SDA Evangelism Good & Bad

[Gregory Matthews]

See:

https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2017/12/01/what-drives-me-crazy-about-adventist-churches

Adventists talk a lot about spreading the gospel and reaching our communities. But for the most part, it’s all talk. When it comes down to it, we don't really want to reach our communities. We only want to reach the kinds of people who will respond to our narrow methods of evangelism. We don't spend time studying the culture. We don't invest in getting to know their worldviews, their art, their language, or their value systems. We don't take time to build bridges with them and to familiarize ourselves with their world. We don't adapt our outreach and ministry efforts to connect with them, and we don't recalibrate our own personal lives in order to more effectively reach them. Instead, we draw a cultural box in our own heads and unconsciously (or maybe not?) choose to reach only those people who fit into our box.

 

 

[Gregory Matthews]

The person who wrote the above was the author of the article that I cited and not me.

 

[phkrause]

I think there's a lot to agree with and disagree with!! I do believe that we work in very small boxes, which would be our own experience's? He mentioned about gang members having no one to relate to?? Well how than do we explain Pr Ron Halverson?? When he came into the church, there were no other gang members to relate to, but he stayed because of the love of the church people that were there to show him Christ's love!!!!! I would say as individual church members we can only work with what we have, and that would be our own experience's!!

[Kevin H]

Brother Ron was an exception and he was able to have an exceptionally good ministry because of that. The basic information in our evangelistic meetings come from the development of though through the Franciscans from about the 1300s and last seriously studied out in the powers court conferences in the late 1700s and early 1800s. And to me it appears that except for newer pictures and stories that our basic evangelistic series was finished in the 1930s and repeated ever since. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshel fell in love with Seventh-day Adventism and kept telling us that we have the best message that there is but that we are going to go no where's with it until we find better ways to present it.

I've known old pastors who say studied with people like Elder Thiele or Lynn Harper Wood etc. and loved what they learned but when they got into the ministry they were so busy it was easier just to repeat the old messages than to implement what they learned from these people. I won't embarrass the guy by mentioning his name, but a friend of mine from Andrews has a TV ministry on 3ABN. He is not teaching what we learned and what he and I would discuss but his knowledge that he had when we were friends is light years a head of the super out of date and ultraconservative message in his messages and books. I have to admit I hate to hear him and had to give up reading his books because it is so  backwards from what we'd discuss at Andrews.

Another thing that this article impressed upon me is that one of my facebook pages are "Ex and Current Seventh-day Adventists" which is full of ex-Adventists (seems to be from mostly Australia) and among the ex-Adventists that I encounter there (as well as other places) are very narrow and ridged people who don't seem to have the theological ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. They are overly focused on things that in a superficial reading appear to be misapplications of the Bible by Mrs. White. Now prophets rarely do exegesis. Mrs. White kept telling us that is our job. She would tend to either draw analogies, or use the phrases from scripture because they had a nice sound to it when making a point. They are constantly trying to make her do exegesis and using concrete thinking when reading her words and are frustrated because it's not exegesis therefore she is a false prophet. But I can't help to think that it is the same type of narrowness and rigidly that we appeal to in our evangelistic meetings and that we set up  these people to come in and then leave and become these vocal ex-Adventists. You've heard the phrase "Don't throw out the Baby with the bathwater" Too many of these people throw out the baby and cherish and cuddle with the bathwater. They describe themselves as narrow minded Adventists who liked to use Ellen White quotes to attack others,, now they have progressed to narrow minded evangelicals who like to use Paul to attack Adventists. And sadly the few Adventists I see there tend not to last long, tend to be from third world countries and tend to try to prove them wrong or try to come out with a stronger quote but still approaching Adventism with the same mindset as these ex--Adventists are using. I've long wondered how our basic evangelic meetings have been causing this problem. I'm glad to see that this article shows that I'm not the only one who is disturbed by this.