iShare 2013: Everywhere

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Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

iShare 2013 Seminar:  Mission to All - Sharing Christ in Any Setting

Debbie Beihl

Alison Geslani

Medical Evangelism

Eric Isaia

Reaching the Choir

The seminar is about to start right now, so for those of you who are going to stay in here, I invite you if you could just quiet down, we're going to get started with the message, the third breakout session of this three-part series.

How many of you guys have been blessed so far at iShare?

And I'm excited to share with you guys today this message.

For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Eric Isaiah.

I'm 18 years old, and I currently just graduated from a high school in Loma Linda.

I went to an Adventist Academy, and so I'm planning on going to Souls West next year, Biola College, so it's gonna be a really exciting experience.

But I actually grew up going to an Adventist school, and I went to an Adventist school from kindergarten up to 12th grade, K through 12.

My whole life I've been in an Adventist school system.

And so because of this, I think that at least, I wouldn't say I'm completely qualified, but I would say I have some sort of an experience with the Adventist school system.

And so that's why I wanna share with you guys a message that's entitled Reaching the Choir that directly focuses on how you can witness in an Adventist school context.

Like if you are a student who may be going to an Adventist academy next year or even an Adventist college, how can you take your faith, your youth rush, or your iShare experience and share it in that context.

I actually got converted when I was a sophomore at Loma Linda Academy.

And when I was converted, I had about 2 years to work in that school and really try to make as much of a change as I could.

And so throughout this seminar I'm going to share with you guys some of the things I did, some of the tactics I used to try and witness as many friends as possible.

And hopefully it's practical and simple enough that all of you guys could grasp them or maybe share them with a friend who is in an Adventist school and they could also replicate that idea.

And so I want to go over real quick, I'm going to have a little overview.

If you guys are taking notes, really 3 simple steps.

First step number 1 is forming a core group and we're going to go in depth what these mean in just a minute, so don't worry if you don't get it just yet.

But forming a core group, step number 2, get involved, and step number 3, planning activities.

And I believe that when you follow these 3 steps, you can be more effective in witnessing in your school.

And this can definitely give you a lot of ideas of things you guys can do that's worked for me and hopefully by God's grace will work for you guys as well.

But before we get into the seminar and just look at it, let's just bow our heads for a quick word of prayer.

Ask God to be with us and ask the Spirit to bless us in this time of study, let's pray.

Lord, we wanna come before you and just thank you so much for giving us this chance, Lord, to go through a seminar and a topic, Lord, that I know a lot of young people really are curious about.

I know that I wish I would have been able to have someone share with me some ideas I could do in my school.

But Lord, I know that you have taught me and some of my friends who have been with me how to witness in this context.

And so I pray, Lord, that as I try to communicate my methods to some of my friends here, that they would really be able to grasp them and make it practical Lord.

I pray that they would come alive to them and I pray that your spirit would be in the midst of us right now teaching us from your word.

Please Lord as we are about to open up this seminar just be by our side and let your presence fill this room.

For I ask this prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

In 2011, I had just finished the first iShare conference, actually.

It was my first summer campus thing and I was really, really excited, okay?

If you guys think I get excited as you guys are going to see me in this seminar, you guys should have seen how excited I was.

I went to my school and I was like, alright, I had 1 friend, PJ, and I was like, alright man, we're going to go to this school and we're going to just witness to everybody we see.

And so we just ran into that school and we were like, all right, the first day we went talking to this friend, we're like, hey man, God changed our lives, we're sharing them our testimony, went to the next person, next person, and just jumped around from a lot, a lot of people.

And while we did get a lot of interest, I guess you could say, while we did get some response at first, it didn't seem as effective to jump around from person to person to person really, really quickly and just share with a bunch of people.

We kind of had this mindset that when we'd approach our school, that we would have to witness to it as a corporate group or witnessed everybody all at once and change everyone in our school all at once.

And when we tried this method at first, it did get some interest, but it didn't really work because we never really followed up and spent time with those people who had that interest.

And so I think that, especially when trying to learn how to witness in an Adventist school context, we need to realize this importance of forming a core group of people.

I mean that when you go back to your school, if you have the desire or the fire that maybe Youth Thresh has given you to go out and begin sharing with a bunch of people, that when you go do that, when you share with those, that you find those who have that interest.

And when you find those who have that interest, you begin capitalizing on them.

You choose out of that vast multitude of students and friends that you want to witness to, and you find those with the most potential and the most influence and who seem the most interested, and you begin capitalizing and spending time with them.

You see, it's really important to realize that working like Jesus did, as trying to help people to become disciples by working on a specific group of people will be much more effective than trying to reach everybody all at once.

And I think that Jesus, like I was just alluding to, had this same tactic as well.

And he's an example that we can always trust and follow after.

And I believe that Christ's example in witnessing to the world was very, very simple.

We're asking this next question, how did Jesus witness to the whole world?

Because just like we wanna witness to our whole school, Jesus also had a mission to witness to the whole world.

But the question is, did Jesus go out right when he came down and did he just begin doing everything all by himself and began trying to witness to everybody all at once?

No, in fact, most of Jesus' time spent on earth was actually with a core group of people.

And in Luke chapter 6, which I want to have be the first Bible text for this seminar, in Luke chapter 6 verse 13, I hope you guys brought your Bibles, we're going to turn there really quickly, we find an example where Jesus actually does this.

And this is a passage where Jesus has a whole multitude of disciples in front of him.

But he realizes the importance of following this tactic of a core group.

And notice what Jesus does when he has all these people laid out in front of him.

And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples.

And then the verse goes on to say, and of them he chose how many?

See, Jesus has a vast majority here of disciples to choose from.

Now, did Jesus want to witness to all of them?

Jesus wanted to witness to the whole group all at once.

But Jesus realized the importance of choosing a specific 12 out of that whole vast multitude and then begin spending time with them.

You see, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I'm speaking about a core group, is finding those few people in your school who have interests, whether it just be like 2 or 3, but finding those people and beginning to build that friendship with them, begin building that core group relationship with them, begin training them just like Jesus did, and we can have the same result as him.

Notice this, after Jesus chooses them, he does something else.

And this is the 2 things we're gonna look at in this section of forming a core group.

Not only does Jesus choose his disciples, choose that core group, but look what he did in verse 17 after he begins giving us all the names in the following verses.

Verse 17 says this, And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of the people out of all of Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases." Jesus takes that core group of disciples that he just chose, and what does he do with them?

He begins going out into that land, and he begins going out to actually train them at how he would witness.

Jesus goes out and begins healing people, doing healing various diseases that they had, And he takes his disciples along with him.

And so you see there's 2 parts of Jesus' ministry here.

He chooses his core group, but then through his example, he begins to do what?

And that's the 2 things I want to look at in this section of forming a core group.

Not only do we need to choose those people who have potential in our school, who we find that interest in, but we also need to do the second thing and that is train them.

This is actually about a friend of mine and of course like I said here the point of this that we can apply is that we need to find those with interest and begin forming a core group and train them, but I wanna share with you guys a story about a friend.

Now, my classmates are laughing, or those who are new to us in this program know who he is, But it's 1 of my friends by the name of Andrew.

Now, like I said, I approached school trying to win this as a whole, but I realized that that wasn't as effective.

And I began looking for those who had interest and potential.

And Andrew was someone who I saw that in.

Andrew was a kid who I was never friends with.

In fact, I don't think I liked him very much before I converted.

But I saw him and I realized that he was interested as we were sharing with him our newfound faith.

And as we began sharing with Andrew, we realized that we need to spend more time.

He began kind of doing the same thing that Jesus did with his disciples, kind of coming with us and seeing how we would give Bible studies, coming with us and seeing how we would witness.

And when he continued to come with us and to see how we did this thing, he became interested and wanted to learn how he could do it as well.

Andrew began growing this desire in his heart to witness to his whole school as well.

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Series

iShare 2013 Seminar: Mission to All - Sharing Christ in Any Setting

Reaching the Choir

Transcript

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