GYC SE 2012: Ultimate Purpose

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GYC Southeast

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Leadership

Mark Howard

I Just Wanna Be a Sheep

Father in heaven, I want to thank you for the Sabbath day, and I want to thank you for the privilege we have of coming to worship together and to get a clearer understanding on your calling for us in our life.

And I pray Lord that you would bless our time as we open your word and study along the lines of this ultimate purpose that you have for us.

We ask it and pray it in the name of Jesus and for his sake, Amen.

Okay, how many of you were at Sabbath school this morning?

Okay, I'm gonna spring off of what we talked about in Sabbath school, the idea of being a disciple of Christ.

We have lost the concept today that a disciple is something everybody is called to be.

You're not a follower of Christ if you're not a disciple of Christ and a Christian, we talked about being the same things.

And that calling includes giving the gospel to the world.

And I want to tell you that I shared this morning that statistically, Christians in North America, 2% of them share their faith on a regular basis.

And 1 of the main reasons that people don't share their faith on a regular basis, probably 1 of the top reasons that people give is the, it's not my gift answer.

And I'm not going to ask if you've said it before.

It's not my gift, and that's why I don't, I can't give Bible studies, I can't go and tell people about, I just, it's not my gift.

Well, I want to clarify something for you.

Number 1, There are 4 spiritual gifts lists in the Bible, 4 of them.

In every list, it has to do with corporate church involvement.

In other words, individually we're followers of Jesus Christ, right?

Individually, you have made a personal choice to follow Jesus.

The spiritual gifts lists are given in connection to the corporate church.

In other words, God has given gifts to help you work in the context of church, But outside of whatever you're doing in the church, you're called to be a personal witness for Christ.

Witnessing is not on any of the gift lists.

I like to tell people it's standard equipment.

Like, When I bought my car, there were options.

I could get power windows and power door locks, and I could get built-in GPS and all these things.

But it came with steering wheel and tires, right?

According to scripture, witnessing is standard equipment.

It's something that the Lord expects of all of us.

And, you know, people say, well, I don't feel comfortable being in that situation of helping, you know, to lead people and give studies and that kind of thing.

And I guess I could ask you the question, how many think, how many, what percentage of people do you think feel comfortable in actually sharing their faith?

That too, you know, why do you think there's only 2 percent of Christians?

How is it that a Christian, a person says, yeah I'm a Christian, I'm a follower of Christ, oh great.

So Christ went out and his whole life was about witnessing and your life is about only 2% of us.

I'll tell you how it happens because people have assumed that if God wanted you to witness it would just come naturally and you would feel comfortable with it.

But let me turn you to something in the Bible here, an idea in Matthew 10.

Now Matthew 10 is a chapter where Jesus sends out his disciples.

I want you to look at Matthew 10 with me.

Matthew chapter 10, And we're looking at verse 28.

And again, he has just sent out his disciples, Matthew 10 verse 28.

The Bible says here, and do not fear those who, what?

Do not fear those who kill the body, right?

But fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hellfire, right?

Now here's a question that we need to ask ourselves.

What kind of person, do not fear, what's another way of saying that?

What kind of person do you say don't be afraid to?

The disciples, and he's sending them out to witness, and he tells them not to be afraid.

I thought when you went out to witness, if it was your gift, it was just natural for you.

I thought there was no fear involved, but Jesus is very clear.

They were timid, they were afraid, but they went because Jesus called them to go.

So the idea of sharing our faith being a spiritual gift is not something that's scriptural.

And I say that because as long as people keep falling back on that concept and that mindset of the witnessing being a spiritual gift, they won't do it.

They'll say, well that makes me feel uncomfortable and it's not my gift.

And I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but we have an abundance of counsel that tells us that if we don't engage in that work, it's the only work that prepares us for heaven.

A participation with Christ in service is the only work that gives us a fitness for participation with him in his glory.

That's almost verbatim out of the book education.

It's, let's use the words of scripture, Matthew 11, 28, you know the verse where Jesus says, all you who are weary and heavy laden, come unto me and I'll give you what?

Take my, take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

So Jesus says if you need rest come to me you need to take my yoke and learn of me.

Your oxen, your draft animals, they wear the yoke.

The animals don't wear the yoke when they're resting.

Jesus says, if you want spiritual rest, you've got to work with me.

If you want to learn of me, you've got to work with me.

Ministry of Attendance

Okay, we're going to get started again here.

The number 1 key to effective leadership, this is not going to be what you think.

In fact, I really wrestled with doing this the last session.

But I thought you can talk about being a leader and if people don't see themselves as leaders they're not gonna wanna know the number 1 thing you gotta know as a leader.

But I'm just gonna tell you that this this idea of leadership, well I'm gonna comment on it after I pray.

I wanna have a word of prayer to begin with.

So I'm going to kneel and ask God to bless our time if you'll bow your heads with me please.

Father in heaven I do want to thank you again for this Sabbath day and the opportunity we have to come together and study your word and meditate upon your call on our lives.

Lord bless us now in the name of Jesus we ask and pray, amen.

I want to reiterate what I said last time in the last session that, and what I said this morning, that there's a lot of concern in the Christian community, and this is beyond the Adventist community, on the missing population of the 18 to 29 year old crowd.

And I really believe a lot of it has to, there are a lot of factors, so I mean I can make a generalization here, but I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact, and I'm going to use David Kinnaman's word, the president of Barna Research Group, that we've not taught the young people any, we've not educated them in life after youth group.

And The fact of the matter is, I've got a...

1 of my church members right now has taken a year off from missionary service, was a student at 1 of our universities, is a student at 1 of our universities, and came to me in his first year and he said to me, Pastor, I forget what I had preached on, I'd made some kind of emphasis on our involvement, and he said, Pastor, I have to tell you, I'm not really involved in church.

I said, well, tell me what the problem is.

He said, I go to the university, it's a university church, it's this big massive church, I don't know what to do or how to get involved.

Of course, he goes to a church that's a smaller church where he comes from.

And the fact of the matter is many young people, Adventist young people, let me just put it this way.

We don't have a lot of mega churches in the Adventist church.

And so here come Adventist kids and they go from home in that little country church with 50 members or less, 75 percent of them with blue hair, and they get into, and I'm not talking about dyed blue hair like people do today, but I'm talking about, you know, that shade, that lovely shade of gray that the older generation has, and that sleepy little country church, and they come into a church setting where everything is entertainment driven, geared to them, so they have a rockin' church service with all kinds of things to grab their attention only to go Back, they don't sing anything out of the hymnal, and I'm being a little bit over generalizing here But I'm going to tell you it's not too much too far off the mark then they go back to their little country church and they say, they go for a week if they go and then they stop going altogether.

I've seen it not only in the college age, I've seen it in the academy age and I told them, I told my young church member, I said, listen, here's the problem you're having.

You have been coddled and catered to every to all the way through high school and what happens is of course you got pass finders, you got camper ease and everything else then you turn 18 years old and boom you're out of pass finders and if you're not in college Then there you are in your sleepy little country church and nothing is relevant anymore.

We talk about young people being the church of tomorrow.

And the young people say, well, if we're leaders of tomorrow, I guess we'll come back tomorrow.

You need to be leaders of today and we've not cultivated that.

We've lost this segment and again this is not just in the Adventist church, this is in Christianity in general, besides the fact that our culture is constantly competing for your attention.

And our culture is very entertainment driven.

I'm going to tell you, when you've got people catering to you to entertain you all the time, then to come into some little country church with 50 members just isn't all that interesting.

And we are sadly lacking the missionary spirit.

When I say missionary spirit, For some of our young people that do catch the missionary spirit, they say, oh yeah, I'm going over to Mexico.

You go around to our little churches around and what do we need?

We need young adult missionaries who will go into that church with their energy and excitement and work to build up the work of God.

You go back to the early church of Acts, you see thousands baptizing a day, but I'll tell you, you're not going to find an entertainment driven mega church there.

In fact, the Bible says when they all started gathering together in Acts chapter 8, God allowed persecution to come on the church and spread them all over the place, because it wasn't His design that they all get together in a big megachurch, and they just, hey Lord, here we are to worship.

I said, Pastor, you know, this talk about mission and everything else, isn't it just about worshiping God, coming into his house and basking in his presence and worshiping him?

So I want you to entertain the thought with me for a minute.

How many of you have younger brothers and sisters?

Okay, imagine your younger brother or sister was kidnapped.

Or let's not just say kidnapped, let's just say they are missing.

They were supposed to come home from school 1 day, didn't come home.

And initial thought is, whoa, you know, and I don't know what the curfew rules are, and what the rules for this, that, and the other.

Maybe they went to a friend's house and there could be all these things processed, but day 1 passes, day 2, day 3, still no word.

Day 4, mom and dad haven't heard from them, you haven't heard from them, their friends haven't heard from them.

Anybody feel a little bit panicked at that?

This is your child and you have heard nothing.

And to make it a little clearer, maybe your younger sibling is 18.

So let's say the 10-year-old, you know, the 8-year-old.

Nobody has, at this point, nobody's found them.

And your friends hear about it, and your friends come over to visit you at your house they know you're feeling down so they come in your house and they say well we just want to come in here and tell you how much we love you and how you know you're just a we just want to tell you you're such a kind person, a loving person, and a generous person.

We just, we thought you would feel better if we told you that.

Now, in this state of mind, what are you going to think, what are you going to say to your friends?

What do you think it means to God when we're going to come in his house and talk about how great he is, we're just going to praise him and we're going to talk about how great he is and how much how loving he is and how much we love him for loving us, but we're not going to do a thing to help him find his lost children.

You cannot worship, my friends, if you don't have a passion for the lost.

You can't worship a God whose whole existence is passion for the lost.

And I'm afraid that some people, they'll throw those kind of things out there like, well, let's just worship God.

It's like the man who Jesus told that we ought to go and don't throw a supper for all your friends who can benefit from it, but go throw a supper for the people who can't benefit.

And then there was a guy who speaks up and he says, hey, you know what?

Blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom of God.

In other words, let's shove that conviction off.

He knew he wasn't throwing a supper for the people that...

He knew he wasn't throwing a supper for the people that, blessed is he who eats bread, or the other man, right, with the neighbor Jesus talking about being neighborly and he says, well who really is your neighbor?

He's saying get off the conviction, okay?

Because he knew he wasn't doing to his neighbors what he should have been doing to his neighbors.

Cultivating the Active Virtues

Heavenly Father, again we thank you for the privilege we have of being called into your service and we pray Lord that you would bless our time now in this final breakout session of the day and Father as well as the other breakout sessions and this evening's meeting We look forward to it and decisions that have been made through this week.

I pray for your blessing upon those as well as you're seeking to revive and revitalize your people.

We ask and pray this all in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

You know, when they asked me to come and speak, I'll just be honest with you, it's interesting when you're asked to speak on different things and they give you a topic and I don't know, this is the second time this has happened to me.

I went to in Michigan We have a men's conference, the Men of Faith, that they do every year, and they ask me to speak on leadership, which is just not what I would have chosen to speak on.

And then when they asked me to come here, they asked me to speak on leadership, which it's not that I'm, as those of you who have been in here, I think this is vital.

It's just that for too many of our people, it's not something that they see as vital.

We'd rather hear something about some sensational, doctrinal controversy that's going on in the church than we would hear about the need to step up and be leaders.

And it's something that is not, as I mentioned, not just for the 18 to 29 generation, although I think that's key.

I think we need more of the college-age generation that's stepping up and taking leadership in our church.

But by far, many people have just withdrawn to where we attend Sabbath services.

For many, Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath-keeping has become a two-hour excursion, if 2 hours.

I've mentioned already, Sabbath school gets cut out.

And for many people, it's just a pop in the back door and pop out and that's not God's design for keeping the Sabbath holy.

So we've talked about the importance of leadership, and in our first seminar, we talked about how God has not called us just to be sheep, just to be followers, although we are to be followers.

But we're also being in the process of being groomed as leaders in the cause of God, and we see that through scripture.

And then in our last session, we talked about the importance of attendance.

You will never be enthused about something that you're not a part of.

And a hit and miss attendance at anything in the church will not connect you with the cause of God.

You know, and I mentioned to you coming to, in the last session, you come to a prayer meeting, there's 3 people there, so you come, and it's just you and 3 other people and it may feel awkward at first and you may feel like there's nothing big going on here but if you stick with that and you come week after week I'm going to tell you what you're going to be blessed even with those 3 people there when you get past that initial mindset but God's desire is so many more of his people would be there.

How many of you are aware of the statements from the pen of Ellen White that says the prayer meeting is as the pulse is to the body?

What she says is the attendance at our prayer meetings is like the pulse is to the body.

Now if you have 150 members and you have 3 people attending prayer meeting, if you compare that to a pulse, That doesn't look real good, does it?

And that's not some little old lady that said that.

That's the Lord who spoke that to his people to try to help us to realize that sometimes some of the things that we deem important are not the most important, and sometimes the things we deem as unimportant may be the most vital.

And so any time the church is moving forward with something, we should be a part of it.

Maybe even more importantly than that, some people communicate this to me.

I've talked about going, and I'm assuming that there's a positive church and a positive prayer meeting where it's Adventist.

The fact of the matter is I've been to a number of our churches that they're not Adventist.

They're Adventist, you know what I'm saying?

But what they're teaching and things that go on are not what we believe is a world church.

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about there.

And so then people say, well, I don't feel comfortable going.

You're never going to change what needs to be changed in the church if you're not a part of the church.

So a lot of people think, well, this is what happens with a lot of independent ministries is they say, I'm just fed up with the church, it's so apostate, so I'm just going to leave.

And they jump ship and they think they're going to have some kind of influence on the outside.

And so we just need to be part of the work of God.

Now this afternoon I want to talk about some biblical principles of leadership.

And I want to start out by delving into something in the whole great controversy scenario that plays into, leadership is an overgeneralization, it actually plays into every 1 of our experiences in our spiritual lives.

And what I'm going to talk about this afternoon is something that if you can grasp what I'm sharing here, your spiritual life will thrive if you grasp the principle here.

I want to start out by just talking about the battle, the controversy, the war in heaven.

And in fact, take your Bibles and go to the book of Revelation with me.

We're going to the end of the chapter, verse 16, right toward the end, and we're going to read through chapter 14, not all the chapter, but just, we're going to read through that chapter break.

You understand that the original text did not have verses and chapter breaks, and you'll see the significance of that as we read through from chapter 13, verse 16.

Now we're talking about the Antichrist power at the end of time, and the false prophet, two-horned lamb-like beast at the end of time, and the mark of the beast, and it says in verse 16, I want you to notice carefully, he causes all both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their what?

Right hand or on their foreheads, and that no 1 may buy or sell except 1 who has the mark of the beast, I'm sorry, the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom, Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.

Then I looked, and behold a lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144, 000, having his what?

His father's name." and some of your translations may say something different there.

His name and his father's name, which is another manuscript reading of that, written on their foreheads.

Now I want you to notice what's happening here.

This is a, there's only 2 groups at the end of time.

There's 2 churches, the true and the false.

And so you have these 2 groups and they're contrasted here.

You come to the end of Revelation 13 and here's the group that's associated with the beast power.

They get a mark on their forehead or it says in the text there in 13 that no 1 may buy or sell except 1 who has the mark or the what?

Now tell me something, those of you who've done a little bit of study, you don't have to do a really a whole lot in Scripture to find out what name is significant of.

When you read the word name or when you read the name in the Bible, what's that indicating?

Let me ask it this way and this is to jog your memory.

Back in Exodus chapter 33 and 34, Moses asked God a question.

And the Lord says, Moses, I'm going to make all my goodness pass before you.

And I'm going to proclaim the name of the Lord.

How many of you know what glory means when you're reading it in that, what is it?

And we know that because then when Moses says the word glory, but God doesn't say the word glory, God says the word goodness, right?

Show me your glory and he says, okay I'll make my goodness pass before you and I'll proclaim my name.

And I want you to understand that the goodness, the glory, and the name are all synonymous and they all are symbolic or have reference to character.

In Bible times, names meant something, right?

When you named somebody something, they would say, you know, because the Lord has done thus and so, Jacob had his vision of the dream, the latter going up to heaven, and he woke up and he said, surely the Lord is in this place.

So he named the place Bethel, which meant house of God.

And it will say that throughout the scriptures, you see that in the Old Testament, they named, they'll make some proclamation, therefore they named the place, and that name had significance, meaning.

And when we're talking about it in the context of Exodus and the name of God, we're talking about the character.

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GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Leadership

Cultivating the Active Virtues

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Parts

I Just Wanna Be a Sheep

58m

Ministry of Attendance

43m

Cultivating the Active Virtues

58m

Sound Doctrine