

So I never knew that those words that he was telling me took me eventually to be an Adventist, something that my mom hated to the most.

Thank God after a lot of, after many years she had a cancer and 2 years before she died she ended up being a 70 Adventist.

So it's a lot of I see my life back and I thank God for every moment of blessings and every moment of sorrow because everything had a purpose.

And it reminds me of what David Fong was sharing this morning because when we started our wellness center, The first health guest we had was your mom, my mother-in-law, and she was a cancer patient.

My background, I'm a third generation Seventh-day Adventist.

And when I was about 7 or 8 years of age, we were living in Columbia, South America, my parents were no longer offered an employment by our denomination, and because of these circumstances, they finished in self-supporting work.

But some circumstances in his ministry, which were not moral or theological, but more of administrative differences and of the emphasis on the message, led that the church leaders at that time decided to disfellowship my dad.

So I grew up in a home where I was a, my dad was a pastor, my mom a physician, they were Seventh-day Adventists, but for some reason they finished being disfellowshipped.

So we were in self-supporting work, but in an estranged relationship.

When I became a young man, 18 years old, 19, I was baptized in the Adventist Church.

My dad was there, because he never instilled in my heart any type of resentment against the organized church.

But for many years, I was in that realm of self-supporting work where somehow I was out of the main body, but I still thought myself, considered myself a Seventh-day Adventist.

And under those circumstances we grew up as missionary kids, grew up, dedicated our lives to the Lord's service.

And then in 2010, I find myself invited to lead Heartland College.

And Heartland Institute at that time was a self-supporting institution which was considered independent and not supportive.

So that is in a brief nutshell some of my background.

And so the way God has led us, we can share from our personal testimony as individuals and also as ministry leaders how God can do great things when we build bridges and we break down barriers, God can do wonderful things.

In fact, 3 months after we arrived at Heartland Institute in 2011, we moved as a family, 3 months later, Dr.

Agatha Thrash from Uchee Pines Institute came to visit Heartland.

And she wanted to speak with me privately.

And as she spoke with me privately, she had 2 words of counsel.

The first 1 was, Heartland has done a great work, but it would do much better if it was working with the world church, with the local church and in harmony with her Seventh-day Adventist church denomination.

And she encouraged me strongly to move in that direction.

And the second advice she gave me was, beware of the Philistine woman.

And at first I didn't quite understand what she meant, but later on she explained how many workers in self-supporting work, also in the denomination, were falling because of adultery and these type of things for bringing reproach upon God's work.

So we started praying that the Lord would open doors if that was His will, and we will share more about that story as we continue advancing because when you pray that God will bring about unity, God answers that prayer, when you pray that prayer intentionally.

It doesn't matter how big the barriers can be.

The Lord says in Matthew 16, 18, And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the hell shall not prevail against it.

Titus 1.5 says, For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee." Scripture is clear that in the New Testament, God established a church, and this church was to have order in the things and ordain elders and have a structure even from the days of Jesus and then later on with the apostles as this emerging church as a transition from the Israelite nation as a theocracy to God having a people organized as a church.

We read in the Spirit of Prophecy, the church of God, the church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men.

It was organized for service and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.

And I think we all agree with this statement from Scripture and from the spirit of prophecy.

An additional statement that we're familiar with, and I would ask, Yvonne, if you would read from the middle down.

It says, in fabled and defective as it might appear, the church is the 1 object upon which God bestows in a special sense His supreme regard.

It is the theater of His grace in which He delights to reveal His power to transform hearts.

So even though we might see things that are less than ideal, God says, even defective and enfeebled, It is still the instrument that I'm using here on earth, and that is very encouraging.

And by the way, we all make part of that church.

Our talents and our weaknesses make it strong or weak, because we are part of the church.

We can't say, Oh, the church is not doing this right.

Well, how can you speak of the church when you're part of the church?

When Daniel spoke and he prayed in Daniel 9, how did he refer to the church and to himself?

His attitude was not self-righteous of standing apart, but of recognizing this corporate responsibility.

Now, it's interesting that when our church started a few years down the road, the founders realized the need of organizing it, the organized church because often you can hear in certain circles, well, the church is just the believers who are faithful.

The church is not the organization, it's not the leaders.

The church includes the leaders who God has placed, allowed to be in these positions.

When this organization started, there was opposition.

Towards the end of 1853, James White wrote to the first well-developed argument, yes, argument for the need for gospel ordered an organization among Sabbatarian Adventists.

He wrote that the extremes of confusion on the 1 hand and inflexibility on the other hand were to be avoided.

Firmly convinced of the need for organization by the middle of 1854 during the ensuing 6 years his articles and church order on the Rebuke and Herald were developed on the basis of the need to avoid the extremes of anarchy and potpourri and the need for a system which was not opposed by the Bible as is approved by sound sense.

So there was the need of not – they wanted to avoid potpourri, but they also wanted to avoid anarchy.

And therefore, church organization was necessary.

We need to understand that at that time a lot of our Adventist brethren were against, even pastors against church organization.

They had been disfellowshipped from the Methodist Church, from the Presbyterian churches, from were accepting and proclaiming the second Advent message.

Therefore, they thought that organizing into a hierarchy was Babylon.

And it took them a while to understand that Babylon is not being organized.

Ron Price

Play Nice in Your Sandbox at Church: How to Prevent or Resolve Conflicts with your Brothers and Sisters

All right, I think, Jill, if you don't mind, I think we can probably get started.

I asked Jill Marconi to introduce me, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

It's my privilege to introduce Brother Ron.

The first time I ever heard about him, his trilogy of books crossed my desk at 3ABN.

Play Nice in Your Sandbox at School and play nice in the sandbox at church.

And I thought, we don't have any conflict as Christians.

And I read them and I was mesmerized by the principles found within these pages.

Ron is a humorist, you already discovered that.

He has mediated for many years in his professional career.

Now, of course, he's a well spoken...something.

Every word he spoke, he's articulate, it was clear, but the principles of conflict management and conflict resolution that he presented can be applied in any location with any person.

And I was personally blessed by what he shared and it enriched my own marriage and my own ministry.

And I know what he shares this afternoon is gonna be a blessing in your homes and in your churches and in your ministry for God.

And by the way, this Sunday, I forget the times, but that program is going to be rebroadcast on 3BN this Sunday.

And I forget the times, but 3 or 4 times.

I'm gonna tell you right now, Jill, there were 2 of us at that table.

She was the second most blessed at that table.

Greg was supposed to join us, and he got called away, and don't tell him this.

We're so sorry that Greg couldn't join us, weren't we, Jill?

Thank you for those kind and gracious words.

We fixed that problem real quick, didn't we?

Okay, yeah, somebody's coming around with...

And if you'd like, what you can do on the eval is just put my name, Ron Price, and then I'll fill in the rest of it for you.

If there's things you like, hey, I want to know it.

If there's things that could be improved, please, by all means, let's do that.

Because we've only got 4 and a half hours for this.

In fact, I want you to take just a moment, look around the room, just a moment, 3 seconds, find somebody who's identical to you in every way.

And yet, as different as we are, we're similar in so many ways.

Now, don't poke your neighbor in the eye, but left forefinger, put it up.

All right, What a talented group of people we have.

Rick Remmers

United in Mission

And isn't it good to be at an ASI convention?

It's your first time to be at a convention.

And I hope you're enjoying the inspiration, the networking.

It's almost overwhelming to go to the exhibit hall.

There are so many different ministries, so many different resources that are available, but it's great to be able to see that.

And then there's the inspiration of the music, the great preaching, and then the seminars.

So welcome to the third in the United track as we look at being united, transformed, and sent.

Dear Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be here at this ASI convention.

Lord, we pray for a fresh outpouring of your Spirit, and we are grateful for the blessings that we have already received.

And this morning, during this session, as we take a look at Scripture passages, as we look at how best to do ministry, We pray that your spirit would lead and guide and that you would help us to apply it in the best ways in order to accomplish the mission that you've given to us.

Well, let me introduce myself to get started.

I'm Rick Remmers and there's a little bit of a bio, but I'm currently serving as assistant to the president at the North American Division.

And the follow-up question, if anyone has any curiosity, is What do you do?

It means I serve as a liaison for a number of different departments and ministries out of the North American Division, 1 of them being ASI.

And so I represent presidential with ASI.

And Philip Baptiste is the Secretary-Treasurer, has his office at the North American Division.

And so the NAD president, Elder Alex Bryant, who we've seen a number of times here with the election process, chairs the nominating committee, is on the board as well here at ASI, but my position also puts me on the Missions, Inc.

Board and the ASI board, which has been a great learning experience.

I've been doing this for the last year and a half.

I've served as a union executive secretary nearly 10 years as a conference president, and what, about 19 years as a district pastor, as an assistant pastor, as a senior pastor, as a pastor with 1 church, 2 churches, 3 churches.

When you start doing 3 at a time, you get a lot of churches quickly with that.

And I remember our first ASI convention was in Cincinnati.

And our kids were in kindergarten level at that time.

And my wife and I were just amazed and appreciative of what the staff were able to do to provide engaging, spiritually focused programming for the kids in 4 walls.

And they went in with nothing but 4 walls in a small banquet room and made it an engaging and exciting place for kids to learn and grow.

And through the years, our kids have loved to come to ASI conventions.

But there, you know, life has its realities.

He graduated a year ago from Andrews University and is now doing a finance residency with Advent Health in Orlando.

My daughter, there's a health care theme that runs in our family.

I'm still coming to grips with that reality.

A year ago, she finished her associates in nursing at Southern Adventist University, took this last year out to work as a nurse in the Philippines at Adventist Frontier Mission site in the southern part of the Palawan Island, Camatian, and she and 1 other were the 2 nurses staffing the clinic there which was just an incredible experience for her.

She had to learn the language and learn nursing.

And without a physician there, the nurses did all the diagnostics, and there were times where she would call in the middle of the night and my wife is a very experienced nurse and so she would be calling to have questions from her.

And there was 1 patient, they actually were able, as relatively primitive as the setting was, they were able to do, I think it was a 12 lead EKG to get the heart rhythm.

She was able to send that to my wife so that she could read that rhythm and advise her on what the patient's situation was and how to help treat that.

And there were times too where she'd be, there's an ER physician in our family and she'd be calling him for counsel.

But just a lot of, a lot of great stories and a lot of great experience living in a bamboo house hut with rats at night and snakes going through and, and anyway, lots, lots of stories there.

She could, She could easily fill the time with that.

But she's going back now for her final senior year.

She needs to get her bachelor's at Southern.

So she's getting ready to go back there to finish her last year.

And then my wife is, as I mentioned, a nurse and has 30-some years of experience with that.

Cardiac intensive care has been her specialty and what she has enjoyed throughout her career, which means that on any given day, the sickest patients in the hospital will usually land up being assigned to her.

Sickest are already in ICU, but then within ICU, the sickest, you need nurses that know the equipment and how to operate that.

And so anyway, she does a lot of training of new nurses, young nurses, orienting them.

So I just share that so you have some context of where I'm coming from.

If you have questions as we go through it, I would welcome that.

But it has provided a number of different perspectives on what it means to be united in the mission of the church that God has given to us.

We know the Great Commission, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And that Great Commission is for all of us.

It is not restricted to the disciples in Jesus' day.

It's not restricted to 1 part of the world.

All of us are called to be a part of that great commission.

So how does that work out in a practical and realistic way?

My wife said, make sure you tell them, you have 123.

So, first we're gonna look at the biblical and spirit of prophecy foundations for unity in the body of Christ.

Okay, well it's converted to video, I guess, format.

And then we'll look some practical applications of where that gets lived out, and then address some of the common challenges that get in the way of pursuing the mission that God has called us to.

So looking first at 1 Corinthians 12, we're used to looking at this in the context of spiritual gifts, and rightly so, because in the heart of 1 Corinthians 12 we find it talking about the various spiritual gifts, and we'll briefly touch on those.

But Romans 12 also covers this in Ephesians 4 with a little different emphasis and so we'll briefly take a look at this.

But we look at 1 Corinthians 12 verse 4, there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit.

Now with that, Paul summarizes what he then unpacks over many, many verses.

And it's, there's a contrast that we often times see in Paul's writings.

This is a passage where we go through it and say, okay Paul, I got it, I got it, let's move on.

And he repeats it again and again and again.

Which leads us to ask, why would he do that?

Why would he spend so much time unpacking and reemphasizing some of these same points?

And I believe it's because it's so foundational, it's so fundamental, But it's also an area where Satan attacks the church and distracts the church.

And it's something that, yes, it's foundational, but we need to keep going back to shore up those foundations to keep them strong.

He outlines a number of differences, but the same Spirit.

And we find this contrast that he comes to over and over again of there's diversity, there's differences, and yet there is unity that comes by the Spirit.

There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.

What would it mean if everyone in the church was engaged in health ministries, like my wife, like my daughter, like my son.

If everyone was doing that, and we believe in health ministry, health evangelism, that's a core part of who we are as Seventh-day Adventists.

And it's a vital message that is a practical need in the world.

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Series

United

United in Mission

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Breaking Barriers & Building Bridges

1h 18m

Play Nice in Your Sandbox at Church: How to Prevent or Resolve Conflicts with your Brothers and Sisters

1h 24m

United in Mission

1h 12m

Sound Doctrine