Find out ways to train the lay members to not only share the gospel, but how to retain the newly-baptized members to be- come more grounded and involved in ministry. More than ninety-nine percent of the entire world population of Seventh-day Adventists are lay men and women, leaving less than 1% who are Pastors. Churches must train their lay members to help finish the work.

ASI Conference 2024: Investing in Eternity

<p>Find out ways to train the lay members to not only share the gospel, but how to retain the newly-baptized members to be- come more grounded and involved in ministry. More than ninety-nine percent of the entire world population of Seventh-day Adventists are lay men and women, leaving less than 1% who are Pastors. Churches must train their lay members to help finish the work.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Seminars

Tyler Coleman

Denzil McNeilus

Donna McNeilus

Our Best Year Yet Sharing Jesus

We're a little bit early, but if you know us as a family, that's kind of the way that we like to operate.

As we like to get going right away, and there is so much to tell because God is blessing.

I'm telling you because this is going to be fast-paced.

And Denzel has slides that he's going to be sharing with us.

We have our son-in-law, Tyler Coleman, with us today.

And if you want to call Minnesota the southern part of the United States okay.

That's right and actually Tyler is our head elder in our local church in Dodd Center, Minnesota.

Anyway, we have the privilege of being servants for Jesus there.

And you know, I'm just such a people person.

I would love to know every single body in this room because you all have a story.

But the most important thing that we can do is pray.

And so I'm gonna invite you to stand with me this morning as we invite the Holy Spirit into this room and as we will begin our seminar, our best year yet, sharing Jesus.

Oh dear Father, how grateful we are to be in your house.

We know that you were here before we got here and we're just asking that you will bless abundantly not only this seminar but every single seminar that's going on.

We know that you will be there blessing them too.

It is such a joy and such a privilege to share you.

So please help each and every 1 of us that's here that we will be inspired to help finish this great work because we are homesick for heaven.

We want to be with you forever, our very best friend.

We love you and thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to be together as 1 united family.

Denzel said, well, why don't you have prayer and you tell what happened.

Well, what happened in Dodge Center, Minnesota is, well, I don't know if it happened in your area but we got COVID.

Not just us personally but our community got COVID.

And you've heard it before COVID changed everything.

Denzel my husband he's so used to traveling around the world and he's so used to being involved in so many projects that suddenly he is at home and he says, Donna, what am I going to do?

I'm thinking, oh you've got to find something to do, because you don't need to be here with me 24-7.

So I said, well, we better start praying, Denzel.

So I prayed and I said, Lord, just show us what to do.

God gave me this vision, this idea, to have prayer in our church every single day of the week for the whole year.

So I thought OK I'm going to talk to Denzel about it.

I thought he would be so excited and enthusiastic about it that he would just be supporting me a hundred percent and I told him about it and he said Donna that's a big goal yeah it is a big goal but I said we can do this and he said first thing you got to do Donna is you have to get buy-in and I said buy-in from who?

I said okay I said I'll tell you what I'll pray you talk to the church board.

And what we did is we sent a sign up sheet around our church and sanctuary for several weeks.

We asked people what times they were interested in coming, what days that they thought that they could come, and we got a team together.

Denzel and I ended up being the fill-ins, so when people couldn't come, we would be there.

God brought the Holy Spirit into that church, and we had sometimes 30 people praying in our church sometimes it was 2 people but we had people praying and God worked miracles in Dodge Center And we can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the reason that God has brought success to Dodge Center, Minnesota, a town of less than 3, 000 people, is because we were faithfully praying every single day.

If I can just interject too, what she didn't mention is this was starting when we didn't have a pastor.

Our pastor had moved to a different church, which also worked for her ability to influence the board because I was the head elder and she's my mother-in-law.

We had an evangelistic series planned that Denzel would get into.

But the idea of are we going to be able to do it every single day?

And this, I'll probably be repeating this, but my mother-in-law was right.

Throughout the year, and prayer was the foundation of everything that we did and everything that God did in our church.

Just to give you a little background, we were in Dodd Center Minnesota, We're in a rural area of Minnesota.

There is a town about 20 miles from us called Rochester, Minnesota.

It's a population of about 100, 000 people.

And we're basically a bedroom community, but We also have factories there.

That's where, as some of you may know, we have a family business where we build concrete mixers and garbage trucks that we sold.

And then also my cousin has the largest steel warehouse or warehouse business of steel in, actually in the United States, privately owned.

There's also my nephew has a manufacturing plant and there's quite a bit of industry.

Is really if you want to, about a bedroom community for Rochester.

And our church historically has been between 80 to 100 members.

During COVID, we actually increased our membership.

Because 1 thing before our pastor left, I want to tell you, he was very adamant that we are going to be open and we were only closed just the minimum amount of time even when the government governor said we couldn't meet We met in the parking lot and he preached from the awning and we listened to him through our cars.

And so we even met when we technically weren't allowed to meet.

And as a result of that, I really believe we were able to, our church actually grew during COVID, which is something that I know a lot of churches didn't do, but ours did.

But I wanna start out with what my favorite Bible text is found in Matthew 24, 14, that says this gospel kingdom we preached in all the world as a witness to all nations.

And then the question I want to ask you today, how many here want to go to heaven?

Let me ask you a question, a second question.

You know, we each have an opportunity, a privilege of being able to witness to people around us that no 1 else can reach.

Narlon Edwards

Medical Missionary Work & the Three AngelsʼMessages

Hope you guys had a good night's rest last night.

We have a lot to cover in a very little time.

So hopefully I could get through my content and then have a few minutes for questions and answer afterwards.

But as mentioned, I do have quite a bit to cover.

Last night when Elder Wilson was giving his talk, he talked about where we are in time prophetically, and it actually triggered me to change a lot that I had in my presentation to add the prophetic lens.

I believe that we're living in very, very solemn times, and we're gonna share that and share evangelism in light of the 3 angels' messages and also Bible prophecy.

So without any further ado I'm gonna kneel and pray.

You could join me by bowing your heads and I'll give a little introduction about myself and then we'll dive right into our message this morning.

So let us kneel or bow our heads as much as possible.

Father in heaven, we're thankful for the opportunity you've given us this morning to share, Father.

And as has been mentioned, we need wisdom.

But we also want to make it very practical and applicable to those who are under the sound of my voice.

I pray that you channel this Father to see how we can participate in the closing work of the 3 angels messages, and I pray Father that when we leave here, we leave here with a sense of understanding that through your power and through your lens, we can partake with you in these closing work.

For those who are meeting me for the first time, my name is Narlan Edwards, and I direct a ministry in a small town of eastern Kentucky called Stanton, and the ministry is Red River Outpost.

And I'll share more about it in the midst of the presentation, but it's pretty much a multifaceted ministry that embraces agriculture.

We have a sanitarium there, a small sanitarium, and much other missionary endeavors in our community.

So we're focused specifically on evangelism.

Also serve as the vice president of evangelism for the Southern Union ASI branch.

So we're happy to be partnering with ASI as well as OCI.

I'm very actively engaging with OCI as well for the past few years.

And we've been doing much evangelistic work in the Southern Union as a VP of evangelism there, and God has been blessing the work of evangelism very mightily.

I was born on the island of Jamaica and raised in New York City.

And urban ministry is what I started off at the tender age of 17.

We went throughout the streets of New York, preaching on trains and buses and handing out flyers and national Sunday laws.

So From the very moment that I became Adventist, we delved right into some very aggressive evangelism, and I've seen God work quite a few miracles in various places that I've been.

In 2009, my wife and I, we had well-supported careers, and we decided to leave it all behind and die a full time into a full time ministry and we got a brief medical missionary training and then from therefore we just went full time in ministry and since then God has blessed us to travel all throughout the world sharing the 3 angels messages in a very very practical light and that's what we want to do this morning we want to share the 3 angels message in a way that's practical and applicable to us who are living in the last days.

So again, our seminar this morning is evangelism and the 3 angels messages.

All right, so before we begin, we do have a YouTube channel.

So if you wanna hear a lot more messages and up-to-date as to what's taking place at our ministry you could actually scan this QR code and either subscribe or see what's taking place on our YouTube channel.

We also have a website that I'll show on the next slide which is RedRiverOutpost.org.

And at the RedRiverOutpost.org site, if you at the bottom subscribe, you receive a monthly newsletter that also keep you abreast as to the things that's taking place at our ministry.

So that's it for our announcements and now we'll dive into the message, evangelism and the 3 angels messages.

Now out of curiosity, do we have any non-Seventh-Day Adventists in this room?

Any visitors who are not Seventh-Day Adventists?

I'd like to acknowledge you if you're not a Seventh-Day Adventist.

Alright, so we're all Seventh-Day Adventists.

Now, I want to share that there's a danger with being a Seventh-day Adventist.

That word Adventist means we believe in the second coming of Christ.

And I was just thinking this morning as I was praying and preparing, I wonder how many times a 70 Adventist in their lifetime have heard that Jesus is coming soon.

If you were to take a guess, let's say a 50 year old or 70 year old born and raised in a church, How many times, and I don't know, I'm just throwing things out there.

About how many times do you think a 50 year old or a 70 year old would have heard that Jesus is coming soon?

I can't put a number on it, but I know it's quite a bit.

Somebody said that the danger with that could be complacency.

We could become very desensitized, we could become complacent, and let me also say that complacency is contagious.

The human mind adapts to our environment rather than allowing those around us to adapt to the truths that we uphold or once upheld.

So that's the danger and I've seen it and the Bible tells us that we should be watchmen and we should be children of light and not children of darkness and should not be caught sleeping as do others.

And 1 of the things that you notice about Christ is that Christ was never caught by surprise.

In fact, it says, Jesus says, my time is not yet come.

He also said Jesus knew that his hour was come.

He says this day is a scripture fulfilling the year.

There's no point in Christ's life that he was unaware of where he was in time.

So, in knowing the time, you have a better sense of knowing what to do.

That's what the Bible says actually in 1 Chronicles 12, in verse 32.

It says, the children of Issachar were men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.

And there's synergy in knowing the time and knowing what to do.

I actually just got back from the Philippines and while I was there my body clock didn't fully adjust and I tried to do it purposely so that when I get back I don't get jet lagged but the bottom line is I was waking up between 2 and 3 o'clock every single morning And because my body clock is off, sometimes I didn't know what time it is.

So if I want to figure out is it time to get up, is it time to try to go back to sleep, is it time to get up and begin to pray and have devotion, what's the first thing that I need to do?

And once I know the time, I know what to, what to do.

So there's synergy in knowing the time and knowing what to do.

So Jesus all throughout his life, he knew the time and he always knew what to do.

In fact we're told that the burden of Christ's preaching was a time is fulfilled.

Thus the gospel message as given by our Savior himself was based on prophecies.

So Jesus was never unaware of where he was in time, therefore he always knew exactly what he needed to be doing.

And we're gonna see how that ties into evangelism.

And the white says, no man knoweth the day, nor the hour of his coming, we are instructed and also required to know when it is near.

Now, let me just say this before I dive into some of the things that I'm gonna share.

I'm a firm believer that there's nothing external that Christ is waiting on.

In fact the last sign given in Matthew chapter 24 was the falling of the stars.

After the fall of the stars, after that is just warning and warning and warning, Matthew chapter 24.

And after that we're told that he's waiting for his elect to be elected.

We're told in Christ's object lesson 69 that Christ is waiting a long and desire for a manifestation of himself and his people.

Psalm 102 verse 16 says, when the Lord shall build up Zion He will appear in His glory.

So I believe with all my heart that it is not us waiting on Christ, it's Christ waiting on us.

Henry Linares

Norma Linares

Connecting to the World Through the Health Message

Our God and Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity that we have to be here, to continue to do your work, and we ask that your Holy Spirit will be in our midst, Father, and that the message that you want to be sent out to the people will be your message.

Help us to stay out of the way and to do exactly what you want us to do.

My name is Henry Linares and this is my wife Norma.

And we are the proud owners of Norma's Plant Based Cuisine, also known as Norma's Delight in Altamont Springs.

We happen to be inside the ABC, which is part of the conference building in Altamont Springs.

And we're here basically to tell you our story, which is a story of journey of faith with God, and it's really God's story.

It's not really our story, but it is God's story working through us.

And basically this journey started years and years ago without our knowledge.

We are both from outside of this country.

And I made the journey to the United States over 43 years ago.

The American dream was my goal, my objective.

And if you want the rest of the story, I can tell you later.

So that slide that you see there, you see us to the top and then you see our children right there with us.

And then at the very bottom you see our family all together.

Our children are 24 and 26 and they live here in Orlando.

My wife's theme or model has always been Jeremiah 29 11 which says, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

And what you're going to see throughout the presentation is that my objective was always IIII wanted to serve me.

And in my wife's side, she was always trying to serve others, trying to serve the Lord in different capacities, whatever capacity came her way.

And what you're going to see is that eventually those 2 kind of merged together to bring us to where we are today.

And it's a few points during the presentation, you might see me getting a little bit emotional, so I'm gonna apologize ahead of time, because this has nothing to do with my capabilities or my wise capabilities but with what God has to do when you make yourself available.

We understand that the role of the health message is more than just eating good food.

It says that through the ministry of LNG White, the Lord indicated that the gospel of health on the health message was to be the right arm of the Therese Angel's message.

I think all of you are familiar with that quote.

I think you all understand what that means.

But she also understood that God's people will be better equipped to spread the gospel if they were in good health.

Again, she told me 1 day, people need to eat good food.

How is that my problem, that other people have to eat good food?

So my passion was not to have other people eat good food.

I wanted to make sure that I was eating good food and she was doing a tremendous job of feeding me good food.

Ellen Joy also understood that the hearers of the gospel would more readily receive it if they experienced the healing power of the Creator's health, plan to ease their physical suffering.

So this is all going on in my wife's head while I am building my kingdom.

I'm building my kingdom and here's my wife thinking how to serve people and how to serve them through food, which to me just didn't make any sense.

I figure I build my career, I take care of my family and that's what God is calling me to do.

So we realize at some point that I was not, at least I realized this, that I was not paying attention to what she wanted.

So as we are progressing, and I'm about to pick my career, she starts talking about starting a restaurant.

And I'm thinking, why is she coming up with this?

What am I doing wrong that she wants to start a restaurant?

And The reality was that I was never trained to own a business.

I was trained as a business person, right?

I was at the peak of my career, I was making money for other people, but I was never interested in running my own business.

And I was actually afraid of it, to be honest.

My wife, on the other hand, her family's all very handy, very creative, They build things with their hands, and they were never really attached to a business per se, depending on them, but they depend on themselves a lot to build things and to create things.

I was gonna work for a company, I was gonna retire with that company, and that was the end of the story.

So she is now in this time running the ABC in Miami.

She deals with the food, and she deals with the customers and people buying books, etc, etc.

I'm an executive director of sales going all over from Mexico down to Argentina to the Caribbean and Central America.

And she's talking to her boss and saying, we want to put a cafe right here inside the ABC.

And all of a sudden, we decided that we're going to move to the Orlando area.

So again, I'm thinking of myself, I can work out of the house, so I asked her politely to give up the ABC job.

You can just transfer to the ABC in Orlando and get a job.

Because when she asked for a job transfer, they said there is no room here.

And she would come home destroyed, exhausted.

And I said, you don't need to be doing this.

Barbara Taylor