GYC 2007: Be

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2007 Plenary Sessions

Israel Ramos

Welcome to the generation of youth for Christ.

We want to welcome you to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it is a whopping 19 degrees.

But obviously that hasn't deterred so many of you from being here.

We want to welcome you to what promises to be a very blessed next 5 days.

We want to especially welcome those of you who are joining us through the 3 Angels Broadcasting Network.

We hope that you'll join us for all of our live evening programming, as well as for our live Sabbath programs.

And I also understand that we have many international attendees here.

We want to say a hearty etzayin to our Ghanian contingent.

We also have some seminarians from Zalsky Seminary in Russia.

And for all of you who are joining us from around the world, from Guam, from England, from Brazil, from Canada, our neighbors to the north and all the other countries, we just want to say we're so glad that you joined us and we trust that this is going to be a life-changing event.

We don't want to just talk like Christians, we don't want to just act like Christians, we want to be Christians from our hearts.

And to this end, we will be studying the Bible, we'll be praying together, and we trust it will be a very memorable next few days.

At this time I'm going to ask Amy Shepard to come out and do our or to lead us in our opening prayer Amy is joining us from the Center for Adventist ministry to public university students, and we're glad that she could be with us this weekend Welcome Please bow your heads with me in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much that you've seen it fit to bring us together this evening, Lord, that you've brought us from all over the country and all over the world.

We just pray, Lord, that you will make your promise true, Lord, that wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in your name, that you will be their Lord.

And we pray that your presence will be with us and that as a result of this experience together we will not only grow closer to you, we'll also know how to better share you with those that we come in contact with every day, Lord.

We pray that your spirit may fill this place and may continue to be with us as we leave at the end of the program.

We ask all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

1 of the goals of GYC is to get young people, to get GYC attendees involved not just here at the conference, but other opportunities that are outside of this conference to get involved.

I brought up here a couple of my friends on stage and we want to talk about an exciting initiative that actually you could be involved in just about any time of the day just about anywhere in the world and I'll ask you What project are you involved in we're involved with a ministry called share him?

Share him is in ministry of the Carolina Conference and we focus on mobilizing and equipping and training and sending out lay men and women to be involved in evangelism, Not only as an event but as a lifestyle So share him focuses in on people that would want to preach an evangelistic series Both people who want to preach as well as people who want to get involved in their local church in an outreach team We call them involved in a lifestyle of evangelism, which involves them preaching themselves in their homes, in their churches, or getting on an airplane and going to Madagascar to preach or the Philippines.

So this could appeal to the young evangelist sitting in the crowd, or it could appeal to Maybe someone that wants to stay behind the stage exactly help them out and and organize for God We have individuals who prefer to stay at home and get involved in evangelism But we have others who say you know I'd like to go to places of the world where the church is on fire and I'd like to practice preaching and getting involved in evangelism overseas, but then they want to come back here and get involved.

So ShareHim is involved in this kind of ministry.

This year we have taken over 750 lay men and women to about 30 different countries around the world and praise the Lord they have preached the 3 angels message and they realize very quick that even though they have never taken homiletics, even though they have not had much experience in preaching, some of them haven't even had the closing prayer for Sabbath school before, but they're preaching an entire series of meetings and they say to themselves when they see people come forward to give their heart to Christ, they say, you know what, it's not really about me, it's the message, it's the Holy Spirit working through me to touch people's hearts.

As I'm listening to this, if I'm you know 45 or 55 maybe I'm just about ready to join Share him and see what I can do but what about for the younger age person?

Well listen folks, the majority I would say of the people who join in Share Him initiatives are young people.

This year alone we've taken over 300 young people, college age kids, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the youngest person to preach a Share Him series was 11 years old.

And we're looking for a 92 year old talk to me afterwards Pastor it's exciting to listen to you, but I see you have quite a group of evangelists here Tell me you know is there some stories that we can share or tell me a little bit about the group you have well Justin These individuals here these young people we're not just talking about a theory here, these young people have participated in a Share HIM event.

And I have a feeling, I'm looking out and I see faces that I recognize who have been involved in Share HIM.

If you've been involved with Share HIM before, Could you raise your hand?

Now what about all of you who don't have your hands up?

These people have been involved, some of them have preached twice.

Joshua Condado, you were in El Salvador, and you were preaching in a church.

Tell the story about when you got to church and they had canceled the meeting for another more interesting event.

You know how we are required to go through our sermon at least 3 times before we preach it that night?

Well, that day I had practiced it 4 times just to be extra prepared for it.

And I get to the church and they canceled the meeting for a funeral because 1 of the old ladies of the church had died.

So they told me to preach the sermon I had done about a week before.

Now here he is a first-time evangelist, and he is called upon to preach a funeral sermon.

When he came back to the hotel that evening, it was amazing.

And he preached on the hope we have in resurrection.

Did you make it through that funeral sermon okay?

Robbie, Robbie preached a series in El Salvador and as well in Tanzania.

Robbie, you had an interesting thing happen this summer in Tanzania.

Tell us about your driver that took you every night out to your site.

Yeah, well, I had a site about 30 minutes out from where we were staying and we were right at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania so that was really awesome.

At night you could see this big mountain and our driver would drive us out about 30 minutes to my site and then would take a lady out to her site about an hour out.

And this wasn't the first time he'd driven people for shahin.

He had done the same thing in 2003 and 2005.

And each time he'd been resisting, I believe he was Muslim, and he would just listen to the meetings and would just resist and resist.

He wasn't listening to the Holy Spirit in his heart.

But this time he was listening and he would usually stay either at my site or this other lady's and at the end he decided to give his heart to the Lord.

And he said that he's going to wait and he's going to convince his whole family to get baptized with him 3 times a charm, amen?

Sometimes we feel well they didn't accept the truth this time then we say well we're gonna move on but you know we need to continue to have that love that God has for us and continue to seek after others so Robbie that was an interesting story now let me ask the the 2 ladies at the end there from a Fountainview Academy seniors there this year and You went to Dominican Republic a few years back and tell us about that.

You went, you prepared your sermons months in advance, right?

No, I went to Dominican with the mindset that I didn't want to preach.

I was just going to do the children's meetings, maybe a health talk, maybe if I was forced, but I really didn't want to preach.

So I went there, and as I was on the plane, there was another kid there who had actually planned to preach, and he was on his plane, and he got a phone call saying that a family emergency had happened and he had to come home right away.

So that left an opening that they needed a preacher for and I was like, oh no.

And so I didn't originally want to preach, but I prayed about it for a while and I just felt so impressed I needed to do this and that God was calling me to do this so even though I didn't feel comfortable doing it I stepped up and I did it and I'm so glad that I did it I was really blessed by the whole experience a powerful story amen A young senior gets on a plane, not even planning to preach, but gets there, God opens the door, she preaches, and she's changed because of it.

I just wonder by show of hands, how many of you are going to preach again?

Get the hands up in the air, you can be proud of it.

And now there's probably going to be someone in the audience that's thinking, you know what, not me.

Sure, those people can do it by show of hands, would you recommend everyone in the audience to do it?

Now I just wonder, Pastor, there's probably someone out here just kind of at the edge of their seat, I can almost see it, they maybe want to go to the Philippines, maybe they want to go to India, maybe they want to do something in Tennessee, but how are they going to find out about it?

Andrea Oliver

Be Nonconformists

Reasons are that they will be fulfilled according to your purpose in our lives.

Transform us, Lord, into your image, into your likeness.

And Jesus, we just pray that you'll be with each attendee, Lord.

He needs your prayers right now as he's in the hospital.

We want to keep that before our minds, Lord.

And we just pray that, that your Holy Spirit will come down and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Send it Lord Jesus we pray, in your holy and precious name.

Samuel Korenteng Pippin and he says that over and over again.

And sometimes we come here and what's happening, what's happening, Nothing's happening.

The point of this session, something is happening, it's called something's happening by the way, is to let you know what?

And we want to get young people involved as well.

I'm gonna invite the love it couple here as you can see they are She's beautifully dressed and he's interesting here What is happening with you guys what is happening with you guys who are you guys I want you to introduce you guys and and let us know who you are.

And we have been church planting among the Gorkha people in India for the last 2 and a half years.

Now, I understand these are missionaries, but These are not your normal missionaries.

They are a special class of missionaries.

And as you can see with the uniform that Jonathan's wearing, he is a special elite class of missionaries.

Before you became missionaries, what were you guys?

Tell us about you guys before you went into the mission field.

Before we applied and joined AFM, Adventist Frontier Missions, I was involved in social services and my husband was building houses.

What was this drive or what is the traction or what caused you to cross the pond and go over to the other place across over there?

I heard a very, very compelling presentation by another missionary of where the resources are in the world, where do most of the Christians live, where are the Bibles, where are the Christian literature, where are the radio programs, All the resources that we're so used to, where are most of those things located?

And where are the unreached people and those that don't have the books and the radio and all those kinds of things.

And I could see that I was also a resource.

And so I had to pray and ask God, help me to know, Can you use me somewhere else where there's fewer resources available?

Okay, so here you're convicted to use your resources that you have, and you want to use it to people who don't have as many resources.

Now where were you guys serving for the past 2 years or so?

We actually live in an elevation of about 7, 000 feet, so it's quite cool there.

So you're 7, 000 feet above sea level in India.

Can you describe what are the people like there?

What was it like when you first got there?

We've never, I mean, I've never been to India.

Well, the predominant people that we work with are the Gorkha.

And they are basically ethnically Nepali.

They speak Nepali, they have Nepali traditions and actually this is a Nepali hat and I'm sorry.

Okay so you're wearing a Nepali hat and these are people from Nepal who have come down into India and you're there to do what?

Before 2004, there were no Seventh-day Adventists in Darjeeling, India.

And now there's a small group meeting and we want to see a self-sustaining church movement begin there that can go through the surrounding Darjeeling Hills and into Nepal.

Let me get this straight, you were the first Seventh-day Adventists in this area?

Let me clarify, the first Seventh-day Adventist was baptized in 2004.

Now these are, now AFM is looking for a subtype of missionary to go out and wear these interesting hats and clothes and to get into the culture.

What are some things you're learning or putting together or stuff like that?

We've spent the last 2 and a half years studying the language and the culture, and we've put together a book that we've written on the culture, which is about 500 pages long.

And the goal of that is as soon as we get back, we're going to begin to write a series of lessons that is specifically targeting the Nepali people, their minds, and the way they think and what they value.

I understand you're also learning the language.

Hey, you know, maybe Americans have kind of a bad reputation for being monolingual and that was me.

And I went over there and had to become bilingual.

Now, you're an American, you're Caucasian, you're white, but you have red hair.

This is off the record, so if you know, whatever.

They do sometimes comment on my hair, but more frequently they comment on my freckles.

Nobody wants something incurable foreign disease.

So there's a high learning curve, you've got to engage the culture, and you're there for Jesus Christ.

Can you explain what is AFM really trying to do?

Well, at AFM, what we try to do is we try to look at the places in the world that are not growing.

Maybe the country is growing as a whole, but perhaps there are particular parts of that country that are not having any type of growth.

Steve Kasperbauer

A Journey of Faith

We are happy to have all of you here and we are so blessed that the Lord has provided this opportunity for us to be able to fellowship with you and with those of you who are watching through 3ABN.

We want to have a very special welcome to all of you and I pray that the Lord will bless us all as we fellowship today.

In Kenya, where I come from, and I believe in most of Africa, an event or an occasion is judged as being good or bad based on the type of food that you ate.

So if the food was good, then the event was successful, right?

Those of you from Africa, am I saying the right thing?

I think the physical food has been good, but hey, what about the spiritual food?

You know, I have been here, and those of you who love bread like I do, I always go for the 100% wheat, you know, stone ground, you know, no, nothing added onto it.

And I have been so blessed being here at GYC.

And I pray that all of you are being blessed.

As we start this meeting, I hope that you will open our hearts, that the Holy Spirit will impress us with the message that he wants for us during this time.

And prayerfully, when we leave here, we will have a life-changing experience.

I want to invite you all to prayerfully consider every message that we hear here, that the Lord may bless us in everything that we do.

We're going to have the opening prayer for Mark Tay, and so I hope that you'll be blessed.

Please bow your heads with me as we pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for you are merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.

Lord, we ask that as we are here this morning, Lord, we know that in your word you tell us that you do not clear the guilty Lord, but that you do keep mercy for thousands.

And I ask that you would forgive us, Lord, of our iniquity, transgression, and sin.

I pray, Lord, that as we are here during this hour, that you would allow your glory to pass before us, that we may appreciate your goodness.

I pray, Lord, that you would, through your servant, Stephen Kasperbauer, and through your Holy Spirit, that you would minister to our hearts that we might be like Jesus.

I am here to tell you about something that we are really excited about.

They are with the International Health and Lifestyle Ministries.

And they are going to tell us some amazing things about what's going on in their ministry.

What are some of the projects that you guys are involved with?

Well, Joelle, we have several projects that, to the glory of God, He has brought about.

And the first thing that happened was in Panama.

We have 4 projects going on in Panama and 3 projects going here in the United States in Missouri.

And what we started out with, I'll show you a picture of the very first house that we had to work with.

We felt God calling us to do a Bible training school in Panama and this is what we had to start out with.

It's a little shack on 1 acre of land in Panama.

But you know when God calls you to do something you need to use what you have amen and so we got started with the training school and then we we wanted to bring the spirit of GYC to Panama and so we did a youth camp in Panama and there's a picture of that as well.

Samuel Pippin came down and shared some great sermons and David Gates came down.

Over 700 people came to this first UIC in Panama and it was amazing.

And so now we're wanting to do youth camps every year in Panama and the next thing we have a wellness center and that's going really great and then we have we're helping out with a nursing home in Panama and then here in Missouri we're wanting to do the same type of thing.

Open up a training center and you'll see the picture of the crops.

We're wanting to teach organic agriculture and among several other things.

And I don't have time to go into all the details, But rocky soil in Missouri, those were the first crops that God brought about and it was an amazing miracle.

These are the first few students, handful of students, but we've already sent 1 to Nicaragua to train the indigenous in organic agriculture.

And we wanna bring a youth camp here And we just wanted to show you a short little video a promotion for no promotional video clip of the youth camp that we want to bring in Missouri 08.30 That is really exciting.

God has been really doing amazing things.

So where did the idea for this ministry come from?

I saw a bunch of people fight out for God.

I saw 1 mission to carry the gospel all around the world.

I went to a booth, European Bible College booth.

In that moment God told me, go to back to Panama, open a Bible college and do a youth camp.

1 day I get up in the morning, God spoke to me again, I said, yes Lord.

You will make my wife have the same vision of mine.

In fact, give me those hundred dollars that you have for paying rent next week.

It's been 18 months and we have 6 projects.

Consecrate your life to God, risk everything that you have, all your money you have in bank account, put all your time, all the sacrifice, pray and trust God anyway.

I believe we've seen that through Andy and Sarah's lives.

Look what they've already been able to do.

If you guys have a chance, I want you to go to their booth and talk to them.

They've got some amazing miracle stories.

Just share with us 1 example of how God provided.

We're going to build a kitchen this year, this year coming up.

Mark Finley

Paul Ratsara Sr.

Evangelism Focus

06.15 SABBATH SERVICES 06.25 Happy Sabbath GYC!

That sounds like you're awake this morning.

I'd like to welcome you to our Sabbath services today.

We started at 9 o'clock and we're going to be live straight till 1230.

Don't worry, our live audience will be getting breaks so you won't have to sit in your seats for 4 hours.

But we are so glad that you are here with us today.

We have some exciting things planned for the service today so I know you will be blessed.

He is 1 of the vice presidents for the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists.

I was talking with him before we came up this morning and he was telling me that he and his wife love the outdoors.

Anything that involves God's nature, that's where they want to be.

In a few days he's going to be heading to Taiwan to the World Youth Congress there.

He's going to be bring greetings from GYC.

So without further ado, I'm going to ask Pastor Finley to come forward this morning and share with us.

I'm looking forward to sharing about what God wants to do through young people in evangelism, and I'll reflect back over 40 years.

Back to Menu

Series

GYC 2007 Plenary Sessions

Evangelism Focus

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Be

58m

Be Nonconformists

58m

A Journey of Faith

1h

Evangelism Focus

40m

1888 Panel Discussion

50m

A Divine Key

1h 28m

Sound Doctrine