As I head into an important meeting August 19 I am in great prayer for the Spirit of God’s leading. Since I always believe in being honest on this blog and in life, I thought I would share the struggle I am having.
My position on the issues of the day are pretty clear, if you read this blog you know I am in support of Women’s Ordination. I believe the day our church took the position to allow women pastors, we should have also taken the position of ordaining. Otherwise it feels like saying “you get paid .75 cents on the dollar” or “here is the title with none of the authority.”
I am disappointed that the current movement is not being lead by our General Conference, and I am finding it hard to trust that things will be different in the future.
**Quick side note, the current administration is getting all the blame, but let us not forget that the previous administration spoke of moving forward on this issue and took a silent survey of the World Division Presidents and pulled back, the current admin is just vocal and so “He” and they get the brunt of our angst, but is an impediment any different whether vocal or silent?
So what is my struggle? My struggle is this: I still believe in the authority of Ellen White in my life as a Seventh-day Adventist, and since she is sleeping in the ground ’till Jesus comes, all I can go by in regards to her counsel are the words we have on the written page. Thus when my friend Pastor Shawn Brace posted two quotes on his Facebook page my struggle has been increased. I have seen the quotes before, but maybe as I am in a great season of prayer over this issue and our church I saw them with new eyes.
I will share those quotes below, but first I want to share one other thing that has increased my struggle. A conversation I had with a fellow pastor, a female pastor, and she said,
“Chad I very much want ordination without regard to gender to happen, but if it happens apart from the General Conference, then I am only recognized in one or two Unions as ordained & if I leave those Unions it has no value. Then all we have essentially done is release the tension a little, much like when certain conferences voted to change ordination policy a few years back, or certain churches voted to ordain their female pastors, it did not really change the issue, women still are not recognized on equal status in the EYES (GC) of the church. If we do this now, will it only release the pressure off the General Conference for a season and in actuality further delay what ultimately needs to happen, equal ordination for all?”
Twice Paul told us that, “Everything is permissible–but not everything is beneficial.” (1 Cor. 10:23 & 1 Cor. 6:12). So I am praying, not what is most permissible, but what will be most beneficial to the cause of God & to the cause of recognition for women by ALL the church?
May we all pray, and may God give us wisdom.
EGW Quotes Pastor Shawn posted that stirred my struggle:
“. . . I have been instructed that there is a great work to be done in America. . .
“The world is filled with strife for the supremacy. The spirit of pulling away from fellow laborers, the spirit of disorganization, is in the very air we breathe. By some, all efforts to establish order are regarded as dangerous–as a restriction of personal liberty, and hence to be feared as popery. These deceiv
That is not a 10k race…for those runner friends out there. I am writing of 10k as in 10,000, & the 1 is representative of 1 church.
We need 1 church for every 10,000 people, to be precise we need 1 church of 200 active members for every 10,000 people. This is the conclusion many have come to, including those in the North Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Why? Well let the folks at NPUC explain:
“A typical church of 200 active members will impact a maximum of 10k people (200 members x 50 contacts = 10k if there is no overlap).”
Now let me throw in this caveat that I believe to be absolutely 100% truth, and definitely verifiable through the stories of scripture. God could reach everyone with just 1 person. I don’t know how, but He could do it. And although that is true that is not the way God seems to work. In fact He seems to work in the way we would typically think of working, at least when it comes to numbers.
More people reach more people!
“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” –Matthew 9:37-38
The idea is MORE laborers MORE reaping!
So yes God could reach everyone with just 1 person, but He has chosen to use people and to call for more people to help Him in reaching everyone. Which is the very reason why the statistic above is significant. For a church to truly impact 10,000 people it must have 200 soul winners, engaged members in its midst.
In most communities where there is an Adventist church of 500 or more folk will often ask, “Why do we need another church?” It doesn’t matter if the city is 20,000, 50,000, or 100,000+. A church of 500 or more is usually quite satisfactory to folk and again people ask, “Why do we need another church?” How do I know this? Because we have recently started another church (in my mind it is a campus, but to the community it is another church) The Ark a Seventh-day Adventist Christian Church, & because there is already a significant size church in our community, The Visalia Seventh-day Adventist Church, (740 members and growing) I have heard many times, “Why another church pastor?”
My answer is this:
Because 1 church cannot reach 125,000 people quick enough with the Adventist message (and yes I do believe in proselytizing) That is how many people there are in my city. Which would mean we need at least 12 churches of 200 soul winners to reach all 125,000+ people in our community.
What about in your community? How big is your city? Does your city have a population of 10,000 or more?
And if so…
Do you have an Adventist church? Are there 200 engaged–on fire, Jesus loving, people serving, Good News spreading–members in your church? Do you have enough churches & or enough members if your city is 20 thousand, 30 thousand, 40 thousand, 100,000, 500,000 people?
For most of you the answer will be NO!
How do I know? Because in the United States the mean size of a typical Adventist church is 215 members. That is good, except…there are only 4950 churches which in comparison to the population of the United States computes to just 1 church for every 63,267 people.
(Even if we took our total Adventist membership in the U.S. and divided it by 200 we would still only have 1 set of 200 people for every 58,900 people. Now probably wouldn’t be the right time to mention that only about half of all professed Adventists are “active” in their local churches right? Yeah that would be a much more dismal picture, so let’s at least let something be rose colored:)).
Back to our situation. In order to have 1 church for every 10k in the United States, we need 31,317 Adventist churches of at least 200 in the United States. So roughly, 26,350 more of our mean size (215) church.
So do we throw-up our hands and say impossible? Can’t be done? Do you remember that God that could reach everyone with just 1 that you were defending earlier when I was throwing-out numbers? Yes, He is still on the throne and He can very well do this! And He can very well do this through us!
Based on some quick adding and some quick math on my part. Let us state that there are about 750 churches with 300 members or more.
What if every church with at least 300 members, encouraged, taught, made a part of their culture, a membership tithe from the church. In other words if a church has 300 members they would ask 30 members to step out in faith and plant a church. If they have 400 members, 40, 500, 50…600 they plant two churches and send out two groups of 30.
What if a church such as Loma Linda University church made the decision to tithe their members. To call for 600 members to step out in faith and plant churches…what if they sent out 6 different teams of 100 to plant a church. 6 churches in 1 year. The same could be true for Pioneer Memorial Church, Pastor Dwight Nelson if he were to stand-up every year and teach every year his congregation to tithe themselves? Could they plant 3 churches of a 100 members every year? Why not? On faith they could!
Here is what I know about tithing financially. With an honest tithe I am never found in need! I believe the same would be true for our churches. If we stepped out in faith and said “we will not be satisfied with the inability to reach more people; we will not ignore the call to pray for more workers, we will actually send out more workers.”
If we were to do this, our churches would never be found wanting and the Adventist message would spread like wildfire!
Are you a Seventh-day Adventist believer? Then the above scenario is not something nice to throw around it is your calling!
“Upon ALL who believe, God has placed a burden of raising up churches.”
–Ellen G. White, Medical Ministry, p. 315
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.
______________________________________________________________________________
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!
These words of Jesus struck me today, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!” –Matthew 23:37a
I began to wonder would we as a church be accused of stoning our prophet, Ellen White, as well? Not with literal stones, but with our words.
The old kid saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” BULL! We’ve all been hurt by words. Words are powerful and influential. And in the way many have spoken of Ellen White and her writings I believe it is just the same as casting a stone, because in some peoples lives before they ever opened a book of hers or read one line of her writing she was already dead to them. Before they could make a decision for themselves she was dead to them, because of the words they had heard THROWN around.
I wonder if Jesus would accuse you and me of killing our prophet? Pick-up the books and read them listen to the words. Pray for conviction one way or the other. Before you pick-up a stone and kill her!
I was challenged to stop stoning her and I decided to read her for myself and her writings have become a living breathing blessing in my life!
So here is what I am currently reading…
“The Bible…English Standard Version“…Primarily as of late the books of 1st & 2nd Timothy –God
“The Acts of the Apostles” —Ellen G. White
“Evangelism” –Ellen G. White
“How to Grow An Adventist Church” –Russell Burrill
“The Art of the Start” –Guy Kawasaki
“Church Planter” –Darrin Patrick
“Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.” –Ron Chernow
“Poke the Box” –Seth Godin
“Necessary Endings” –Henry Cloud
“Reality Check” –Guy Kawasaki
“Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream” –David Platt
…Don’t be impressed I’m a really slow reader so I probably will be reading these same books for the rest of the year:)
Oh and I am also listening to…
“Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive” –Patrick Lencioni
All but the first 4 titles and the Lencioni audio book, I am reading on my Kindle, which I love! Thank you Christina!