NAD, Pacific Press and Review & Herald Evangelism Initiative

[Gail]

Here is a GREAT challenge! I think it will be fun!- Gail

Nampa, Idaho (March 21,2007)

The president of the North American Division(NAD) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Don Schneider, along with the two NAD publishing houses, Pacific Press and Review and Herald, have teamed up in a bold new evangelism initiative to blanket North America with Adventist literautre. The initiative is called Seven in Seven in 2007.

Seven in Seven is a simple plan to spread the gospel by encouraging each Seventh-day Adventist church member in the NAD to distribute seven pieces of literature in seven days. Seven in Seven will take place April 7-14, 2007. Schneider says, "Please join me in being a part of Seven in Seven in 2007. If every church member in North America shares just one piece of literature a day for seven days, we could distribut 7 million pieces of literature. That means 7 million contacts for Christ in just one week! Imagine what God can do with that."

At recent meetings, the leadership of the North American Division(NAD) of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church announced that churc growth in the NAD has declined to only 1.4 percent. Literature evangelism is one way we can help grow the church membership in the NAD.

Dale Galusha, president of Pacific Press, says "Our church has produced some fantastic literature designed to be shared with friends, co-workers, family, and neighbors. Visit your local Adventist Book Center to see the sharing materials available to you. hen begin each day during April 7-14 with prayer asking God to direct you to someone who needs encouragement, and He will bring someone into your life that needs the literature you have."

To find your local Adventist Book Center, call (800)765-6955 or visit their website at www.AdventistBookCenter.com

[bevin]

Sigh.

This is KNOWN not to work.

It is KNOWN to be a waste of time and money.

Don't these people ever study the research their own commissioned studies come up with?

/Bevin

[Gail]

Bevin, sometimes I wish you would not be so negative.

I've always enjoyed when people shared books with me!

[darlene]

This is great! Can you imagine receiving a gift piece of literature from a friend or neighbour? What a gift! It could mean the difference between Heaven or death for a person. The only problem I see is for every member to find the literature to give.

Gail you did say from the ABC, but for many members the ABC is too far away. Can a person get them from their church? Even in our church I haven't seen enough literature for every member to give out.

[Gail]

Of course you can get the books from the ABC, and some churches stock some.

It's a great time for the churches to buy some tracts and Steps to Christ, etc

My favourite, though, has always been Desire of Ages. Who can argue against a biography on Jesus?

[darlene]

Yes, I wouldn't mind giving out The Messiah. I'm reading it now for the third time. It's such a good book!

[olger]

Sounds good to me. Thanks to those of you who are positive in the Lord.

olger

[Taylor]

Sigh.

This is KNOWN not to work.

It is KNOWN to be a waste of time and money.

Don't these people ever study the research their own commissioned studies come up with?

/Bevin

What is sad is that we don't realize that for every piece of literature "thrown away' there are still many who do come to a knowledge of Jesus through such literature. I personally know many people who came to know about God through literature or books that someone gave them. What is sad is that we don't do this any more in North America. It needs to be revived. For all the "waste" it is worth it for those it works with as well as the fact that many have found 'thrown away' literature and have found the truth that way. Right after 9/11 our academies and colleges gave away many hope-filled books to survivors. There were many incredible stories of how appreciative people were. It can be done tactfully and when it is done like that it is often very much apreciated.

[bevin]

Quote:

Bevin, sometimes I wish you would not be so negative.

I've always enjoyed when people shared books with me!

About 1999, give or take a couple of years, the Northern New England Conference had a serious look at why our numbers weren't growing. They looked at the research about planting and growing churches, and they discovered and started pushing the "Natural Church Growth" program. At the time I was putting a lot of effort into trying to fix the problems in my home congregation at Nashua, and in the Conference, and was on various committees at church and at the Conference.

All the studies amounted to the same thing. Few people join christianity OR the SDA denomination from a no-human-friendship position. They get brought in and kept in by friends who share solutions to their real needs.

The Conference recognised the value in this research, and did exactly one round of training and planning. Just enough to get me hooked.

Teeny Finlay, Mark's wife, came and talked to our church about what would be needed to prepare for an evangelistic crusade. Her message was an exact match - get out, form friendships, start bible studies, get the potential audience way up, and an evangelistic series will get people to make the final step and actually join. Make sure they have friends in the church so they stay. Make sure they contact their unchurched friends and repeat the process - while they still have such friends.

THEN it was time for the annual camp meeting. Do you think they pushed this sensible, intelligent, research-based plan?

Of course not. They flew in some gold-digger from California who had a whole bunch of worthless brochures to sell, and told people to buy them and leave them lying around on buses and public seats and ...

And people did, and it was a waste of money and time, and it distracted everyone away from the sensible program that was being proposed

I was disgusted. I resigned from the SDA church when I realised it was broken at the congregation, the conference, the division, and the GC level.

This particular sequence of events was what persuaded me that the conferences and the NAD were fundamentally broken.

/Bevin

Google "natural church growth burrill" for more info, such as...

http://www.reviewandherald.com/speakerbureau/display.asp?id=132&speaker=yes

http://www.nadei.org/article.php?id=3

http://www.adventsource.org/ministry.aspx?Cat=269

http://www.dawnnorge.no/dawnnorge/vedlegg/cplant_24.06.2004_13.26.25.pdf

[Taylor]

Agreed that friendships are the MOST important...completely agree! However ,that doesn't discount the need for colporteurs, for literature, for evangelism even of people who have no ties with our church.

[darlene]

Sorry, but I would not call our church broken. Yes, there are things wrong with our church and with our people. However, God is still in control of His church and His people. You are limiting God when you say things are broken. God can take imperfect people and still use us, can He not?

I just participated in a church consult in a conference close to us. The consult is much more than, but uses the NCD Adventist testing as part of the process. This church and it's pastor are very progressive and doubled their scores in most of the eight areas over the last five years since they went through the process. The NCD process of testing is good, but there needs more to the process than just the NCD test.

In 15 days or so I will be going to take the basic NCD training course and our first church consult will take place on September 22, 2007. It's already scheduled. (If no one else understands what I am talking about by NCD, Bevin will.)

[Gail]

Bevin, read Dale Galusha's comment above. He states, "...Our church has produced some fantastic literature designed to be shared with friends, co-workers, family, and neighbors."

And he is right! If you want, you can invest in the short tracts that carry a short message about a certain doctrine and hand those out en masse.

Or you can also, as Darlene suggests, use the Messiah. There are also many books out there on various topics that are relevant to today's people. But to be able to give out a book like this, you need to already have some sort of relationship with the recipient. You need to, in order to be able to discern what topics you know interest that person.

The last time I was at a Singles retreat I offered an armful of books on anger management to anyone who would take them. They almost FLEW out of my hands! And I didn't know all the recipients personally, I just told them about the book.

I think it would be a nice gesture :)

[Gail]

I echo Taylor's comment about literature evangelists also. I've known some, and they do have GREAT stories of their adventures!

[bevin]

Best wishes with the NCD (Natural Church Development) and related activities. I believe that it is the right way to go.

Giving or loaning friends copies of relevant books is also the right way to go.

But

Quote:

Schneider says, "Please join me in being a part of Seven in Seven in 2007. If every church member in North America shares just one piece of literature a day for seven days, we could distribut 7 million pieces of literature. That means 7 million contacts for Christ in just one week! Imagine what God can do with that."

is the wrong way to go.

It makes for good looking "number of pieces of mission literature distributed" (to quote a phrase from the SDA SS class of my youth), but without the emphasis on friendship and relationships it is a waste of time and energy - in fact it probably actually is counter-productive.

To have the NAD president using his limited "sound bite" time to promote such a thing illustrates what I mean by broken. It is the only direct quote that has crossed my desk from the man this year, and it is a recommendation to do something ineffective.

/Bevin

[Taylor]

It has been missused in the past by a few pushy people but that doesn't mean it can't be used affectively.

[Stan]

There have been too many people that have other their broken lives fixed by information introduced to them by our literature NOT to do this...

For many seekers, it is more important about the message than it is the messager.

Not everyone is looking for a relationship with others, I sure wasn't.

[Taylor]

Amen Stan!! Literature and good books are needed and we should give them away.

Now that you are "in" however...and we didn't know you when you were "out" we are so glad you are our friend!

[darlene]

Hey! I just received a shipment of the new SIGNS Magazine. They are changing the magazine to a new and smaller format. It can fit in your pocket or purse and it is a wonderful little magazine that you will be very, very happy to share with friends and neightbours. The change came into effect in January of 2007.

And this magazine has a story in it about a boy who becomes a rabit to save his rabits. Got to read it to believe it!

[Gail]

There have been too many people that have other their broken lives fixed by information introduced to them by our literature NOT to do this...

For many seekers, it is more important about the message than it is the messager.

Not everyone is looking for a relationship with others, I sure wasn't.

Just to tack on to what Stan has written here, when I first came into the church I also thrived on books that were given to me or that I bought. They were the fresh air, the information that I craved and they helped me in different aspects of my spiritual life.

[Beryl]

Quote:

Of course not. They flew in some gold-digger from California who had a whole bunch of worthless brochures to sell, and told people to buy them and leave them lying around on buses and public seats and ...

And people did, and it was a waste of money and time, and it distracted everyone away from the sensible program that was being proposed

I was disgusted. I resigned from the SDA church when I realised it was broken at the congregation, the conference, the division, and the GC level.

This particular sequence of events was what persuaded me that the conferences and the NAD were fundamentally broken.

Bevin, I am so sorry to hear that story. The truth is, it can be re-told so many times, where a well-thought-out plan gets sidetracked.. However, there is no need to be a loser yourself! Friendship evangelism is a personal thing. In fact, it is something that can be taught to the church, BUT IT IS AN INDIVIDUAL THING TO IMPLEMENT! Even if everyone else gets sidetracked, the individual can still carry on with friendship evangelism. In fact, that is the only way that it works.

The two plans really can, and must, work together to a great advantage. Often the giving of a suitable piece of literature is the beginning of a friendship. Friendships are formed when something (anything) brings two people together. Sometimes friendships are formed immediately, but more often it takes a long time to form a lasting friendship, in the same way as literature evangelism takes a long time to mature.

The church members need to be faced with many ideas which they, individually, can put into practice. It is a mistake to think that any one plan will finish the work, because we are all individuals, with individual talents. Therefore a variety of training opportunities must be given. It may even seem that everyone of them fails -- but they don't. For every plan taught there are some people who find that this is something which they can do. The majority will reject it, but then another plan will just "touch the spot", and they will find ways to implement that plan.

Sorry that you found it necessary to walk away from the church because your excellent plan did not become THE plan to be used, instead of seeing it as ANOTHER plan to be used.

God bless,

Beryl