GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2012 Seminar: Leaders On Leadership

Israel Ramos

Organized Religion: Does God’s Organizational System Need a Revolution?

This message was presented at the GYC 2012 conference in Seattle, Washington.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Alright, welcome everyone to our seminar.

I know that there are a bunch of seminars that you can attend and so we're thankful that you're here with us today.

We're doing a seminar on leadership, and when they asked me to address the topic, I was thinking, man, everything that I have to share on leadership, I can probably share in like 2 or 3 minutes.

And they're giving me 6 hours, And so as we talked more, rather than addressing issues on leadership, I thought the best thing for me to do is to feature leaders that have impacted my life personally.

And so that's actually what we're doing throughout the whole of our seminar.

We're featuring leaders in various capacities and in various forms.

Normally, we have ideas of what a leader should look like, and so we're trying to provide as many varieties of leadership as possible.

At the same time, we wanna address some basic topics on leadership, and so the majority of our seminar is dealing with featuring leadership in an interview style but we have 1 or 2 lectures that we will be having and today is 1 of those times and so I want to introduce to you Pastor Cameron DeVacher, he's a pastor in Michigan.

And several months ago, we were doing a conference together for public university students, and I was really, really blessed by the messages that he presented dealing with youth leadership and with the leadership of the church.

And so I asked him to come and to present some of that here, because I thought everyone would value it as much as I did.

He will be presenting our topic today on church leadership.

Yesterday, we addressed the topic of women in leadership.

And we had a discussion with a panel of ladies from a variety of leadership experiences and that's what we addressed.

So you know the lectures will be recorded but the interview conversations will not be recorded That's just something that we will keep here and that's just to keep the interest local for the people here to provide GYC attendees a special experience and so that's just for your information.

Let's bow our heads for prayer and then after that I'll give the floor to Pastor DeBasio.

Father in heaven we're so thankful for another day of life that you've given to us and we're thankful Lord that in the mind of God there exists a model of leadership.

You use common people to lead your people but ultimately you are the leader of your church and you are the leader of each individual and so we ask Lord that as we look at biblical principles for leadership that you'd open our eyes, help us to learn something that will impact our ministry as a leader and impact your church as a whole.

Israel, as you mentioned, this is not going to be 1 of the interview style formats, and this is also not going to be a preaching format either.

I promise I will do my best to not run across the stage or anything like that.

This is kind of a geeky Bible study kind of thing.

And I hope that's honestly why you're here at GYC.

Obviously connecting with friends and hearing speakers, that's great, but I hope that you really, really want to know more stuff about God and His Word than you did before you got here.

Very simple goal, we want to study the Bible.

So I hope that you have your Bibles with you.

And I want to share with you some perspective on organized religion.

Now I know Towards the end we're going to get practical application.

A lot of this is just theological just structure, a lot of theory that will have practical application, but we need to have a framework in our minds as to what we're talking about.

Oftentimes, I'll just put this out there, Skeptics of organized religion have likely never seen it.

Most people who do not like organized religion, which is gonna be most people, say like, oh, organized religion, oh no, no, no.

And they might even say, I'm spiritual, I'm just not religious.

Or I like Christ, but I don't like the church, or structure, organization, hierarchy.

Those are bad, dirty words today in the general zeitgeist of our times and our psychological makeup of, as even inside the Christian church, we seem to have an inherent disdain for organized religion, or it seems to be that way.

But my premise today is that skeptics of organized religion have likely never seen it.

Instead, they've seen an accurate caricature of it.

Ty Gibson likes to tell the story of the time he sat on an airplane next, sat on an airplane.

He sat in an airplane next to a gentleman who obviously was not a believer.

Ty was reading his Bible and the guy kind of looks over at him and keeps seeing, you know, and basically says, so you're reading the Bible I see.

And so Ty turns around and says to him, and he tells him what he does, and he says, are you a Christian?

He's like, no, man, I don't believe in God.

To which Ty comes and says, Oh, that's great.

And you've probably heard the illustration before.

And they go, how are you studying the Bible being a teacher, being a pastor, and being an atheist?

And Ty says, you tell me, you describe for me the God you don't believe in.

And of course he goes down the line, oh the God that I don't believe in is this maniacal God who's destructive and genocidal and hateful and chauvinist, all these terrible things and he attributes it to God.

And Ty says, see I don't believe in that God either.

He gives an opportunity to say, like, the picture of God that you have in your head, I don't believe in that either.

And the same thing is true for organized religion.

I think when people say the term organized religion, they have a picture in their head that is inaccurate, and they're railing against that thing instead of the actual thing that it is.

So what I want to do today is kind of outline that God's work is always organized.

God's work is always organized and I'm going to give a history of how God has worked in an organized manner and towards the end bring it down to practical application, how we can be involved in his organization.

Oh, that's almost killed the whole thing.

This is where we're going to do our Bible study.

Of course, God's structure and organization can be seen right off the bat.

I mean, if you go through, and we're not going to take a lot of time to go through every detail, but some things we're going to highlight specifically.

Nature itself speaks to a God of order and not a God of chaos.

In fact, the most accurate time piece in the universe is the universe.

God worked in order in creation, for which we should be glad.

First day, second day, third day had their proper sequence in order.

If God had created man on day 2, we'd be dead by day 3.

We had to have these things in place first and God works in structure and then he gives instructions of how to operate that.

For instance, he made the mechanism of the human body.

And if you go to Genesis chapter 1, you'll see there when he makes man and creates him in his image, then he says, here's the food you're supposed to eat to operate this thing.

He gives instruction of how the thing works.

His organization is part of his essence, is part of his being, it's what he does.

Of course, Noah and the Ark, you can look at how he organized the building of the Ark for the salvation of humanity and the animals, and how long it took, and how he raised up different people just the right times.

Chad Bernard

Michael Hasel

Andy Im

Alanna Knapp

Youth Professionals: An Interview with a Variety of Youth Leaders, Part 1

I'm really excited about this discussion that we have and about the panel that we have today to start us off.

We'll start with the word of prayer, then I'll introduce him, and then we'll talk about the topic for this hour.

Our Heavenly Father, we're so thankful that You've given us, Lord, the ability to have a church full of leaders that have a desire to reflect you to the world.

And as we feature this panel today, we ask that you would ultimately be the 1 that shines forth from this conversation and that you would be the 1 that is imprinted in each of our minds.

Be with our time together now, help it to be enjoyable, fruitful, and also educational.

When you think about a leader, a youth leader, the very first picture that comes to your mind sometimes, at least it does for me, many times is a youth director or a youth pastor.

But when I look at my experience growing up, perhaps the greatest impact on me as a young person was my teacher.

And so what I'm doing today is we're talking about leadership not in the context of pastoral youth ministry or a youth director but in the context of educational leaders.

And so I have before us a panel of presenters and guests who represent that sphere.

He's a professor of archaeology and many other things at Southern.

She's been working in public campus ministry now for more than 10 years.

And she's a graduate from Michigan Tech in the Upper Peninsula.

We've had the opportunity to work for many, many years together.

And she's made a huge impact in the area of public campus ministry, and so we have her.

He's a lot older than I was, though, than I am.

And, Let's just make sure that I was in the seminary and you were in the undergraduate.

And now he's a professor, an instructor at Weimar College.

And then we also have Chad Bernard, who has been in education for some time now.

Before that, he was at Lansing Academy, so he's been a principal for several years and a teacher.

So he's wearing his Weimar Academy shirt.

Thank you guys so much for coming and for joining us here this morning.

First of all, I guess we can start off, in your mind, you guys are, I consider these, the people up here to be great leaders, because each of them has impacted my life personally, and I can actually go and tell you any stories of how I've been personally impacted.

But the very first question that I'd like to ask leaders is, who in your mind is a leader and why?

When you think of a leader, someone that maybe has led you, or a leader from scripture, who's a leader and why in your mind?

I'm gonna take him first before somebody else says it.

Greatest teacher the world has ever seen.

He had the ability of taking anyone wherever they were in their life.

First he would meet their needs, win their trust, and then say, hey, let me show you something better and take them there.

And really, when you're working with people young and old, that's where it's at.

Meeting them where they're at, loving them, winning their trust, and saying, hey, let's go to a better place.

When I think of a leader, I think of the Apostle Paul.

And first and foremost, because he was a soul winner.

And when you read the Spirit of Prophecy, specifically in the context of Paul, he was 1 that did not consider ease or comfort, but he went out there and did the work of God.

And so when I think of leader, outside of Jesus, I think of, of course, Paul.

If anyone, by the way, if anyone has any questions, we do have Erwin in the back.

You can just raise your hand, pull them aside, and then at any time, you guys can interrupt us and we can come right into the discussion.

So someone who faces challenges, difficulties, doesn't run away from them.

Jesus, the ultimate example of leadership, someone who takes someone from where they're at and transforms them or helps them become something beyond what they were even capable of imagining.

Elena, what comes to your mind when you think about a leader?

The first person that comes to mind is Moses.

I was the outside of Christ who is the ultimate teacher.

I think the reason why I really appreciate Moses' leadership is because at the moment when Israel really forsake God in breaking the commandments and going into idolatry, he said, you know, blot my name out.

He took that failure of the people upon himself, and I think as a leader that is so important in the people that we're mentoring and that we're ministering to, to when they make a mistake or when they fail in any form, that we take that upon ourselves and bring that to the Lord and intercede for them.

That's very powerful because normally when you think about a leader, you think about someone who's successful instead of someone who's willing to accept or take responsibility for failure.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, I was thinking each 1 of those were outstanding.

Probably another person that would come to mind a biblical character would be Joseph in my mind.

Joseph was a person, in my mind, what made him powerful was that he was faithful in little things, and God was able to give him trust in great things because of that.

And no matter where he was, he went through huge hardships.

I'm sure he struggled with major questions as he was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in Egypt.

But whether he was in Potiphar's house, whether he was in the dungeon, whether he was in Pharaoh's palace, he was faithful to God in all of those places.

And, you know, when you read the Spirit of Prophecy, when you read the Bible about Joseph, it just, you know, we all make mistakes, but there's not much that is there about Joseph making those mistakes because of his faithfulness to God.

And as long as we remain faithful to him, God is faithful to us as well.

And I think of all these men who became great.

I think of Joseph, I think of Daniel, and I think 1 of the key characteristics of these individuals is that they didn't seek intentionally to become leaders.

They didn't seek a high position, but God placed them there.

And I think we need to recognize that because I call it when I teach the Mark Finley syndrome.

Every pastor evangelist wants to be a Mark Finley, wants to be a David Asherick.

And I think we need to throw that aside and say we need to become like Jesus.

And before there is glorification, there is the cross.

Points & Promises: Personal Thoughts and Reflections on Leadership

Heavenly Father, as we close this seminar up, we ask that you would be with us 1 more time and that through the experience and the history of GYC, you would give us a glimpse of leadership that is dependent not on man but on God.

And that you would inspire us to attempt greater things for you than we have up to this point in our experience.

This we pray in Jesus' name, for his sake, amen.

What I wanted to do is share with you a little bit of the history of GYC.

I was in the audience and I heard the question being asked, how many of you are experiencing GYC for the first time and I saw that the majority of the hands went up.

And I realized that I'm becoming more and more the minority as far as the group of people that have attended every single GYC.

And I mean, is there anyone here that has attended more than 5 GYCs?

So what I wanted to do was to talk a little bit about the history of GYC from my perspective, and then from that draw out lessons that I've learned along the way in regard to leadership.

It's an interesting thing and it's a challenging thing to talk about leadership because it automatically assumes in some way, shape, or form that you view yourself as a leader.

And to even begin to think of that has always been a challenging thing for me.

And so that's what I want to share with you, my experience.

I hope that for the people that have been able to attend the previous workshops, I hope it's been a helpful thing for you to be able to see the display of a variety of leaders.

That was what my goal was, to display a variety of leadership, people in leadership, and I hope that this will kind of be the last thing that ties it all together.

GYC started off when I was, or I should say the building blocks of GYC started off when I was a sophomore or junior in high school, a junior in high school, 15, 16, 17 years old.

I was in a consumer math course, which was basically a high school level personal finance class.

And we were sitting in class, and the teacher had us do a project in which we had to balance a fake checkbook.

It was like playing a more sophisticated version of the game of life.

And so the teacher would come around and he'd have a hat, and you'd draw from a hat different papers, and the paper would say, all right, you need to pay $50 in gas, you need to pay this, you need to do that.

The friend of mine that was sitting next to me, his name was Jojo, is the first time, by the way, that I've seen him here in over 10, 15 years.

And we were sitting next to each other and part of the thing that we had to do for our personal finance class was to pay tithe and offerings and to make tax-deductible donations because we were gonna get taxed at the end of the class, or at the end of the school year or whatever.

And so he looked at me, he knew I wanted to be a pastor, and so he said, hey, I'm gonna give you my donations so that I can get a tax-deductible receipt.

And so he said I can't write out a fake check to Israel Ramos.

And so he invented what he called the IR Mission Foundation.

It started off as a joke And that's how it continued for the rest of my entire high school career.

Somehow, I don't know what happened, but it just caught wind.

People started talking about the IR Mission, probably because we play fought a lot about who he was and who I was.

And it was just a complicated story, but it just caught on.

It caught on to such a weird degree that I started, I made up a logo for the IR Mission Foundation.

And the I was a little figure man with his hands in the air holding a Bible.

And I would just write the IR Mission Foundation and go back to my academy.

And to this very day, we did a lot of graffiti.

To this very day, you can see cemented there on the school block the IR Mission Foundation.

Long story short, my friend in consumer math class abandoned me and he sued me for embezzlement and so forth, and that was the end of my two-year IR Mission Foundation experience.

Fast forward that to college, went on a mission trip to the Philippines.

And I experienced some of the most life transforming experiences in my entire life.

I was 18 years old And when we arrived there, and I was there on a three-month journey, and when we arrived there, the conference president met us in a small village called Magaleon.

And he said, I'm going to drop you off in this village, and you're going to do mission work for 3 months.

And that was pretty much the extent of the information that we got.

Let me introduce you to the head elder of the church.

I don't think he knew what to do, we didn't know what to do, so he took us to a church member's house.

I don't remember the lady's name, but she, and I don't remember why she told us, why she confided in us this information, but she said that she'd been sick for some time with asthma, and she asked if we could help her.

I was 18 years old, my friend was maybe 19, 20 max.

We thought, what in the world are we gonna do to help her out and what makes her think that we know anything about medicine or about asthma even, right?

And I don't know why we said yes or how we said yes, but we found ourselves, if you fast-forward the story, we found our house ourselves in our home with a little book that someone had given to us before we left that had a picture from the 1970s and it said, the title was Home Remedies.

And we opened the book up and we didn't know what to do, so we just came across a chapter, hot and cold compresses.

And so that's what we did, we just did a hot and cold compress on her.

We got like some boiling hot water and some lukewarm water that they considered cold and we just dipped it in there and put it on there.

And I mean, we just followed the instructions.

Someone also gave us a little bottle of eucalyptus oil, and 1 time I put it in my mouth and I started coughing.

And so just for an extra kick, we sprayed it in her mouth, and she started coughing.

And it was just for effect, make her think she was being healed.

The next day, we're walking down the street.

And she says, I've been healed from my asthma.

And so I'm thinking to myself, nobody say anything.

And I'm thinking either she did not have asthma, or she's not healed, but don't ruin the surprise, right?

And we never thought anything of it, but this lady went throughout the whole village telling people that 2 American doctors were in town.

And for the rest of our 3 months, Most of the day from sunrise to sunset, almost every single day, our schedule was just packed with visitation after visitation after visitation, either giving Bible studies or treating medical illnesses.

It got so bad that doctors from neighboring towns came and they said, hey, can we shadow you guys?

And people were like, no, they're just being humble.

I just graduated from high school a couple of months ago.

We got this home remedy book, you can look at it too, I promise you, and we were afraid we were gonna get killed.

During those 3 months, I can't tell you all the stories because there's too many and they are way too powerful to just go over very quickly, but during that 3 month time period, I'm sure we saw more than 100 people that had some type of illness.

And out of all those people that I can remember to this day, all except 1 were completely healed of incredible illnesses that we did not even know how to detect.

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Series

GYC 2012 Seminar: Leaders On Leadership

Organized Religion: Does God’s Organizational System Need a Revolution?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Organized Religion: Does God’s Organizational System Need a Revolution?

1h

Youth Professionals: An Interview with a Variety of Youth Leaders, Part 1

43m

Points & Promises: Personal Thoughts and Reflections on Leadership

43m

Sound Doctrine