BestPractices
|
April 29, 2009
|
|
 Welcome to the new Best Practices! Thanks to the team at Vervent, we've got a new look, and we're proud of it.
Do you ever feel uncomfortable with the way we talk about those we want to evangelize? Do we sound condescending? I've had those concerns. Even the term "non-Adventist" implies our superiority. Ryan Bell suggests that when we make our outreach plans, we have a few of "the lost" with us, to monitor our communication!
What do you think? Check out our Night Owl Forum, now hosted at the new Vervent website, to join the conversation.
Blessings
Loren Seibold,
Editor, Best Practices for Adventist Ministry
|
|
|
|
| Best Practice Pastor
|
In the Presence of the Other
by Ryan Bell
I'm a fan of pluralism. There, I said it.
Put another way, I love diversity. After all, the universe God created is a very diverse place.
In any medium-sized to large city and even in many small towns, mosques, synagogues and temples dot the landscape, along with the churches. From the beginning of my pastoral ministry I have made a concerted effort to be in community with other religious leaders. Most often that has been other Christian religious leaders, sometimes only Protestant. But in the past two years I have had the opportunity to expand my religious community.
Recently I was in Maryland and Washington, DC with a group from the Inter-religious Council of Southern California (IRC)-a group which I serve as Treasurer-to tour the General Conference and learn about Adventism with a very diverse group of people. We had one Catholic priest, three Mormons, one Sikh, one Buddhist monk, four Hindu monastics from the Vedanta Society, and two Seventh-day Adventists.
Toward the end of the week I had the chance to converse with one of the top executives in the church. We had both noticed how our language about ourselves changed when we were in the presence of people who weren't the same as us. We decided it would be a good discipline, whenever we are talking about "saving the lost" or "evangelizing" a group of people, to have a so-called "lost person" in the room with us. If we are talking about ways to reach Buddhists with the gospel, we should invite one or two Buddhists to sit in our group to listen to what we are saying and reflect back to us what they hear.
We can learn a great deal about our real motives and intentions by speaking in the presence of "the other." This goes for times when we're talking about our spouse or our kids, those frustrating church members, or those lost people we want to give the gospel to.
So, the next time your church or conference is discussing evangelism strategies and plans, ask your pastor, ministerial director, or conference president if it would be okay to invite a non-Christian to sit in and provide some feedback. At the right time and place, I think this would give us some priceless food for thought.
What do you think? |
|
Reading For Pastors
|
Faith vs. hope: A thoughtful essay by Dr. Herold Weiss about the Bible, faith, and objective knowledge. Quote: "It is a fallacy to think that because the Bible is an object, all the
information obtained from it is objective knowledge. The faith that
affirms the action of God in the death and the life of Christ gives hope
of eternal life. But what faith and hope know is not objective
knowledge."
Believe it or not, it costs more to be poor.
Can sex offenders come to church? A North Carolina law, under review, said no. Quote: "If they want to repent their sins, sex offenders in Buncombe County and elsewhere had better do it at home.
Some church services are among the activities that are off limits
because of tough restrictions on registered sex offenders' movements,
passed all but unanimously last year by state lawmakers who invoked a
young girl's tragic murder."
Christianity Today has movie reviews, including this one of the Dan Brown religious thriller "Angels and Demons". (CT includes discussion questions about the movie. Could watching and discussing the movie be a young adult activity?)
Are we here to evangelize the culture or transform it? An ongoing question addressed on CT's site.
More Susan Boyle: Tom K. at Patterns of Ink has some Christian reflections on the Susan Boyle phenomenon.
Torture: Why do conservative Christians support it more than others? (More on the Pew Center study here.) At least one religious journalist thinks it has to do with our soteriology. Quote: "How violence is interpreted shapes how people respond to it. The
comparison of the photographs from Abu Ghraib to crucifixion images
suggests that the violence in those photographs has been seen through
the lens of the crucifixion, and that this theological story has shaped
how torture is understood."
|
| Resource Review
|
|
| To the Point
|
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
- Sir Laurens van der Post
Adam
was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all
the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first
consultant.
- Mark Twain
Christ is the glory of God. His blood-soaked cross is the blazing
center of that glory. By it He bought for us every blessing-temporal
and eternal. And we don't deserve any. He bought them all. Because of
Christ's cross, God's elect are destined to be sons of God. Because of
His cross all guilt is removed, and sins are forgiven, and perfect
righteousness is imputed to us, and the love of God is poured out in
our hearts by the Spirit, and we are being conformed to the image of
Christ. Therefore, every enjoyment in this life and the next that is not
idolatry is a tribute to the infinite value of the cross of Christ-the
burning center of the glory of God. And thus a cross-centered,
cross-exalting, cross-saturated life is a God-glorifying life-the only
God-glorifying life. All others are wasted.
- John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
There is no such thing as "fun for the whole family."
- Jerry Seinfeld
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
- Terry Pratchett
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
- Herman Melville
Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
- Stanislaw Lem
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
- Eric Hoffer |
| Thoughts and Ideas
|
-
From Monte Sahlin: "Loren, I am not sure that you should have given publicity to the video on Muslim demographics. The data attached to the posting states that it was produced in Lebanon
by "Friend of Muslims." The statistics in the presentation are questionable. No
known research source suggests that the current population of Muslims
in the U.S. is as high as it states nor that the growth rate is as
rapid as it suggests. It is not a reliable piece of information. It is
most likely political propaganda. It is unclear whether this is (1)
Christian nationalist propaganda from a U.S. source designed to stir up
sentiment against immigration or (2) Israeli propaganda designed to
reinforce anti-Palestinian sentiment among Americans or (3)
fundamentalist Muslim propaganda designed to suggest superiority over
American Christians. Whatever the case, it is clearly not
Christ-centered nor produced by anyone with a heart for reaching
Muslims or any other group."
- From SimpleChurch advocate Milton Adams, news of a House Church Summit at the Andrews University SEEDS conference, June 10-13, 2009.
Got a tool, resource, site, article, idea or seminar that you like a lot? Share it with us at BestPractices@ameritech.net. |
|
Upcoming NAD Events
|
- SEEDS conference 2009: June 8-13, 2009, at Andrews University.
- SEEDS house church summit: June 10-13, 2009 at Andrews University
- InMinistry Center CE classes (advanced degrees for pastors); summer classes, Andrews, July 19-30
- AU 2009 Family Celebration Sabbath, featuring Mark Laaser on sexual addictions, July 27-18
- K.I.D. University (Kids in Discipleship Ministry training):
- April 3-5 - Sunnyside SDA Church, Portland, OR
- April 12-15 - Collegedale SDA
Church, Collegedale, TN
- April 16-19 - Paradise SDA
Church, National City, CA
- NAD-IAD Health Summit Orlando 2010 -January 24 - February 7
|
|
Best Practices is a Vervent publication of NAD CHURCH RESOURCE CENTER. Editor: Loren Seibold, Senior Pastor, Worthington Ohio Seventh-day Adventist Church. E-mail:
Best Practices. You are free to republish pieces from Best Practices in your own
newsletter or blog, with attribution to the Best Practices newsletter and the
author of the piece. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
