GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The GLOW Ministry: A Literature Phenomenon

Kamil Metz

1. From the 1840’s to GLOW in the 21st Century: Trace the Path of Free Literature in the Adventist Church

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

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

Okay, I want to thank you for coming and I would like to start with a prayer.

Father in heaven, we want to thank you for bringing us here today to consider how you have led us in the past in the literature ministry.

And Lord, we will consider what you are doing today and what you will do in the future.

And I pray that you will send your Holy Spirit to be our teacher this morning.

And we pray for that in Jesus' name, amen.

The title of this message is called From the 1840s to Glow.

I was 8 years old, I remember Looking out of the house and watching my mom coming towards the house and entering the house and Then she gathered all 7 children together And she said when you pray she just came from the hospital and she was given 2 weeks of life and so she gathered all 7 children together and we knelt down and she prayed, she had a heavy burden in her heart you see my dad was atheist And so she's thinking about what will happen after she's gone So she prayed for us children The doctor gave her 2 weeks of life Few weeks later.

And then a little later, she gave him the great controversy.

Today, the doctor is a faithful Seventh-day Adventist.

A few years back, I was heading back home to visit my mom, and she arranged for me to preach in her local church.

The doctor invited his friend doctor and that friend doctor invited his friend who worked for the national TV.

After the church service, they went to our house and my mom told them many stories of how God has provided for us as a family.

At the end, before they left, she gave them the desire of ages.

6 months later, she received a phone call from the national TV asking if she would be willing to be part of a program, a story about what it was like growing up or living during communism as a Christian.

And it was 6 months later when it was aired and she called me later on, she said, you know, there were a lot of people who watched the program, the whole program started with her reading the Fourth Commandment.

She's reading the Fourth Commandment and the footage is she's walking down by the river where she was baptized and she's sharing how she has found the truth on national TV there were some family members and friends of Seventh-day Adventist who called their Adventist friends and members of our church and they said we never knew the Sabbath was in the Bible.

God has used literature And TV in a big way.

Now when we look at the history, we'll see that in 1800s, God did not use television.

But we cannot assume that that medium will be always available in the future.

As the Bible says, you won't be able to buy or sell.

That applies to you cannot buy satellite time.

So we'll be spending some time talking about the history of the literature work in our church.

Then the second seminar, Nelson Ernst, will be covering 12 ways to engage in personal ministry of sharing glow.

And then in the third seminar, we'll be looking at how we can be involved in a glow ministry at the local church level, how we can lead out in that.

We're looking at the Millerite movement right now.

And the way he does it is through translation and distributions of the Bible.

What he's doing is he's putting Bibles in people's hands.

Because the preached word will be preached from the Bible.

William Miller started preaching in 1831 and he would proclaim the message in 2 different ways.

It was through preaching and through publishing.

Himes became the chief organizer, promoter, and publicist of William Miller.

It says, Himes made many dynamic contributions.

Perhaps his greatest was through publications.

In February 1840, without money or a subscription list, he launched the first Adventist periodical, Signs of the Times.

In fact, the Signs of the Times became so popular that secular press approached them and said, we want to buy it.

Because they realized if we can buy Signs of the Times, we can make a lot of money.

Was proclaimed in different cities by the Midnight Cry, the Glad Tidings, the Advent Chronicles, the Jubilee Trumpet, the Philadelphia Alarm, the Voice of Elijah, the Southern Midnight Cry, the Western Midnight Cry, the True Midnight Cry, and several others.

Before the Great Disappointment of 1844, 8 million copies of Armitage literature found the people and spread the word.

During that time there were around 17 million people living in the United States.

That equals to around 3 million households.

That means that every household was hit at least 2 times with the Adventist literature.

Now we go beyond that and after the great disappointment, the Sabbath message was being shared.

Thomas Pribyl wrote a track called Tract showing that the seventh day should be observed as the Sabbath.

Joseph Bates read the track and accepted the Sabbath message.

Evening he told Willer he wanted to study about the Sabbath and then they went on on all night Bible study.

After that he's traveling back home And, okay let's try this way here.

After he arrives home, he meets his neighbor.

And the neighbor says, what's the news, Captain Bates?

The news is that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord our God.

The Adventist had a model to follow in sharing the message, it was through preaching and through publishing.

Interestingly the same track that converted dates into the Sabbath message, the same track was used to reach John Andrews as well.

In May of 1846, Joseph Bates published a 40-page track called The Opening Heavens.

Now there were believers who believed that Jesus came in 1844 spiritually, and this track was showing why it was wrong.

Now here's a pattern how they paid for this track.

There was a lady who sold her new carpet and funded the printing of that track.

Joseph Bates soon became known as the apostle of the Sabbath and wrote several booklets on the topic.

1 of them was entitled, The seventh day Sabbath, a perpetual sign from the beginning to the entering into the gates of the Holy City according to the commandment.

We simplify it today and we call things things like signs, the sign.

Now, the review also began to print tracks as well.

They didn't have all the equipment needed to print.

In fact, Uriah Smith used a penknife to cut the tracks.

And at the end he said, tracks, they were square in doctrine, even if their pages were not.

She says, after coming out of vision, I said to my husband, I have a message for you.

You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people.

Let it be small at first, but as the people read, They will send you means with which to print and it will be success from the first From the small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear around The world from the small beginning of printing 1 paper.

James White had a heavy burden to print, but he had no money.

There were a thousand believers who were very poor, But a local printer agreed to print that track or that paper on credit.

Listen to the description of what was going on.

It says, The precious printed sheets were brought into the house and laid on the floor.

And then a little group of interested ones were gathered in and we knelt around the papers and with humble hearts and many tears besought the Lord to let his blessing rest upon these printed messengers of truth.

Not amazing, with humble hearts and tears they prayed to God to bless The papers.

Then they folded the papers, they put addresses, and then James White walked 8 miles to the town to send it through the post office.

The publishing work in the yet unformed denomination had begun.

In 1850, the Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald was published.

Today we know it as the Adventist Review.

And of course this paper brought all those scattered believers together.

Nelson Ernst

2. 12 Easy Ways: Creative Ways to Personally Begin Sharing GLOW

Hello everyone, my name is Daniela, I'm from GYC Missions.

I just wanted to give you a short little update on something we talked about on stage last night, virtual outreach day.

But I guess before I do that, I just want to ask you, how many of you have either participated in a GYC outreach day before or plan to do it this year?

But how many of you are active in evangelism at your local churches?

So 1 of the things that we've noticed over the years, first of all I'm a huge huge fan of GLOW.

I have some fabulous stories I can tell you.

And GLOW is always a part of our outreach here and hopefully it's something that you also do at home.

But something that we've noticed over the years as just a trend kind of throughout all of the seminars and things is that we have a lot of people who come to GYC and we're really excited while we're here and we do evangelism here, but when we go home, we don't really apply the things that we learn.

And we kind of forget that the whole point of GYC is to come to deepen our relationship and to gain tools and resources so we can go home and be more effective in our communities.

And so, I don't know if you're aware that the reason that the GYC Missions Department was formed several years ago was actually to combat this mentality of just living conference to conference and being dormant in between.

We were formed to give you suggestions and opportunities to be involved in evangelism throughout the year.

And so 1 of the initiatives that we have this year is virtual outreach, which is happening again March 21st and 22nd.

And basically, again, we're just asking you to form groups together at your local churches just to do some kind of outreach.

You can pass out glow, you can distribute great controversies, you can feed the homeless, you can do whatever you want to do, but we just want you to do something.

Because 1 of the things that makes UIC so great is the organization, and especially in outreach, it's just so powerful to see all these people just going out in this united effort.

But we're actually counseled in the spirit of prophecy that we're supposed to be doing this all the time in our local churches.

There's actually a quote up on our website with virtual outreach that really delineates that.

But so again, we just want you to do some kind of outreach.

And if you form a group at your church, you can register it on the GYC website.

And then we'll list your location on there so that people in your area know that they can come to your church and help you and participate.

But if you don't feel like you can lead out a group or you don't know if one's happening at your church, you can also just register as an individual and we'll notify you if a group forms in your area.

But I just wanna make a note also on the great controversies.

You don't have to distribute them, but if you choose to, Central California Conference is going to have a really amazing deal, and they're gonna be selling the books for 50 cents a piece.

Yeah, so we're gonna have the website and stuff where you can order that attached with the virtual outreach tab, so make sure to check that out, but that's really, really amazing.

So if you do choose to go that route, that's something you should definitely plug into.

And so if you go on the website, we already have 7 sites listed that have already signed up to participate, so you can see if there's 1 that's near you.

And again, just for more information, you can stop either by the GYC booth or go on the website.

And just again, as you listen to your seminar, it's just our hope and prayer that you don't just sit here to like listen and absorb information and a theory, but that you actually think about practical ways that you can do this at home.

Yeah, Daniela mentioned the Great Controversies that Central California Conference is making available.

They're full edition Great Controversies.

They have Glow contact information on the back and they have much better cover than a lot of great controversies that are floating around out there in the NAD.

So if you want to get a full edition Great Controversy for 50 cents, that's a killer deal.

You actually can go to buyglow.org or just check out the information that GYC is going to probably send you later via email or something like that.

I don't know about you but I've really been noticing as I've been sitting in this seminar that that door back there is I think the loudest door I've ever heard in my life.

Every time somebody comes in, it really just bang, it hits the, you know, the beam there.

So I'm going to try and ignore that and I hope that you can ignore that too.

We have a doorkeeper that will help out with that, so that's helpful.

Okay, well let's get into our presentation here.

What we're going to talk about right now in this seminar is 12 practical ways that you can distribute Glow.

And many of you have already been distributing literature, distributing Glow.

So you might ask yourself, what is this guy going to tell me that I don't already know?

Well, I might not tell you something you don't already know.

But I can maybe tell it to you with a fresh story about how people are finding success in doing it.

Or maybe you don't know what I'm going to tell you and that will be a benefit to you because it's going to give you new ideas for how to get literature out in your community.

But before we get into the actual methods, I want to start off with a couple of things.

Number 1 is every single Friday, Glow sends out a weekly email.

And this weekly email has a awesome story of people who've been passing out literature.

Like, we get stories from people all the time who are distributing GloTracks in Africa, Europe, America, various places And we collect these stories and then we send them out 1 story every Friday.

So if you're interested in getting that weekly email, we're only going to charge you $5 per email.

You just give us, no I'm just joking, they're actually free.

So just go to that website right there, GlowNews.org, and put your contact information in and you can register and get the free weekly email.

These are great stories that not only you can read, but you can share with your local church.

Second business item is just clarification on the Glow 1000000 challenge.

If you were in the GYC main meeting last night, you saw that I was up there with some of the GYC leadership including Taylor and we were talking about this idea of distributing million glow tracks over the course of this year, the GYC attendees.

All you have to do is go to a website called GYCchallenge.com.

Just go there and it will explain everything that you need to do.

You can go there on your phone, You can go there on your phone, you can go there on your computer, you can go there on whatever other device accesses the internet and it will explain everything.

You might already have tracks at your church, that's fine, as long as you have literature.

If you don't have literature, click on that little tab, it says buy tracks, and it'll actually take you to our website so that you can purchase the tracks online, and then you can just come to our booth right here at GYC and you can pick up the tracks.

If you don't want to pick up tracks and carry them in your luggage, that's fine.

Click the option to have them shipped to you and we can ship it to you later.

But the point is we want you to have literature.

Step number 2, which is mentioned on GYC challenge.com, is you want to go to that website and it's going to guide you how to set up a user account so that you'll have a user account for when you input your numbers which leads us to step number 3.

Step number 3 is now you have your tracks, you're passing them out and now you're going to report those tracks on GYCchallenge.com.

So the third step on that website shows you how to report your numbers.

So this main website, GYCchallenge.com, is a place where all of us, as we're passing out glow tracks this year, we can go there and we can report our numbers.

And we actually have a chart showing how close we're getting to a million.

And every time that you input your number, maybe you go to Walmart and you distributed 7 tracks to the cashiers.

You go to this GYCchallenge.com on your phone, you input that you just distributed 7 tracks after you sign into your user account and then it's going to actually increase the chart and it's going to show that you put it up there because it lists the top, the most recent people who input their numbers.

So your name can show up, you know everybody in GYC can see that you distributed 7 tracks and there's a little comment section and all kinds of cool things.

All right, we're done with announcements.

For the people who are listening on AudioVerse, they're really going to miss out on this, but they'll understand in a second.

Can anybody tell me what this is a picture of?

It's a tractor, but what kind of a tractor?

I'm not talking about John Deere or whatever, but an old tractor.

3. A GLOW Marathon: How to Effectively Jumpstart Your Local Church to begin GLOWing With a 26-day “GLOW-a-thon”

I'd like to start with prayer before we begin.

Let's pray, Father in heaven, Lord we thank you again for the time to come together and so we can talk about how we can get our local church involved in the literature distribution and I just pray that you will bless our time we pray for your presence and we also pray for the Holy Spirit to be our instructor today We pray for that in Jesus name, Amen.

We will be talking about a GLOW marathon.

How do you get church, local church started in GLOW ministry?

And 1 of the initiatives that we have started in local church is a GLOW marathon.

I'd like to just review what we have gone over.

We have looked at a subject entitled, From the 1840s to Glow.

So we have looked at kind of the history of the publishing world.

We have learned that The… the… the literature ministry was detrimental in… in… in the starting of the… of… of the church, the development of the church in… in many parts of the world.

In the second seminar we talked about 12 different ways how we can share GLOW on a personal level.

And now we'll be talking about how we can get GLOW ministry started on a church level.

Couple years ago, there was a lady that was attending evangelistic meetings in Texas.

And she was a little suspicious about this whole thing, you know, those new things that the presenter was presenting and she was not sure whether she should come back.

And so she prayed to God to show her whether she should come back to the meetings or not.

She went to bed that night, at 3 o'clock in the morning she woke up and she walked to her library and she reached for 3 books.

She opened the books, 1 of them was the great controversy, she opened the books and she read about the Sabbath.

I don't know if she stayed up that night or she went back to bed, but that evening the evangelist was preaching about the Sabbath and she accepted the message.

The point is that God cannot use literature that we have not shared, right?

Can God use literature that is not shared?

Glow is 1 exciting way to share with others.

Ellen White had a vision and God told her that we as a church need to start publishing books and tracts and papers.

This is what she said, I have a message for you and she's talking to her husband James.

I have a message for you, You must begin to print a little paper, a little magazine, and send it out to the people.

Let it be small at first, but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be success from the first.

Many things began with small thing, and then it grows into something so much bigger, right?

And she says, from this small beginning, it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear around the world.

God showed her that though the beginnings may be small, the end will be magnificent.

And that's what James White, her husband, did.

He wrote a little paper on the Sabbath and then they have shared that.

Now the reason we are here today is because we continue the legacy of the literature ministry.

In 2007, Nelson Earns, 22 years old young man, came up with the idea of starting GLOW Ministry.

He was reading in publishing ministry written by Alan White, And he talked about books, papers, and tracts.

He was a cold porter and he was selling books, or he was sharing them on donations.

And as he thought about it, God placed a special burden on his heart to actually develop something that we, today we know as the glow tracks.

So it started in September of 2007, And since then we have printed 42 million glow tracks.

A young man 7 years ago had an idea, and today, 42 million tracks later, we're doing this.

I think 1 reason why people like GLOW in our church is because they're attractive, don't they look good?

There was, this is being translated in many languages, and there was somebody who said, you know, we really should write our own tracts.

Maybe we shouldn't use GLO, we should use our own to make it more relevant for our own country.

Series

The GLOW Ministry: A Literature Phenomenon

3. A GLOW Marathon: How to Effectively Jumpstart Your Local Church to begin GLOWing With a 26-day “GLOW-a-thon”

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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