OCI 2014 Leadership Retreat: One Thing

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Outpost Centers International

Ministry Workshops

Steven Grabiner

One Thing: Focus vs. Fog

And so my topic this morning is 1 thing, fog or focus.

And I have a picture up here that I pulled off the internet.

I'm much more of a whitewater kayaker and canoeist than I would be a boater that would be using this.

And the question, if there are any boaters here, If you are looking at this chart, what would be the most important thing for you to know?

Channels, probably depths of water, interesting little sign down here, kind of danger zone.

That's really not the most important thing.

Probably even if you know how to swim, anyway, it's a distance.

North, south, you know, where the direction on the compass is?

Okay, well, here's an evangelistic way to look at the map.

You can know everything about the depth and the currents and the direction, but if you don't know where you are on the map, it's useless.

Now if you're good at maps and you had all this information, you might be able to determine where you were if you didn't know.

And that's kind of what I want to talk about this morning is as leaders, knowing where we are and where we're going.

A couple of years ago, I took a leadership class and someone shared this with me, thought it was very insightful.

And the speaker said that a leader is knowing what to do, knowing why it should be done and also knowing how to bring the appropriate resources together to accomplish that task.

Knowing what to do, why it should be done, and how to gather the resources.

Those resources could be monetary resources, they could be people, time, materials, whatever is involved in that.

But the important point for us this morning is knowing what to do.

And oftentimes, Leaders find themselves uncertain as to where they are on the map.

Certain things happen in their life, and this isn't just for leaders.

That's who we're talking about this morning, the leaders in training, some of the students that are here, some of us who have had experience for a long time, but both in leadership and personally or experientially, oftentimes we lose our bearings.

And so it's important for us to kind of come back to that.

And so I want to use a little illustration now.

I think I actually shared this here at Uchupines a few years ago.

And that is oftentimes leaders or at times leaders find themselves in what I'd like to call a fog.

Now if you're driving down a highway and you've got the nicest car, and if my son was here I could ask what the nicest car is and he'd probably tell me, Frank is our car man.

So if we're driving down into Bugatti, which must be a really nice car, Frank likes it, and all of a sudden fog comes down on the road, does it matter how much horsepower is under the engine?

Cuz you really can't see what you're doing or where you're going.

And when leaders find themselves in a fog, that's a time of danger.

Every leader, at some point in their experience, finds themselves in a fog.

Sometimes leaders feel like they're juggling a lot of balls.

Or you've probably seen those individuals who spin plates.

You know, they have lots of these plates.

And you're spinning all these plates, but you're not doing well and you know it.

You've lost your clarity and you know it.

You're dropping balls, you're dropping plates and you know it.

So The question is, how do we get out of fog?

But oftentimes when we are in fog, when we've lost our focus, when we're not really clear as to where we are on the map or what direction we should be taking, we become fatigued.

Those of you that are kind of new in your leadership trajectory, you're emerging leaders, have lunch or breakfast or walk with somebody that's been in the ministry for a long time and ask them a question, have you ever experienced that?

I'm sure you're going to get the answer, yes, because every leader falls into this.

And when we're fatigued, then we begin to have flirtation.

And I'm not particularly talking about flirting guys and girls, although men and women, that can happen.

I'm talking about the kind of flirtation that comes about when we begin to think, maybe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

I begin to flirt with this idea, I should move on to another pasture.

There's times when it is time for us to move on.

Actually there's times when we should be moved on, actually.

We need wise nursery men that can transplant trees, Ellen White's expression, where individuals have been in a position for too long for their own spiritual health, and it's time to move on, oftentimes a difficult situation.

But here I'm talking about when we're in this fog, when we've lost kind of our focus, we're not really sure what we're doing and we realize it.

But exceptional leaders try to find a way out of that fog quickly.

Cheryl Doss

Training for Mission Effectiveness

So let's just, we'll just think a little bit together.

I know we have people here from many different parts of the world, many different areas of expertise, many different responsibilities.

So I hope that as we go through this, you will think about it from your own perspective, and hopefully we'll have a few minutes at the end to kind of talk about it from where you're coming from, from the kind of work that you do, the kind of things you'd like to see come out of missionary training.

The Institute of World Mission, as was said on the video, which, by the way, was done a couple years ago when we celebrated our 45th anniversary, has been training missionaries since 1966.

And for you that are younger, no, I wasn't there the first time.

I've just come later, although I look like I could be, right?

But in those 50 years, we probably have made every mistake possible to be made, but we've also learned some lessons.

And so, based upon some of the lessons that we've learned, by the way, that's the picture of the first group of missionaries.

Some of you old enough to know some of those people.

Sidney Beersol, Steve Young, William Jensen.

I don't know if any of you have met them, but some of them I remember as a kid.

There are basically 5 lessons that I would like to draw out of our learning that I think might be able to be used in any setting in which we are trying to build a missionary team and train people to be part of that team.

First of all, we need to find our foundation.

Make sure that we know upon which model, which foundation we are trying to build a training.

Secondly, we need to objectify our outcomes.

So often we kind of think we know what we want to do but we don't actually write it down, we don't actually specify it, we don't actually know what we want out of the training that we're doing.

When I'm talking about a curriculum, I'm talking about something that's much bigger than just what content we're going to share.

I'm thinking about the entire situation and environment we create for learning about mission.

We need to understand the task deeply, and that's going to involve, most of all, understanding the people that we're dealing with.

And lastly, we need to seek for transformation.

It isn't enough just to share information.

Now, all of you serve in mission in some way.

And it changes us in good ways, and it can also change us in bad ways.

Have you ever met a mean and nasty missionary?

Have you ever met somebody that you wonder how they got to the mission field.

They brought all their old emotional baggage with them.

By the way, I always say emotional baggage is 1 thing, kind of baggage that never gets lost on an airplane.

And, you know, The first person you meet when you get to the mission field is yourself.

And so our training needs to seek transformation.

1 of the issues about missionary training is some things are called training.

Some things are called mission training, but they may or may not actually be training for the kind of training that you and I want to do.

And so this is part of finding our foundation.

And I think this basically goes back to the idea of who is a missionary.

Ellen White tells us that every disciple of Christ is born a missionary.

But the problem is when everybody's a missionary, then nobody's a missionary.

How do you train for it if everything is a missionary?

So I think we have to do a little distinguishing between the kind of calls to mission that we see in the Bible.

This is a call on all people everywhere to become Christ's disciples, to be growing in Christ.

Sometimes, however, mission training just focuses on that.

I was talking on Sabbath with a person in my Sabbath school class because the Sabbath school lesson was about discipling for mission for the world.

And she's saying, oh, but going on mission trips is so helpful to these kids.

But if all we're doing in training for mission is what can you get out of it, how can I get more out of my mission experience, then we're short-circuiting our task, aren't we?

That's important that we are disciples, that we're growing as disciples, that we're learning from our mission experience.

But that is not the major focus of mission training, in my view.

Jesus asks all his disciples to witness for him, to become fishers of men, as he says.

If you're a disciple, then you need to be a witness.

And too often I hear about things that are called mission training that basically are teaching people how to give Bible studies and how to hold evangelistic meetings.

Not a bad thing to do, but it's often done in the same way for any part of the world.

In fact, I heard 1 of my relatives went with a group that goes out and gives short, gives evangelistic meetings, and he was told, we don't want you to be out in the community during the day, we want you to be in your hotel room studying your sermon for that night.

Now, maybe he needed the study, you know, I'm not suggesting that isn't important, but is that really mission?

Just going and studying what you have to say and not mingling with the people, not actually being out and becoming part of the community.

That's again a short circuiting, looking at witnessing only from what I have to say instead of from what do they need to hear.

In order to know what they need to hear, we need to go out and be there.

So while it's important to know how to witness, that kind of mission training is a small part of the whole, in my view.

And the last call is to witness across cultures.

And Jesus' command to go and make disciples of all nations.

And I think to do that is a much broader picture of what mission training is.

And so for us at the Institute of World Mission, this is where we have focused.

We are not trying to make just make people better disciples, although we hope they are.

We're not just trying to teach people how to share the story that God has given them.

We're trying to teach them how to help and empower other people to become disciples.

Other people in other places to understand the gospel in their context, to live out Jesus' life in their context.

And that requires understanding the whole cross-cultural issues involved in discipling and witnessing.

So that is our foundation and here's how we articulate it.

Each of you, as you think about the kind of training you are needing to do for your group or you want to be a part of, think about what area, what is the foundation upon which you want to build that training.

In anticipation of Jesus' soon return, our purpose is to cultivate mission vision.

That would be a vision for the world mission, mission vision.

We're not just trying to prepare people to go and live in the next state or the next county.

We're trying to prepare people who can go across the great divides in the world and nurture that missionary witness so that they are witnessing as missionaries.

They are witnessing out of their own sense of mission.

Because mission, after all, is God's project.

Craig Harding

One Word: Communicate

Okay, let's bow our heads and get started.

Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you for the opportunity to be together.

We ask that you would be the 1 heard today, that you would speak to our minds and to our hearts that we could be more equipped to share the gospel with the world.

So, on our 1 thing theme, I was invited to share about 1 word, the idea of communication.

And so I thought, how do you start a topic that's going to be very practical, but tie it in to the fact that we are all our ministries, and how does communication play into that?

You know, I've heard people say, you know, if you want to be a communicator, you know, it's important for people maybe like David Asherick or maybe Frank Fournier to be experts in communication, but if I'm working in an industry, at a ministry, or I'm, you know, working in an office, or however my capacity is, a ministry leader, is it really that important that I communicate well, and maybe even consider becoming a communications expert?

And so let's talk a little bit about that.

And so as I thought about that, I thought, well, you know, what about the verse in John 1, verse 1?

You know, the apostle John was probably the closest human being to Christ while he was on earth as a disciple.

And it says that in the beginning was the word.

You know, as inspiration was resting upon the Apostle John, he could have used any description, any human language to describe the creator of the universe.

And what did he use to communicate that idea?

He said, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.

And you have in the Greek this interchange of communication, of giving and receiving this community that focuses on communication.

In Romans, the Apostle Paul says this, he says, How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher?

After all, isn't the goal of every 1 of our institutions to reach people for Christ?

He's been making this masterpiece of righteousness by faith evident in the book of Romans, And he gets here and he says, it's all good, but what are they going to do if they can't hear it through a preacher?

And so it underlines again the need of communication.

We also find a few quotes in the Spirit of Prophecy.

Multitudes are perishing without 1 pitying look, 1 word or deed of sympathy.

If that isn't the saddest thing, but it's the true fact of many people throughout the world today.

Many have fainted and become discouraged in a great struggle of life whom 1 word of kindly cheer and courage would have strengthened to overcome.

So today we're going to look at what makes an idea succeed or fail.

But first I want to ask a question, what is it that makes 1 idea go viral, become a common knowledge versus an idea fail?

What are the, maybe some ingredients that make something succeed or fail as an idea?

So Tell me a little bit more about communication when you say that.

You can't get your idea across to somebody else.

So a great idea, not communicated well, might not become as popular as another idea.

A word that fits the need of somebody else.

So an idea that could fit in with someone's perceived need might be more well accepted than another idea.

There was a man and he was on a business trip and he was certainly not a Seventh-day Adventist and I would suggest probably not a Christian.

And he is in his hotel and he goes down to the little restaurant and bar and he's at the bar and he's getting something to drink.

And a beautiful lady comes up and she says, hey, you know, I've got a drink here, you're welcome to have one." And she gives him 1 and they're visiting for a little while and she walks away.

And the next thing he knows, he wakes up in a hotel room in the bathtub full of ice.

And there's a note and a phone and it says, call 911 and don't move.

So he gets his phone and he calls 911 and they ask him, where are you and he tells them, I'm sitting in a bathtub, it's filled with ice and it says don't move, call you.

And they said, I think you've been had by a ring of organ harvesters that have spiked your drink and reach around your back, and is there a tube coming out of your back?

He reaches around, and there's a tube coming out of his back, and he realizes at that moment that he has a significant problem.

And of course, it indicates that he needs to have emergency services come to the scene.

Now this idea in some form or another has gone around the world many, many, many times.

But, if I ask you at the end of this retreat and probably at the end of next year to tell me that story, you could tell that story and almost all of its important details without ever hearing it again.

Because even though it's a bad idea, even though it's a lie, it's communicated in a powerful and memorable way.

And so, what we want to look at today is not necessarily how we communicate, but what is it that we're actually communicating itself.

You know, a lot of times, you go someplace and they're going to have, you know, a speaking class.

Are you, you know, techniques, looking above people's heads so you don't get nervous?

You know, you get all this stuff that people will tell you, but very little is said about the actual substance and the techniques for making what you say actually be remembered.

You know, it's a tragedy, but I myself don't remember most of the sermons that I've heard in the last year.

If you thought back, it would be interesting to sit down and take about 30 minutes and see how many of the sermons over the last year that you've heard, and some of you will have heard many, you would actually remember.

And for some of us, it might even be worse than that.

It might be how many of the sermons that we've preached we actually remember.

And it comes based largely on something that we struggle with.

You might say, well, I think knowledge is kind of a good thing.

I mean, I could be dying of some disease that I could prevent because I have knowledge, and that is, of course, true, but there is a thing we call the curse of knowledge, and it goes like this.

What happens when you discover something?

For example, 1 that we run into a lot is if you were a non-SDA and you come to the truth and you learn about the state of the dead, you now have a different paradigm in your world and oftentimes we rush back in State of the Dead, The Mark of the Beast, these surprising discoveries that we have on the journey of becoming a Seventh-day Adventist, these truths, and we go back to share them with the people that also don't know.

The problem is we now know, and we forget what it was like to not know.

And so we tell a story that doesn't have the details that were playing in our mind but not communicating through our mouths.

An example of this we'll look at here in a second, but here's a quote I found interesting.

It says here, talking about the curse of knowledge, there are actually only 2 ways to beat the curse of knowledge.

The other is to take your ideas and change them.

And we'll look at this in the next illustration.

You know, I always wonder about scientists because they'll like study, you know, the life of cockroaches in an urban environment.

I'm thinking, you know, they're getting paid to do this stuff?

And so what they did is they brought, and we could do this, but I don't have time, but we could bring any 1 of you up, and we'd bring another 1 of you here, or maybe several of you, and I would have 1 of you sit and tap out the rhythm of a song on a piece of wood, a book, or something, and the other people would be listening.

What they did is they asked the people doing the tapping, how many of your listeners do you think should be able to get what song you're tapping when you tap?

The answer actually was they thought, you know, it was a 50-50 chance that they would get what was being tapped.

But what they found is actually somewhere between 2 and 3 out of 20 actually understood a single song of any of the ones that were tapped.

And it led to great frustration for the people tapping because they're sitting there and they're tapping, you know, happy birthday to you and the people are going, going okay, you're great knocking but, you know, I don't know what you're doing.

And there was this frustration, this tension, and the reason was is when you do that, and you should try it, it's a great experiment, you're hearing happy birthday to you play in your mind, because you know what you're trying to communicate.

And so this is a challenge we face all of the time as we try to communicate the messages we have, especially because the messages we have are not common knowledge generally, right?

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