GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

David Kim

01-The Need

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

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

We're just getting started right on time, but you'll catch up.

Also, we'd like to welcome all of the folks who tried to get into David Asherick's.

You know, the overflow effect is a wonderful thing.

So, clearly the Lord meant for you to be here and not over there.

I think for those of you who heard last night, I'm a corporate executive, but really the way I live my life today is as a Bible worker focused on witnessing to the wealthy, worldly, and well-educated.

And as you'll see, this is a real mission field for those of us who are in the 3 Angels message and have that understanding.

So I just thank the Lord for each and every 1 of you being here.

It is, and I hope and I pray, in fact, that this will be a rewarding and valuable seminar for you.

So, before we go any further, let's just open with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we come before You because we want to share the gospel with this under-reached group.

Lord, each of us here has people in our lives who can only be touched through us.

And Lord, we want to be best equipped and best available to you for that sanctified use.

Lord, please be with your humble servant and anoint my lips that everything shared here would be directly from you.

And please send the Holy Spirit to be upon each heart, each person here, to receive, to have understanding, and to have conviction about what they ought to do with this information.

I thank you and I praise you in the name of Jesus.

As we get going here, I just wanted to start with a few questions for you.

First I'd like to know how many of you here are students in university or high school, graduate school, you know, any kind of student, okay?

So, it looks like about a third, about a third of the group here.

Now, how many of you are in the workforce?

Some way, okay, all right, great, wonderful, about two-thirds.

And just call out what fields are you in or what areas of study are you pursuing?

I brushed my teeth this morning, have no fear.

Apparently, less than 5% of people, you could perhaps verify this, less than 5% of people floss on a daily basis, which to me is just really, you know, but What I have to say is I wasn't always this way, so I had a little bit of a conversion experience.

How many people have in mind someone or a group of people who you'd like to be able to reach using some of the methods that we discuss in this seminar.

I'd like to just quick, I know we, you know, there's always less time than there is material, But I would like to get from you a little bit of what specific questions do you have that you'd like, that you'd hope that you'd learn the answers to in this seminar?

And I'm just going to write on the whiteboard here, just a few, but raise your hand if you have a question you'd like to see answered in this seminar.

How involved do you get before broaching spiritual subjects.

How do you create a need when they feel there is no need?

Yes, how do you create a need when they feel there is no need?

Does it possible to have a, in fact, have a wealthy and well-educated if you are not wealthy or well off?

What are the signs that tell you maybe you're passing pearls before swine for your behavior, not to be too tender and too easy.

How do you approach someone who has said no to you?

How do you explain those people's existence of the glue or the existence of a darkness?

I think people challenge that point in time.

02-The Method

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

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

Okay, you know, I'm 2 minutes late starting.

We'll try to do it, we'll try to stay on time.

We end at 11 and then the big plenary starts at quarter after 11, right?

So I will make sure that we get out by then.

Part 2 of this seminar on reaching the wealthy, worldly, and well-educated.

In this piece of it, we're going to talk about the method of sharing.

So we're going to talk about a framework of the approach as to how to share.

Before we go on, how many people were in the last session?

In fact, we'll do the review off of this.

Does anyone remember how many people there are who you could call wealthy, worldly, and well-educated in the United States?

About 20%, approximately 60 million, which is about the size of the UK, the entire population of the UK, right?

What are some of the reasons why it's so difficult to reach these people?

Our lack of faith in reaching out to them.

Fear of repulse, yeah, we're afraid of being turned down and rejected, It's just like middle school all over again.

But what else makes it difficult about wealthy people to be reached with the gospel?

We read about how the law and the righteousness of God is sweeter than the honey and the honeycomb.

And then we read in Proverbs how the satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb.

They can create heaven on earth, their version of heaven on earth using their money.

So they don't feel like they need heaven.

Because they're equalized, they're a peer group.

Yes, because of their peer group, their social status, they are so locked in to the social circle, the glitterati, the whatever you want to talk about, who is equally as secular as they are.

And so it's a big deal for them to step out of that into the faith.

They don't want you to get close because they think you want something because everyone who comes up to them wants something.

They want money, they want a job, they want influence, whatever it is.

They just think, well, I'm not thinking about that right now, I'm too busy working, I'm too busy making money, I'm too busy traveling and having fun.

So those are all reasons why this is difficult.

Now, we talked a little bit about our qualities and why it's hard for us, right, because we're afraid of being rejected and because we lack faith in God, right?

But why does God want us to witness to these people and in fact make it the first priority.

You remember that Spirit of Prophecy said that, that these people should be the first priority for witnessing.

Because first of all, it's for their own salvation, but second of all is because once converted they can become workers for the gospel, both in terms of their money and their talents and their time and their influence.

And so, there are a lot of reasons why Spirit of Prophecy prioritizes reaching out to the wealthy, worldly, and well-educated.

And then the third point here is, what do we need to do in order to be effective witnesses to this group?

Traditional forms of evangelism tend not to work.

She said, you'll remember, publications tend not to work.

The typical methods and approaches tend not to work.

We need to, thank you, we need to bring our A game, Ellen White writes this over and over again, you need to bring your A game in order to reach these people you can't just do your lackadaisical B game or C game, which is often we talked about in the last session, oftentimes what happens in our churches, forget witnessing, but even in executing the church service, we bring our C game.

I will often, I'm an elder at my local church and I will preach from time to time and I will sometimes ask people how many times they were late to work this week and to contrast that to how many times they are late to church.

So that's the review And let's move on into this next part, so the method.

I wanna start with this concept of a flywheel.

Jim Collins, anyone heard of Jim Collins?

So he is a business writer, he's a business guru.

He's written a bunch of books, good to great, built to last, a number of these books.

And 1 of the basic concepts he talks about is a flywheel.

Anyone want to explain what a flywheel is?

Well, in that case you have to hear an MBA's explanation of what a flywheel is, which may or may not be physically accurate.

But a flywheel is basically a disc of some sort that is weighted and created in such a way, manufactured, machined in such a way, that it stores energy so that once whatever impulse you give to that wheel is, it keeps turning.

And oftentimes with flywheels, they use the power of inertia to keep that motion going.

03-The Experience

How many of you were here, well, how many of you for, how many of you is this the first 1 of these sessions you're coming to?

And so that means everyone else has been here for at least 1 or 2 of the other sessions.

And we'll start with going back to the first session, the need, Right?

This is a, we said this is a large, about over 60 million people in this demographic, and they are also among the most difficult to reach.

And what were some of the reasons that they were so difficult to reach?

For those of you who are here, they're self-sufficient.

They can create heaven on earth for themselves.

What's difficult about reaching these people?

We have lack of faith in studying with them because we think that they don't need God or we think that they think they don't need God.

But actually Spirit of Prophecy tells us that they think they need something and they just don't know what that is yet.

What else is difficult about reaching these people?

Yes, they're rich, and so they can do whatever they want.

And the other thing is rich people hang out with who?

And so when they are in their little echo chamber all the time, it's very hard for them to break out of that.

It takes a lot of courage for them to confess Jesus, right?

And then what was the third reason that we said it was difficult to get to witness to the worldly wealthy and well-educated.

This is not, let's see how many tracks we can pass out in an hour.

That will not reach these people, or at least most of the time.

And that's not my opinion, that's spirit of prophecy.

And the third reason was procrastination.

Because people just don't think about these issues of eternity and life and death until they're faced with it.

And so they're enjoying life and they just want to have the good times roll.

And in order to work with this group and witness to this group, What are some of the principles that we talked about?

In order to work with this group, you need to...

You ought to bring your A game to these people because they're always bringing their A game to whatever they're doing, right?

Now, that leads us to the next section, the method, where we talked about the framework and approach for how to witness to these people.

And you remember I talked about a flywheel concept, right?

Can anyone tell us, or what was the first item?

And spiritual interests will then turn into what?

Bible studies and Bible studies will result in what?

And we talked about each 1 of those steps and how witnessing is just as much if not more about your own spiritual walk as it is about whoever it is you're studying with.

All right, so we talked about the flywheel.

Now, what were some of the metaphors that we used for talking about how to witness to these people?

So we had fly fishing because you're always casting for interest.

Other fish who are not hungry are just going to swim right by.

But that's okay because you're looking for the hungry fish.

What was the other metaphor that we used?

And you're gently, gently just testing the fruit, seeing which 1 is ripe.

And if you yank a fruit off the tree it will die and it will never become ripe fruit.

And so that's why we have to be very careful and we're not going down the orchard with a mechanical harvester.

And we are not dragging a net out the back of the industrial fishing boat, right?

And what were the 3 steps for witnessing to these people?

You want to build credibility right you want to build credibility by being excellent and bringing your best to whatever you do and having integrity.

Being a living epistle is the phrase that Ellen White used.

And then so building credibility and then what was the second 1?

You have spiritual experiences big and small.

Small ones are great because that's your bait.

You don't go to the bait shop in order to attract these spiritual interests.

You have your own spiritual experiences which you can then share and that's your bait.

This should feel as easy and as natural to you as talking with someone about the weekend or the weather.

And you remember we went through that list of example questions.

There are more questions, but those were all actual questions that people had asked to me that I then used to turn into a spiritual conversation.

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GYC 2013 Seminar: Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

02-The Method

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01-The Need

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02-The Method

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03-The Experience

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