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BestPractices
March 31, 2010
Easter Wings
by George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poor:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
IN THIS ISSUE
Tim Garrison gets connected to the mission field
Reading: Goat-kissing evangelism
Media: Stained Glass Documentaries
Quote: "A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."
iFollow Discipleship Curriculum
News & ideas: Easter Sabbath resource
Events: Adventist Fresh Expressions
Ministry
T GarrisonConnecting a Local Church to Work Far, Far Away
By Tim Garrison
 
The posters were colorful and well designed the videos dramatic and compelling. Still, the connection of members to distant ministry was missing.  They had seen it all before, countless times, one dimensional on a flat screen.  How to make it real was the challenge.
 
What would happen if image turned into real time experience?  Not just a mission trip to build a church or school, but North American church members walking from behind the camera to see, hear, touch, and feel for themselves. 
 
Could a local church pastor make that happen?  Would the corporate church be willing to send people in the pews to remote places to make a real connection to missions?
 
Three year ago I mentioned the idea to Hope for Humanity Director, Maitland DiPinto and the Hope for Humanity local church Advocate program was born.  Working with the West Region Pastors of the Southern California Conference I invited church members to travel to Central America to see for themselves Hope for Humanity's Literacy Learning Circles.  These amazing home based learning circles are helping hundreds of mostly adults learn to read, write and do basic math for the first time. 
 
Two years ago our first group of Southern California church members went down to Nicaragua to visit Learning Circles, meet with the teachers, worship with the local members and simply observe the work of Hope for Humanity.  While there they had the chance to develop custom presentations to bring back to their local churches.  Last year another group traveled to El Salvador.
 
We now have Hope for Humanity Advocates in 12 churches in the West Region of the Southern California Conference.  During last year's trip to El Salvador I presented a check for $6000.00 to Maitland DiPinto on behalf of the Hope for Humanity Advocates and announced a goal of $10,000 for 2010. 
 
When the corporate church is open to ideas that better connect their work with local church members both are enriched spiritually and financially. 

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Reading For Pastors

Pets get remembered better than people: the boom in elaborate and expensive funerals for pets, and pastors who participate in them.
Have you ever done a funeral for a pet? Would you if asked?

Because of our own prophetic expectations, I'm fascinated by stories where collective hysteria takes over, so that it only takes a minor difference from popular culture for government to become highly oppositional. It's happening just to the north of us: the Quebec government is seeking to restrict health care and education to any woman who wears the niqab, the full-face Islamic veil. (Niqab wearing is an isolated practice: fewer than 25 wear it in the entire province.) I think of our unique beliefs when I read this quote: "That's democracy in action, it can be said. But we have seen many ugly manifestations of the popular will before."

A word you may not know, but that is gaining in importance: "La�cit�" refers to a stricter separation of church and state which amounts to a complete secularism of government-what some have called hostile church-state separation. Government cannot interfere with religion, but neither can religion take any part in public discourse. It is being put to the test in several countries, notably France, where the state does not recognize churches, and the role of religion is not given any credit in public life. The result: clashes with civil authorities when immigrants want to make their faith known publicly.

A thorough review of Fritz Kling's new book, Meeting the Waters: Seven Global Currents That Are Shaping the Future Church.

Humor: 5 Tips For Attending a Baptist Church Without Embarrassing Yourself

Oh, dear: A Harris poll says nearly a quarter of Republicans think Obama may be the antiChrist. And over half suspect he's secretly Muslim.

New evangelism idea: "Bring a hundred people to church, and the pastor will kiss a goat!"

All those years in school? 71% of pastors say they still use what they learned in seminary.

Are you a leader? Check out these ten signs that a leader is "losing it".
Featured Media
There are almost 6,000 churches in the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Each one has a story. Stained Glass Documentaries produced by the NAD Church Resource Center chronicle the lives of several churches in this landmark film series. Watch as churches struggle to find themselves and their purpose. These are gritty, authentic, powerful documentaries of how God is working today. The first episode of the Hollywood Blvd documentary is released in today's Best Practices. Come to Hollywood and struggle with Pastor Ryan Bell as he faces a church with little purpose or internal community. CRC will continue to release a new episode of the Stained Glass doc with each new issue of Best Practices. Milton Adams YouTube Video

March 25-27 of 2010 marked the seventh annual Andrews University Music a
nd Worship Conference. Pastors, lay leaders, and seminary students from all over the world enjoyed this informational and inspirational conference. The weekend was filled with stimulating workshops and diverse worship experiences. If you missed out this year you should definitely make it a priority to attend in 2010. Many of the presentations were recorded and will eventually be posted online. Check with the AU Music and Worship site or the Vervent site to find out when they will be available.   Watch Monte Sahlin's presentation at an earlier Vervent worship conference as he shares the role that ethnicity plays in worship services.
-Dave Gemmell
To the Point
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
  - J. Frank Dobie

A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
  - John Tudor

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
 - James Thurber

If all the good people were clever
And all the clever people were good
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could
 - Elizabeth Wordsworth

Laugh, and the world laughs with you:
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth
Must borrow its mirth,
It has trouble enough of its own.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure
Of all your pleasure,
But they do not want your woe.

There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train;
But one by one
We must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
 - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.
 - James Thurber
Resources
Dan DayifollowThe iFollow Discipleship Resource
Dan Day, Director, NAD Church Resource Center

People have been asking for more details about the iFollow discipleship resource we've been discussing here in the pages of Best Practices. When will it be available? What will it contain? How will we use it? Let me begin to open the door a bit more widely, so you can begin to think about how the new resource could impact your ministry.

The first elements of the new iFollow resource will be introduced at the NAD Pavillion of the General Conference Session in Atlanta, which will take place during the end of June and the beginning of July this year. It will be fully rolled out by the time of the NAD Ministries Convention, in January.

Over five years in development, the new iFollow discipleship resource is a product of the Adventist church in North America, developed in response to research findings with Adventist pastors who said it was the most important resource they could be provided. It was developed by teams of Adventist writers and editors, under the direction of the NAD Church Resource Center, who contracted with the Center for Creative Ministry for the early work. It is a content-rich tool that will enable pastors and congregational leaders to access a broad set of discipleship resources, and is being engineered to serve the local congregation in discipleship training in several different ways.

How will it all work?

First, each church in North America will be provided with a special edition of the Pastor's DVD that will contain a complete library of discipleship content. That means it is free to you and your congregation. This content will be searchable, so it can be assessed to set up training sessions and mined for sermon content. It's going to be so cool.

Second, there will be a website associated with iFollow that will mirror the DVD. What that means is that the content can be accessed there, too, providing a wide assortment of ways it can be used. The website will also contain additional elements as they become available.

Third, a series of books is going to be offered (with the first ones available at AdventSource during the GC Session), drawn from the discipleship content and written to address specific discipleship themes. These books, written by experienced Adventist authors and editors, will be unlike anything you've seen before. They will be specifically organized for use in small group settings. Not only will the discipleship themes be addressed in powerful ways, but additional content will in each book, providing things like: a Bible study for each chapter, specific discipleship comments from Ellen White and various contemporary writers, and activities for the group to use in making the content more accessible. There will even be a section in each chapter that shows how the theme of that chapter intersects with one or more of the Fundamental Beliefs of the church.

In short, the iFollow discipleship resource will be a powerful new tool for strengthening the vitality of the local congregation and deepening the spiritual life of the individual Christian. It will be specifically developed with the end-users in mind, and it will continue to grow as more titles are added and additional content is made available. That means if you want to begin discipleship training in your church, you will be able to continue the process over however long you wish-with content you can trust, organized to make the process easy and effective.

News, Ideas & Reminders

  • Lonnie Melashenko is back on the air. He's done a 13-part series called "Healing Hope" that would be good for a small group or midweek meeting. You can watch it on the Hope TV channel, the Hope TV website (if you can figure out how to navigate it - I can't) or the Kettering Health YouTube channel.
  • From Darron Boyd: "I have been trying to find a new approach to evangelism that is family centered. I want to do a non-traditional meeting that still covers the Adventist message but is inclusive of the family and targeted to the family - not just to the person whose interested in prophecy. I was able to find what I was looking for: the Happy Family Bible Seminars International. This is from Gordan and Waverly Martinborough who were the Family Life Coordinators of the Inter American Division and now operate Happy Family from Orlando Florida. It is a 24 part series focused on the family. It's definitely a different approach to doing Evangelism Seminars."

Got a tool, resource, site, article, idea or seminar that you like a lot? Share it with us at [email protected].
Upcoming NAD Events

Do you have an event you'd like to invite NAD pastors to? Send details to [email protected].
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.