GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

A Call To Arms: How to Fully Engage In God's Church

Justin Kim

1. Red Tape to Red Carpet: Your Unique Participation in the Global Adventist Church

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at La Crosse in Phoenix, Arizona.

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

You are in a seminar called Red Tape to Red Carpet, your global contribution or your unique participation in the Global Adventist Church.

I would think if you were, if I were here, I'd go to another seminar because there's so many other good ones.

But you may be stuck here because someone else recommended it or you're something, you're into red tape and red carpets and for some reason that you're wanting to know about the global church.

I'm a Director of Communications for the Michigan Conference.

I've been part of GYC leadership for a while, and I've been a Seventh-day Adventist my majority of my life, but the majority of my life, I did not know how the global Adventist Church worked.

So if you're a nerd like I am you will enjoy this presentation.

If you're not a nerd you're gonna fall asleep and you're welcome to do so.

But I will request that you go to the back row and fall asleep there not to impede anyone else's attention.

This is going to be not per se a Bible study.

This is going to be a pragmatic, organizational look at the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The Adventist Church organization is not mentioned in Scripture.

But there is a discipline out there called ecclesiology.

And you are all part of the remnant church.

And so we're going to look at how that looks out practically.

And when we look at the great commission that Jesus gave, how does the organization of the church meet the objectives that Jesus has given us?

Okay, before we start, I'm gonna ask that you have a word of prayer together and then we'll get started today, okay?

Gracious Father, we ask very humbly for that submissive attitude that was presented at the morning devotion to be real, especially for this next hour.

Lord, I submit to you, I ask for your Holy Spirit to speak through me.

I ask that every person who hears us on the recording, and especially for those of my brothers and sisters who are sitting at the seminar now, Help us to be amazed, awed, and overwhelmed of this great object of your regard that you have of this church.

This is our humble prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

This logo is the logo of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

It is not...Ellen White didn't have a vision about it.

So there's nothing powerful about this logo.

But I mention this because I'm very proud to be part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Okay, how many of y'all have church membership and you know where your church membership is?

How many of you don't know where your church membership is?

When I was a young person, and in many regards I still think of myself as a young person, even though my hair doesn't show for it, is that I did not understand how the Seventh-day Adventist Church works.

And once I understand how the church works, I got really excited about it.

And if you don't get anything out of this seminar, this is my whole point.

Today, the expectation for young people is so low that you're 30 years old, 35 years old, 40 years old, 55 years old, and you're considered still a young adult.

The whole point of this seminar is grow up.

I don't mean that offensively in any way.

And what I mean is, How many of you go to potluck and you bring food to the potluck?

Okay, how many of you go and you're 55 years old and you still mooch off the potluck?

I'm going to be talking about church board meetings, business meetings, Sabbath school involvement, what it means to be involved in your church.

But to understand how the local church works, we need to understand how the global church works.

Okay, and if you do not have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, you will not understand this and you will think of this as a bureaucratic mess.

But, if you have a hardcore relationship with Jesus, you will understand that keeping the Sabbath and not watching TV on Sabbath is not the only thing about being a Seventh-day Adventist.

There are 2 church, world church entities found in Revelation.

Revelation chapter 14, verse 6, you should all know this and memorize this.

I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven having everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every, and, and, and.

Revelation 16 verse 13 also talks about 3 other entities, and we'll go to the bold in verse 14, they are the spirits of devils working miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole what?

So you have 3, 2 sets of 3 going out to the whole world, okay?

The book of Revelation is about contrast and talks about different sides.

You have the Holy Trinity and you have the false Trinity.

You have the great supper and you have the supper of the wicked where the birds are eating the dead bodies.

1 is found in Revelation 13 and it's described and named in chapter 16, but the plan is found in chapter 13.

God's plan to counteract chapter 13 is found in chapter 14.

So question is, how many of you want to be part of plan 13?

How many of you want to be part of plan 13?

What is so special about frogs and Pharaoh?

Now, if you don't know your Bible, then you're gonna be utterly lost.

I got back from an international trip and I had TV back then, and I watched TV 4 in the morning because of jet lag, and I got on some Sunday evangelical channel, and they were doing Bible study on the 3 frogs.

2. Bored to Board Meetings: Your Unique Participation in the Local Adventist Church

We're going to start with our second seminar.

It's 2 minutes after 10, according to my watch.

Seminar is entitled Board to Board Meetings and I wondered if this was a good seminar title because people might think it would be boring and seeing how- oh hey, hey Dale, what's going on?

Seeing how a lot of people left, it was a boring topic.

I'm going to ask you, how many of you are part of a board in some capacity 1 way or another?

Let's have a word of Prayer and we'll get started here for today.

Father in heaven, we ask that you use this time, Lord, use my bumbling words to convey the passion you have placed in my heart.

Father, there are boards that are happening all over the world, Lord.

And the gospel work is not just sitting in meetings all day.

But Lord, we know that plans are happening to expand your work and we just pray that teach us, Lord, how to be Christ-like, to be strategic in a Christ-like way, on how to get the gospel forward, we pray, humbly in Jesus' name, Amen.

Again, the seminar this morning is entitled, Board to board meetings, your unique participation in the local Adventist church.

I'm going to do some recap from the previous seminar, so if you were here, you're going to be hearing the same thing.

We talked about church organization in our last seminar.

You have the Episcopal type and the Presbyterian type and independent type.

We are part of the Presbyterian representative ecclesiology.

If you don't know what that means, you're going to have to look at the, listen to the previous seminar.

Here, there are 4 different, 3 different conference levels, 4 different levels in the church.

The highest being the General Conference and you have 13 world divisions.

And by the way, you guys see in the middle there, the newly created Middle East and North American, North African Union.

It was newly created in the past couple years and a specialized evangelistic effort for the Muslim and the Middle East and Arabian countries.

You see right in the middle there is the Star of David.

So they are a union that's under directly the General Conference.

I don't know if you guys are nerdy, I find that to be very interesting.

And the General Conference is taking initiative to do evangelism in the Middle East directly.

There was another slide that I took out, but if you look at the world church, the place where there are the least amount of Seventh-day Adventists is, guess where?

And the highest concentrations are in Inter-America, which is the Central America, and in Africa, those divisions.

Here's the West Africa that we showed last time.

This is an example of a union, the North Pacific Union.

And the passion that I shared last time was, you all should know what local conference you're in, what division you're in, what union you're in, and all be partakers in church polity.

By the way, there's nothing like a young person that's interested in church polity that really excites church leaders.

Okay, and your participation may in many ways help them.

A lot of them have been sitting for a billion years old.

And so when you ask them some of these questions like, hey what's the blah blah blah, it really juvenates and gives them hope in the future and that young people are interested in church business.

We talked about the local church being having authority over membership, the local conference having authority over pastors, the Union Conference having authority over policies, and the General Conference over world missions.

I also talked about the general conference session that all of you should be going to this year in 2015 in San Antonio.

They will be talking about the 28 fundamental beliefs, the church manual of tithe, and all these things will be recorded in the church papers and the Adventist Review.

And then we also talked a little about Sabbath School on how your local participation Sabbath School participates or interacts with the world church.

This seminar will be about these 5, more like 4, How to get involved in the global church.

There's a new term that's been phrased maybe about several years ago called global.

Global is the way how the global movement impacts your local movement.

Sometimes when You get into these extremes where you're all about the global, the global, the global.

We're going to take over the world, take over the world.

I don't know, but I'm just part of it, man.

I haven't done anything, but I'm part of it.

We're like, you know, hands on, grassroots, my hands are dirty, and like, well, why are you doing it?

I'm just handing out water to homeless people.

That's the largest picture, they're thirsty.

Okay, now, You need to bring these 2 sides together.

Number 1 is every Seventh-day Adventist, young, old, or middle-aged person, should win a soul to Christ personally.

And if you're really passionate, Carissa McSherry is going to teach you how to practically do that.

I took her photo off the internet like a creeper and she works for Amazing Facts and she's here with us And I was going to say this whether you're here or not.

But from the rumors that I have heard about her, she is 1 of the most qualified instructors on personal evangelism.

And she's going to blush a little bit and I feel a little awkward.

But you want to come to those 4 seminars.

Number 2 is get involved with your Sabbath school.

We talked about this in the previous seminar.

1 way to get involved is to revitalize your Sabbath school council.

How many of you are a part of your Sabbath school council?

I love you to death in a sisterly way, in case my wife is listening.

Your sister behind you gave this inquisitive look like, what is a Sabbath school council?

The Sabbath school council is this, where the Olympian gods sit amongst these pillars of Greek, you know, and they discuss the topics of Sabbath school.

It is responsible for all the activities in Sabbath school.

In the ancient Sabbath school, and by ancients I mean the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, 90s, 2000s, Sabbath school was a evangelistically active engine of the local church.

Sabbath school was a place where all the departments of the church were united.

Carissa Vitorovic

3. Not Might, But Christ: Reaching Hearts in Today’s Culture

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at the Cross in Phoenix, Arizona.

I'm hoping that no 1 enjoyed lunch too much.

We're going to have that afternoon slumber going on here, but it's a blessing to have you all here.

As you know we're gonna be talking about a call to arms, how to fully engage in God's church.

This first hour we're gonna be looking more at the grand scheme.

How can we implement the things that we are learning into our church?

How do we get our church on an evangelism cycle?

How can we get every member involved in the work?

And then in the next hour, we're going to make it a little more practical application.

How do we implement friendship evangelism in our community?

If I'm shy, if I am a very introvert person, how can I possibly reach out and minister to people for Christ?

I don't know about you, but I can fit into that category.

How do I step out and reach hearts for Jesus Christ?

Before we begin, if you would just bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you today and we are seeking your guidance and your grace, Lord.

Father, we come to you as your children, Lord.

May you guide us, Lord, as we learn from your word.

May you help us to know how to implement these things for your people, we pray.

And typically when I travel to these seminars, I'm asked the same 3 questions over and over again.

So I prefer just to get it out of the way from the get-go.

So if you were wondering, your questions are now answered and you can think about the rest of the presentation.

I am from Sacramento, California area, born, raised, and stuck.

And I've been working full time with Amazing Facts since 2011.

I work primarily with their AAFCO department.

How many of you have heard of AAFCO before?

Awesome, okay, the Amazing Facts Center of evangelism.

So we're traveling around doing evangelism training weekends and then we also have our four-month program every fall.

Back in 2006, I actually attended AFCO myself as a student And I remember twice a week going out and knocking on doors and doing outreach.

Have you ever gone out and knocked on doors in your community?

It can be a little terrifying at first, right?

You're not sure what to expect and you're there and you're knocking on doors.

And I remember meeting a woman by the name of Betsy.

Now, I loved the outreach territory that I was given.

I was in those areas where the cops are constantly circling.

Where you're walking through the apartment complex and you see the guys out front and they're smoking dope.

I soon became known as the Christian girl.

As I go door to door in that community sharing Christ.

But you know I loved it because the people were real.

They felt their need And it was such a blessing and minister to them, particularly as I mentioned, to Betsy.

Betsy was the Bible study contact of your dreams.

The 1 who was always excited about the Bible study lessons, that sharing what she was learning with others.

And I remember every single week going to her house, and she just was thrilled at what God was teaching her through His Word.

When the prophecy seminar came to town, I invited Betsy to come, and she said, absolutely, I'm there.

So Every night I would pick her up at her apartment and I would take her to this prophecy seminar.

1 night I was traveling around in my outreach territory and I was visiting some of my Bible study friends who hadn't come to the seminar.

And as I'm visiting with them, I had this very strong impression, you need to go visit Betsy.

Have you ever argued with the Lord before?

I certainly have and I was in that moment.

She's going to be coming to the prophecy seminar tonight.

If I go to her house constantly, what is she going to think?

And so I said, Lord, I don't need to visit her.

And yet that impression kept coming and I kept pushing it away.

All right, Lord, I'll drop by really quick.

And so I remember parking the car and I drove on over to her apartment, knocked on that door, and there was silence, no answer.

I knocked again because I knew that the Lord wanted me there for a reason, and yet again, no answer.

And so I knocked a third time, and the person who answered the door was not the Betsy I was expecting to see.

You could see this look of complete despair and depression on her face, and I said, Betsy, what's wrong?

I went into her living room, and she said, Carissa, I was just sitting on the couch trying to determine the best way to take my life.

What if I had not finally given up and listened to the voice of God?

What if I had not gone to her house that day?

There may be people here at GYC, but I know certainly there are people in our community that are at that same level of despair.

They're looking for it in all the wrong places.

And God has called us to be the ones to reach their heart.

Could there possibly be a greater calling for our life?