Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

David Kim

Collegedale Korean SDA Church

03-Congenital Christianity

Lord God, our Father, you're so merciful.

Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would be poured out upon this place.

I pray that you would speak through your servant and that you and only you would be glorified.

Lord, I pray that through my testimony that each and every person would catch a glimpse of your power and how you can transform lives.

I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit and his convicting power would descend upon each and every 1 of us.

I pray this in the lovely name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior.

I'm an elder brother, I'm a husband, and I'm a father.

I'm a former professional cellist and I'm a corporate executive.

Yet, as important in defining each of these facts as to my identity, there is 1 fact which is even more important.

The most important fact in my life is that I am the survivor of a chronic and deadly disease.

Millions around the world have this disease.

It runs in families and is passed on through heredity.

There is no known cure for this condition absent a literal miracle from the Lord himself.

I'm a survivor of congenital Christianity.

Congenital Christianity is a spiritual condition which in some ways resembles true Semte Adventist Christianity but which is at its core superficial and lacks an authentic saving relationship with Christ.

To make sure that we share a common understanding of this condition, I want to share with you a non-exhaustive list of symptoms.

Would you like to know what the symptoms are?

Number 1, you avoid talking about your faith because you don't want to have to explain what you believe because you're a little bit embarrassed by it.

2, you know that Saturday is the Sabbath, but come on, what's the big deal?

3, you've heard that we have distinctive biblical beliefs about death, hell, and the sanctuary, But you're not quite sure what they are or why they even matter.

4, you hear people talking about the spirit of prophecy.

But you're ambivalent about it, even though you've never actually read any of the books.

5, those beasts on the prophecy seminar flyer look strange and bizarre to you, and you've got no clue what it all means.

6, you think that mega church down the street is way more fun, way more interesting.

They've got great programs, they've got a great band, they've got donuts and coffee.

You think that megachurch is way more interesting.

But you feel kind of guilty that you think that.

7, you abstain from all unclean meats, except for pepperoni, bacon and shrimp, because they taste so good.

Okay, well, a little bit of beer and wines, but just socially.

Well, and the hard stuff only when you mix it with orange juice or cranberry juice.

Because then you can't taste it, and it's got vitamins.

You dutifully wait until after sundown on Saturday before you head out to the multiplex to see Twilight in IMAX 3D.

9, you go out to lunch after the Sabbath church service because surely God would not want you to starve And what they've got at Potluck isn't nearly as good as those garlic breadsticks.

You go to church most weeks because you want your kids to have exposure to the faith, even though you don't have any personal investment in it.

These are just examples, but they should give you an idea of what we're talking about.

But perhaps a friend, or a family member, a classmate, maybe a church member.

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.

Thank you, because that's the way I wrote it.

The bad news is that untreated, congenital Christianity leads to eternal death 100% of the time.

The bad news is that while the disease is passed down, the cure is not.

You cannot be saved by your parents' faith.

The bad news is that you must affirmatively choose to be cured.

The good news is that there is a cure and I stand before you today as living proof.

I testify to you that I have been cured by the love of Jesus and the power of the everlasting gospel.

The good news is that if God can save a wretch like me, He can surely save you.

And the good news is that it's not too late.

Even if you've been suffering under the lukewarm, putrefying, malaise of congenital Christianity for years or even decades.

God can still reach down from His throne and touch your heart and turn it from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

I know that He can do this for you because He did it for me.

My story begins 3 generations ago, in the early 1900s, when my great-grandfather was the second ever ordained Korean Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

His son, my grandfather, also entered the pastoral ministry and he became the first native Korean to become president of the Korean Union conference.

His son, my father, did not enter the pastoral ministry, but he attended Seventh-day Adventist schools all his life until medical school, at which point he scored number 1 in the entire country on the medical board exams that year, all the while skipping class on Saturdays, observing the Sabbath in a country which required going to class on Saturdays.

So being number 1 in Korea on the medical board exams, that means something.

I was just 4 months old when my father, mother, 2 suitcases and a baby showed up in Boston to pursue his residency.

So while I'm a 1.5 generation Korean-American, I'm a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

My roots in the faith, My faith has been passed down to me from its earliest days in Korea and while many blessings come from having this history in the church, it also comes with it a predisposition towards congenital Christianity.

My earliest spiritual memory goes back to when I was just 4 years old.

I would walk downstairs early on Sunday mornings while my parents still slept to watch TV.

And it didn't take me long to notice that it seemed every channel I turned to on Sunday mornings would be playing a broadcasting a church service.

And I was totally confused by that because even at that age of 4 I knew that Saturday is the Sabbath.

So it didn't take long for me before I decided that I would get to the bottom of this.

So I walked into the kitchen to ask my mother.

And I said, Amma, why are all these people going to church on Sunday?

Don't they know that Saturday is the Sabbath?

Now before I tell you what happened, I have to give you some context.

She is a prayer warrior, a church planter, a Bible worker amongst the Korean immigrant community.

02-Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated Pt. 1

Lord God, our Father, we thank you for the opportunity and privilege to gather together to worship you this morning, this Sabbath morning.

And Lord, you know the burden on my heart, the message that you have given me to give.

And Lord, I pray only that the words that I speak would be useful towards illuminating these topics in the minds of this congregation.

Lord I pray for the Holy Spirit to be upon each and every heart, to be receptive, to be engaged, and most of all to embrace the message that you have for us this day.

We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Now we turned off the lights because we thought the slides would be easier to see.

So in Sabbath school I think in contrast to what 1 might consider for the divine worship service, tends to be a little bit more interactive.

And I'd love for this to be very interactive.

And so would that be agreeable to you to participate and to ask questions as we go?

And what we'll do is because we do want to manage the time and we have a lot to go through this morning.

Some of your questions I'll answer right on the spot.

Some of your questions I'll say, hey wait till the afternoon or later in the materials and we'll answer that questions.

And some of the questions I might say, hey come approach me later.

But regardless, please just ask questions and let's keep this very interactive.

So with that, The title of my talk is Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly and Well-Educated, or as I call them, the W3.

You don't have to be wealthy and worldly and well-educated.

You just have to be 1 out of the 3 to fall into this group.

And it's really more of a mindset, frankly, than a demographic.

We're going to try to define it a little bit in the next hour.

But it's really a mindset about worldliness and secularism and a world that is paying attention to things other than the things of God.

Does anyone here know someone who fits that description?

Just raise your hand if you know someone who you would consider wealthy, worldly, or well-educated.

Perhaps by the end of this seminar you'll realize that you actually do.

At a minimum you're here on a university campus.

So everyone should have raised their hands.

Unless you're 1 of those people masquerading as a student just for the free food.

Emergency landing was my talk last night, a little testimony about something that happened.

In the next session here, we're going to talk about my full testimony and how I came to have this heart conversion that Alistair referred to.

And then this afternoon, we'll talk about the method of how you reach the wealthy world when you're well educated.

Starting with the first W, the wealthy, you can define this in a lot of ways, but just to give us an idea, I've defined it as the top 20% of the population in the United States, which roughly gives you a six-figure household income above $100, 000.

And that's about 20%, that's about 60 million people.

Just to give you an idea, 60 million people is roughly equivalent to the entire size of Great Britain, of France, of Italy.

And so as a mission field, as a people group, this wealthy segment is literally the equivalent of an entire medium-sized country.

This is a large mission field and although it's top 20% of this country it's only 7% of Seventh-day Adventists.

And so we're outnumbered by almost triple, 3 to 1.

So in other words, for every 3 wealthy and worldly and well-educated, there's only, or excuse me, for every 3 wealthy in this country by this definition, there's only 1 Seventh Day Adventist.

And As you go up into the higher income and wealth brackets, the outnumbering gets even more dramatic.

The worldly, you can see these covers of magazines that I've put here just to give you a sense.

It's hard to define worldliness as a demographic segment, but it's a mindset.

It's a mindset around materialism, around acquisition, around accumulation, around lust, around all of these things, around pleasure, around intellectualism.

We have a New Yorker magazine here, well known as a very intellectual magazine.

And intellectualism, I'm not against being intellectual or being well educated, but our intellects can become a god in and of themselves.

And so that's what we're talking about when we talk about worldliness.

I have a graph here, a bar graph, of educational attainment over the age of 25.

And so what you can see here is roughly 42% of the United States has a bachelor's degree or greater.

Now, the Adventist church, this percentage of 42%, do you think Adventists are higher or lower in terms of educational attainment?

Indeed, indeed it is higher for Sente Admin, a little bit higher.

For Sente Administ, it's about 45%, so it's slightly higher.

Now what's interesting about this is we saw the earlier number on how the wealthy is underrepresented amongst Sante Adventists.

But educationally we're actually overrepresented and any demographer worth their credential will tell you that education and wealth go together.

In other words, the more educated you are, the more wealth you have.

Now here we have a little bit of a mystery.

We are more educated than average, but we are less wealthy as a people.

Yeah, so there's a lot, there's a selection, career selection mix here.

So there's a career mix element here, which I thought was interesting because my mental model for Seventh-day Adventists is doctors and dentists and health care professionals of various sorts, which tend to be fairly well compensated.

But actually we skew, although there is that that skew, there's an equal skew that goes towards ministerial or missionary type work which is lower income.

Well tithing is actually, so tithing comes out of your income, but your top line income is still your top line income.

Now if the question was discretionary income or savings rate or something like that, then that would definitely play in.

01-Emergency Landing

Lord God our Father, we come apart, we still the voices, the bustle, the busyness of this week.

As we enter into the Sabbath, and Lord what joy it is to come together as a body of believers to celebrate the love and salvation and victory that we have in Jesus Christ.

And Lord, this evening as I share a little story I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us that every word from my lips would be from you, and that each individual here would hear exactly that which he or she needs to hear, a word from on high.

We are here because you've given us life.

And Lord, let that opportunity not go to waste.

We pray Lord that our hearts and our minds would be fully engaged in this act of worship.

And we pray this in Jesus's precious and holy name.

This weekend, as Kurt, thank you, Kurt, for your announcement, your introduction.

This weekend, we're going to talk about a lot of things, but they're going to center around living for Christ, living for Christ, Bringing Christ to everything in your life.

And we're going to take it in a few different parts, 4 parts to be exact, but 2 of the parts are really going to be testimonies in which I will share with you how the Lord has worked in my life.

That's tonight and that's the sermon, divine worship tomorrow.

And then the other 2 parts are going to be about how the Lord has been using me to be a light in my sphere of influence and me sharing with you things that you might be able to do in your spheres of influence.

And so we're really taking it in 2 parts, but it's all about living for Christ.

And so this evening, I'd like to share with you a story.

And it's 1 that, it's probably, I think it's the most meaningful memory that I have.

Maybe second only to my heart conversion and of course my wedding.

And this is on audio verse, so my wife knows that I said that.

Unfortunately, they could not be here this weekend.

And as Kurt mentioned, I'm a corporate executive.

I work at a large financial services firm and as part of my job I travel.

We go to different places, generally on airplanes.

And so I fly a lot and people ask me how much I fly and I found that the best way to answer that question is I fly enough to be silver but not enough to be gold.

Although I get very close, I get very close and maybe this year I'll make it.

And so because I travel so much, it's quite a normal thing that I do.

It's not something, I'm not 1 of those people who's afraid of flying.

I know that factually that flying is perhaps the most the safest mode of transportation out there except perhaps your feet.

So I'm not worried about flying And I'd like to take you back to just over a year ago, December 4th, 2013.

December 4th, 2013, it was United US Airways, US Air because I'm from Philadelphia, which means you fly US Air.

And I was flying from Philadelphia to West Palm Beach, PBI, for those of you who are IATA code enabled.

And December 4 is a good time to be flying to West Palm Beach And it was an uneventful it was an uneventful morning was a 10 a.m.

And then I got in my car and I drove the 45 minutes to the airport.

My flight was departing out of Terminal B but there's never any parking in Terminal B because that's 1 of the US Air terminals.

So I had to go to Terminal D, which is generally where I park.

Went to Terminal D, got out of the car, walked into the terminal, went through security, got my shoe shined.

The Koreans, for some reason, own all the shoe shine stands in Philadelphia Airport.

So I got my shoe shined in terminal D, then I walked over to terminal C because C is in between D and B.

And when I got to terminal C, I went to Jamba Juice.

And I got a large Kale-A-Brie and breeze without the Greek yogurt.

I'm aspirationally perhaps, but it's just too hard to do when you're out and about and traveling.

But I just didn't care to have the yogurt.

So I got the Calibri and breeze, no yogurt.

That was in terminal C, and then I went over to terminal B for my flight, because there's no Jamba Juice in terminal B.

Like I said, I fly enough to be silver, but not enough to be gold.

So I got to the terminal, I got to the gate and it was a very interesting crowd at the gate going to West Palm Beach on December 4th because I was going for a conference, a conference of top advisors, top advisors from around the country, people who in fact specifically women, it was top women advisors.

These are people who manage hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars on behalf of their clients.

So we had a lot of professional financial advisor types.

We had other financial services types like myself who are trying to get in front of these financial advisors.

I think they wheeled down, you know when they first call for those who need assistance to go down the jetway?

I think half the plane was wheeled down the jetway.

But because I'm silver I got to go on relatively early which means I get overhead space.

Wheels in first of course And so I found my seat.

I sat down and I just got out my routine.

So when I sit in the plane, when I'm ready for a trip, I take out my earplugs, my foam earplugs, my Bose noise cancellation headset.

And my eye mask so that I can relax, if not sleep.

Usually I end up dozing somewhere between sleep and being awake.

So I pulled all that out and next to me straggles in in zone 5.

A young man, he couldn't have been more than 25.

Very tall, very slim, very lanky, crazy wild hair, kind of matted looking, lots of kind of a scraggly beard.

Apparently that seems to be popular these days.

For the longest time I noticed that some of the younger folks in my office would have that is it a three-day or a five-day beard.

I'm not sure which day it is it's something like that and for the longest time I just thought wow they might need to get a sharper razor or something.

Then I realized that they were doing it on purpose.

He looked like he'd been up all night or doing something.

I was on the aisle because I always like to be on the aisle because I'm very type A and a little bit of a control freak perhaps.

And so I was on the aisle, I let him in and he immediately crashed out, immediately crashed out.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

03-Congenital Christianity

46m

02-Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated Pt. 1

1h

01-Emergency Landing

44m

The Same Spirit

1h 5m

7. Proverbs: Dealing With Fights

30m

Much More Than This

33m

Is Perfection Possible?

45m

The Eighth Wonder of the World

35m

The Devil’s Lethal Deception

59m

Presumption: Counterfeit of Faith

49m

Righteousness By Faith

57m

The Key of the Gospel

1h 45m

Sound Doctrine