GYC 2014: At The Cross

The GLOW Ministry: A Literature Phenomenon

Nelson Ernst

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

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

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.

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.

Kamil Metz

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

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.

Victory Over Sin: How To Overcome Addictions

Taurus Montgomery

3. Victory Over Sin: How To Overcome Addictions

Father in heaven, again God we are thankful that you've allowed us to be here in this place at this time.

We ask that your spirit will come and illuminate our minds with understanding and help us to apply these things to our lives.

I pray that the words that come from my mouth will edify, uplift, and strengthen your people.

And I know, God, that that is impossible in and of myself.

And so I'm asking, God, we're asking for the presence and power of your Holy Spirit even now.

So, victory over sin, how to overcome addictions.

All right, now, I want to do just a small little recap of the first 2 presentations.

I'm not gonna go into much detail about them, but there's 1 thing in particular that I want to share with you, especially those of us who are here for the very first time and those of us who could use a little reminder.

All right, We began by talking about addictions and what addictions are, and we gave this definition of addiction that I want to share with you to start our presentation.

And we said that addiction is bondage to the rule of a substance, activity, or a state of mind which then becomes the center of life.

Which then becomes the center of life defending itself from the truth so that even bad consequences don't bring repentance and leading to further estrangement from God.

That is the most comprehensive definition for addiction that I have ever come across and that's why I'm sharing it with you right now.

So when it says a substance that could be anything such as food, it could be alcohol, it could be heroin, it could be crack cocaine, it could be chocolate, it could be sugar, it could be anything, any substance, anything.

That activity could be playing soccer, it could be basketball, it could be video games, it could be a variety of things.

Any activity or any substance or any state of mind.

It could be a mindset of negativity, a mindset of doubt, of insecurity.

It could be anything that becomes the center of a person's life.

Defending itself from the truth so that even bad consequences, be it your health or depletion of finances, don't bring repentance and leading 1 to further estrangement from God.

The good news is that there is freedom from addiction.

Now, now, now, now, as we continue now, as we, and this presentation gets into, I want to share with you some practical things as it relates to dealing with addictions, or rather overcoming addictions, okay?

We'll get into that, But before we get into that, I want to warn you of some strongholds that can prevent us from actually having the victory that Christ has promised, okay?

And 1 of those strongholds is a stronghold of hopelessness.

Well, there's a story in John chapter 5, verse 1 through 7.

In John chapter 5, verses 1 through 7, this idea, this stronghold of hopelessness, is played out in this particular passage of scripture.

All right, John chapter 5, verse 1 through 7.

This is the story of a man who was sitting down by what we know as the pool of Bethesda.

And what I find to be amazing about this story is that here you are, here you have a great number of disabled people, verse 3, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, they're laying around the pool.

And 1 who was there had been an invalid for how long?

Here's a man who's been invalid, who's been lame, who hasn't been able to do for himself, who has been handicapped for 38 years.

This man has been handicapped longer than most of us have been alive.

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him a question, do you want to get well?

This is an amazing story because this story, this story illustrates this mentality of hopelessness that 1 can have when they've been struggling with something for so long.

For this man, it is a physical condition.

He's an invalid, the Bible says, and for some of us, it could be an addiction that we've been struggling with for a very long time.

And Jesus comes to him and Jesus says, sir, do you want to get well?

He says, sir, I have no 1 to help me into the pool when the water is stirred while I'm trying to get in someone else goes down ahead of me What's the problem with that?

But listen, this is really just plain old common sense stuff, right?

This man has been accustomed to being in this position, and he's been accustomed to people not helping him.

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

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