A few months ago I attended the Pacific Union Conference Ministerial Meetings in Ontario, CA.. While there I attended a seminar by Pastor Carlton Byrd has in the very near past become the speaker/director of Breath of Life Ministries and also just recently became the new Senior Pastor of the Oakwood University Seventh-day Adventist Church in Hunstville, Alabama.
I attended the seminar because I wanted to learn from Pastor Byrd, not about preaching, which he is a great preacher, but about how wherever he has gone his churches has grown (yes I know part of that has to do with great preaching)? I believe it was last year at the church he is now transferring from Berean Church that they baptized 800 folk. Their membership is now 4077 people, they have three sevices, they have a closed circuit feed into their basement for the overflow of folk, and all of this without being attached to a Seventh-day Adventist school of higher education (in the United States our mega-churches have typically only existed next to our colleges).
So I was curious…people come to your church for great preaching, but 800 in one year don’t get baptized without first of all the Spirit of God, but secondly some intentionality.
The following are the notes I took. I didn’t edit them or pick and choose what I thought was great or not. I am simply sharing with you the thoughts I wrote down from him in this seminar.
“I’ve never had a vision for ministry I could afford; If I did, it wouldn’t be from God.”
“Do good (pardon my English) just to do good and God will bless you.”
“If worship is to contribute to the growth of your church, three things must be true:
“The greatest advertisement for your church is word of mouth.”
“Intentional careful selection of parking supervisors, greeters, ushers, and worship leaders must be done!”
“Don’t let people box you in!”
“Sabbath needs to be a celebration!”
“We can’t do music just to please older generation.”
“We’ve kept our hymnals but lost our children.”
“Should the church be held hostage over someone picking at the instruments? NO!”
“The Senior Pastor should be involved in decision of what songs we are going to do.”
“Singers sing, preachers preach. Don’t let your singers get up there and think they can preach a sermon or share something they think is just so wonderful. They are there to sing.”
“Don’t let your minister of music say, ‘I am running this (worship). LET’S BE CLEAR, there is ONE leader! If there were multiple leaders in Israel the children would still be slaves in Egypt. God gives the vision of the ministry to the leader and it is not a compromise of your idea and my idea.”
Evangelistic Outreach:
“An evangelistic cycle throughout the year with good worship, a friendly environment, and strong leadership will grow.”
“Build database from EVERYTHING done at or through your church. I have over 8,000 names in our database that are not members but have attended one of our events.”
“Send communication by Monday to every visitor within two days of their visit.”
A Bible Workers work six weeks before the evangelistic meetings:
“When folk come to our public campaigns and become interested or are baptized they are assigned a Spiritual Guardian. We don’t want to just baptize people, we also want to keep them. We don’t want people going out the back door where we wouldn’t notice, especially in our large church.”
“Singers sing & preachers preach” (seriously he said it again, must be a pet peeve)
Typical length of meetings 2 weeks 5 & 5
I always cover and usually go in this order:
“I always then do some special midweek. Why? I don’t want someone that just was convicted of the Sabbath or true church or something like that to then go back to their church and be discouraged from our message. I don’t want them at their old church I want them at Berean!”
“I do two to three public campaigns a year.”
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And those are my notes from Pastor Byrd. Some powerful stuff. He is a dynamic individual that beleives 100% in what he is doing and Whom he is serving!
So I read the following statements this morning and it states well something God has shown me I need to work on in this new year.
“If any one shall seek to draw the workers into debate or controversy on political or other questions take no heed to either persuasion or challenge.” Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers, p. 374.
“If men who are engaged in presenting and defending the truth of the Bible, undertake to investigate and show the fallacy and inconsistency of men who dishonestly turn the truth of God into a lie, Satan will stir up opponents enough to keep their pens constantly employed, while other branches of the work will be left to suffer. We must have more of the spirit of those men who were engaged in building the walls of Jerusalem. We are doing a great work, and cannot come down. If Satan can keep men answering the objections of opponents, thus hindering them from doing the most important work for the present time, his object is accomplished.” –Ellen G. White, Gospel Workers, p. 376.
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So what am I working on for 2012? Not spending a lot of time trying to defend & debate the positions I have been convicted on through the Bible and prayer.
I need to be content to state what I believe when folk take umbrage, and if they want to continue after that I simply need to remain silent and walk away. AGREE to DISAGREE.
God has called me to focus on the ministry for the days in which we live and not to remain continually occupied with conflict or vain discussions that rarely go anywhere, but to division and hurt feelings.
Goal for 2012: Less arguments, less repeat discussions, no debating.
Pray for me since I have never been one to back away from a verbal jousting session!
We are in the thick of the political scrum! Debate after debate, pundit after pundit, poll after poll. It is pure madness.
Who am I going to vote for? I can’t tell you!
But I can tell you about some of the issues that folk in our country seem so riled-up about from a Biblical perspective. This is not an exhaustive examination of each topic, but will cover some basic principles that point to the primary truth.
Taxes:
“Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men. Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the tax money.” So they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?”
They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way.” –Matthew 22:15-22
It is historical fact that the Jews were heavily taxed by the Romans. It was also taxation without representation (something we went to war for with England back in the 1700’s). Notice though how Jesus responds, pay your taxes and worship God. Give to Caesar (that is pay your taxes) give to God (that is worship or your heart). It seems just in this one verse that Jesus didn’t see the tax fight as a fight He needed to take on.
My question would then be: Why do we? You can vote however you want on the issue, but a vote is different than fighting the system and the man. If Jesus didn’t fight it, we shouldn’t fight it either.
Jesus spoke a lot about the poor and on one occasion He said the following:
“But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” –Luke 14:13, 14
Jesus clearly expect believers to take care of the poor. In fact the inspired early description of the church one of the things emphasized over and over again is caring for the needy.
“Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.” –Acts 4:32-35
The role of the church is to care for the needy and if the church won’t do, if the church has abandoned her job, then I would say the government stepping in to help which raises taxes isn’t the governments fault but it is the fault of the church (I am not talking about spending on “a bridge to nowhere”, but rather social programs to help the needy and underserved in our country), so should we fight taxes that are being used to do the things we are supposed to be doing as believers?
Conclusion: Jesus’ stance on taxes is pay them as long as they aren’t preventing you from loving and serving God, which they aren’t. Second, Jesus’ stance is that believers should care for those in need, unfortunately we don’t. So the government has stepped in, I don’t know that Jesus would denounce government for that, but He may have some words for the church (see Isaiah 58).
So where do you stand? On the Bible or elsewhere?
Abortion:
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.” –Psalm 139:13-16
Some key phrases in this scripture inspired by God:
First, “My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret.” In other words when no one else knew there was a baby made, God knew.
Second, “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” So God sees substance and life and value before we as humans are fully formed. Also, God has a desired plan for each baby before they have even lived a day outside the womb of their mother.
It would seem then based on these texts that the following text would also apply to unborn babies:
“Thou shalt not kill.” –Exodus 20:13
Conclusion: The Bible clearly teaches life begins long before a baby comes out of his or her mother. The Bible clearly teaches that taking life is wrong. As Christians we cannot let our political desires or party influence our support of life!
Hunting:
This one could really be labeled guns. I put hunting in though b/c every political cycle there are some pictures that surface of candidates, usually GOP candidates wearing orange vests and carrying a rifle. In this go round there have been some direct references to hunting due to the presence of Rick Perry. Folk defend the right to bear arms for protection, I don’t fully agree with that position, but I can’t find Biblically a yes or no, so my opinion on that really doesn’t matter. But I have also heard some from the NRA speak of the right to have guns for sport/hunting. And the Bible does address that issue:
“The lazy do not roast any game,
but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt.” –Proverbs 12:27
Conclusion: Hunting for sport is wrong (lazy); hunting to eat is acceptable. You may say well laziness isn’t that bad. Read what Jesus says about lazy folk in Matthew and see what Paul writes about lazy folk in Titus. It’s not good to be lazy and therefore protecting gun rights for the sake of sport seems to go against the Bible. If you kill it, eat it or don’t kill!
Welfare:
“But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us. For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.” –2 Thessalonians 3:6-12
The text is pretty clearly stating that a person that is able to work, but unwilling to work should not get any support. Based on this point of view Christians should take a position on welfare that would urge this type of standard.
Conclusion: A welfare system based on the Bible would look a lot different than the welfare system we have now.
So what was the point of this post?
The point of this post is maybe to point out that a Christian shouldn’t stand with one political party or believe that one political candidate is the perfect one; we should understand that no matter who we vote for, we should be honest about the fact and hopefully be willing to disagree openly with the person we voted for if their position is not in line with scripture.
As Christians our political views should be based on the Word of God! That should be our standard, any other standard is placing another God (self and our own human thoughts) above God!
So a few weeks ago I had a little rant against Adventists dropping the ball on some modern technology. Well, I am not taking that rant back, but I do want to promote a site that is trying to use the tools that are available to us to reach people and grow people in Jesus.
The site is: Adventist eBooks this site is from the Pacific Press Publishing Association. I mentioned it my RANT but I wanted to promote it again because as Doug Church, VP of Sales & Marketing stated so accurately,
“It is difficult to overstate the difficulty of “marketing to the Adventist Church.”
So let’s help this ministry out and market it! Go visit Adventist ebooks and then repost this blog post somewhere or share it on your twitter, Facebook, or Google+ page and we can help Pacific Press get the word out that we are moving into the 21st Century.
I already bought a book from them, “A God Named Desire” by Ty Gibson
Oh and for those of you that do read Kindle or Nook & also study the Sabbath School Quarterly you can also get the S.S. Quarterly each quarter in e-Format
Here is a trailer from Amazing Facts for their series “Reclaim Your Faith” I post it because it has some very interesting facts about Christianity and our great need to get out there and introduce people to JESUS in a way that truly models Him–LOVE! Are you searching for the 1?