2025 eHuddle Monday Afternoon — Feb 24 — BAPTIZE & EQUIP

Summary

The 2025 eHuddle session on Baptize & Equip, created by nadadventist, brought together a vibrant mix of pastors, volunteers, and church leaders to share their experiences and techniques for baptizing and equipping believers. This insightful event highlighted innovative strategies like utilizing tech and community engagement for evangelism. With discussions ranging from youth discipleship through robotics to revitalizing churches through community connection, the conference was a beacon for spiritual renewal and effective ministry practices.

Highlights

• Grassroots evangelism is key; engaging communities can revitalize dwindling churches. 🏘️
• Youth involvement is crucial; they're not just the church of tomorrow, they're leading today! 📚
• Innovative tech use in ministry, like robotics, can surprise you with its evangelistic power. 🤖
• Strategic use of social media and ads can drastically increase event attendance. 📈
• Concerted prayer and asking for God's leading showed success in miraculous church growth. 🙏

Key Takeaways

• Baptism and equipping in North America is not just possible, but thriving with the right strategies! 🎉
• Young people are eager to learn and can be powerful disciples—even in robotics clubs! 🤖
• Engaging communities through meaningful projects opens doors for evangelism. 🌍
• Tech-savvy strategies are boosting church growth and engagement like never before! 📱
• Volunteers and pastors alike are redefining church success beyond traditional walls. 🏠

Overview

The afternoon session of the 2025 eHuddle was nothing short of inspirational as church leaders shared their journeys in church growth and community engagement. With a focus on Baptize and Equip, attendees learned about the power of volunteer leadership in revitalizing churches and the importance of grassroots evangelism to engage communities.

Pastor Danny Salo, a volunteer lay pastor, recounted an inspiring story of faith and determination as he helped transform a declining church into a vibrant community hub. Pastor Bob Windsor shared the importance of vision and mission in revitalizing churches that were on the brink, emphasizing that people are drawn to communities that fulfill their needs through engagement and worship.

In an innovative twist, Pastor Kristen Thomas demonstrated how the intersection of faith and technology can create impactful discipleship programs. Her work with a robotics club showcased how unique initiatives can engage young minds and lead them to Christ, adding a layer of excitement and involvement in church activities beyond the traditional methods.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Intro and Opening The chapter titled 'Intro and Opening' likely provides an introduction to the broader themes or topics of the book or text. Without specific details from the transcript, it's difficult to provide accurate content, but typically, an introductory chapter sets the stage, presents key questions or problems, and may introduce main characters or settings if it's a narrative piece. It might also outline the structure of the book and provide context or background information necessary for understanding the forthcoming content.
• 03:00 - 10:00: Welcome and Overview This chapter provides a welcome message and an overview of the structure and topics covered within the content. It sets the stage for the reader by highlighting key areas of focus and the objectives intended to be achieved through the subsequent sections.
• 10:00 - 40:00: Chapter 2 - Transforming the Church Chapter 2 - Transforming the Church: The chapter delves into the various transformations that the church has undergone throughout history. It explores the significant events that have contributed to the evolution of church practices, structures, and influences. Key themes include the reformation movements, changes in liturgical practices, and the role of the church in modern society. The chapter highlights the challenges faced by the church in adapting to societal changes while maintaining its core values and beliefs. It provides an insightful analysis of how these transformations have affected the church's role in communities and its relationship with its followers.
• 40:00 - 56:00: Empowering Discipleship The chapter "Empowering Discipleship" emphasizes the importance of nurturing and empowering individuals in their spiritual journeys. It highlights methods and practices that facilitate personal growth and community development. Key concepts include fostering supportive environments, encouraging active participation, and developing leadership skills among disciples. The chapter also addresses overcoming challenges and the significance of mentorship in cultivating a thriving discipleship community.
• 56:00 - 74:00: Engagement and Retention In this chapter on Engagement and Retention, the focus is on understanding how to keep users or customers engaged and retain them over time. Various strategies and best practices in engaging users, such as personalized interactions and consistent communication, are discussed. Retention strategies including loyalty programs, feedback loops, and continuous product improvements are explored. The chapter highlights the importance of understanding user needs and behaviors to tailor effective engagement and retention strategies, ultimately aiming to enhance user experience and increase customer loyalty.
• 74:00 - 89:00: Community Connection and Evangelism The chapter "Community Connection and Evangelism" delves into the importance of building strong community ties and the role of evangelism in fostering these connections. It explores various strategies used by communities to engage their members and spread their message effectively. Throughout the chapter, different perspectives on the balance between evangelism and respectful community interactions are discussed. Additionally, case studies illustrate successful community-building efforts led by passionate individuals committed to their cause, highlighting the impact of community connection on both local and broader scales.
• 89:00 - 100:00: Impact and Outreach Strategies The chapter 'Impact and Outreach Strategies' discusses the various methods and approaches organizations or individuals can employ to enhance their influence and reach effectively. It includes a detailed examination of targeted communication techniques, the use of digital platforms for wider outreach, and the importance of personalization in messages. Additionally, the chapter explores how establishing partnerships and networks can amplify impact and describes case studies of successful outreach campaigns. Insights into measuring the effectiveness of different strategies and tools for feedback and improvement are also provided, offering a comprehensive guide for crafting impactful outreach efforts.
• 100:00 - 110:00: Conclusion and Q&A Title: Conclusion and Q&A In this chapter, the key topics and findings from the book are wrapped up and discussed in a concluding manner. The main themes are revisited, ensuring that readers have a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Additionally, a Q&A section addresses common queries and clarifies any doubts, providing additional insights and answers to readers' questions. This chapter serves as a satisfying closure to the book, leaving readers with clear takeaways and considerations for further thought or action.
• 110:00 - 127:10: Final Remarks and Discussion The chapter entitled 'Final Remarks and Discussion' seems to involve a conclusion to the preceding discourse. The transcript, however, only contains the character 'e', hence no specific content is available to provide a detailed summary. Typically, this section would wrap up the main ideas discussed, highlight key points, and possibly suggest areas for future research or discussion. It also might address unresolved questions and provide closing thoughts to encapsulate the overall narrative or argument presented in the text.
• 127:10 - 165:00: Behind the Scenes Interviews In the chapter titled 'Behind the Scenes Interviews,' the focus is on exclusive conversations with key individuals involved in a particular project or event. The chapter delves into the insights and experiences shared by these individuals, offering readers a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. Through these interviews, readers gain access to stories and details that are not typically visible to the public eye, providing a rich, inside look at what happens behind the scenes.
• 165:00 - 170:00: Closing Remarks and Updates The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Updates' likely serves as the conclusion for a section or the entire book, focusing on summarizing key points, offering final thoughts, or discussing future directions. Although the transcript is unavailable, typical content might include reflections on the material covered, reiteration of core themes, acknowledgments, and information on upcoming releases, changes, or responses to reader feedback.

2025 eHuddle Monday Afternoon — Feb 24 — BAPTIZE & EQUIP Transcription

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• 20:30 - 21:00 afternoon and a Welcome to our ehad session number three are we alive and awake here today all right all right very very good very good and for those of you who are watching us online thank you for coming back please take a moment to go to the chat and let us know where you're watching from we have people watching from all over the United States Canada some places in gu chronia Bermuda and we have some people from outside of North America Amica all the way to South
• 21:00 - 21:30 Africa Australia so we want to welcome you wherever you are thank you for tuning in and I'm here with my friend and my colleague Dr Tim Martin who is the director of the North American Division evangelism Institute let's put our hands together for Dr Dr Tim Martin Dr it is so good to be with you here this afternoon welcome to my backyard we're glad you are here in berrying Springs Michigan this is home for me normally when I see some of you I'm traveling to your location so welcome to my house so we're glad that you are here
• 21:30 - 22:00 with us excited about what we have this afternoon this morning was already power packed a lot of great information a lot of ideas I know turning in my head but we're just going to continue that momentum right on in this afternoon Tim in a few moments we're going to pray and we're going to introduce uh the speakers for this afternoon but I want to take a few moments to ask each and every one of you to go to your devices please uh we have an app that we use for registration for this event it's is called NAD events
• 22:00 - 22:30 if you don't have the app NAD events we would like for you to go uh to the Apple Store and download the NAD Events app this is an app that we're testing because in a few years in in about two years we're going to have the co convention 2027 and we would like to make sure that this app will work well when we get there so we're testing the app NAD events we want to be sending we're going to be sending you we're already doing that sending some of the
• 22:30 - 23:00 updates notifications everything so if you could check in with your app and make sure that you have it we would love to see how it works so it is very important and I wanted to I wanted to let you know about that very good and I just want to encourage those who are online watching us if you could just like and share this with other people there are other people who aren't watching this that maybe on the west coast are about ready to take their lunch break and to be able to sit down and enjoy this great experience with us so like and share this I'd like to
• 23:00 - 23:30 invite a colleague of mine to come up on the platform at this time uh my colleague Dr Fernando Ortiz uh he is a leads the doctor of ministry sorry not the doctor of minist the Masters in Divinity program here at Andrews University and what's interesting is the three of us we went to school together students in the MD Department all together about 30 years ago now that's true we're young people welcome so good to have you here tell us a little bit more about the
• 23:30 - 24:00 master of divinity the MD and then you can have prayer for us so Greetings From The 7th Day Adventist Theological Seminary where we work together with team and others and we're delighted that ehad Jose was uh is here this time we are honored that you chose uh Andrew University so uh and the master of divinity program has almost 450 students from all walks of life and all countries we have more than 30 countries represented but also from all of the the unions here in North America and I want
• 24:00 - 24:30 to put a bug in your ear if you may I know you know young people that may be uh receiving a call for Ministry or you see that potential of ministry how about if you tell them you know go to one of our undergraduate schools or come to under or if they already have an undergraduate degree they can come and if you see that ministerial potential in them ask them hey how about if you go to unders they will not need to do another underr degree they can come straight to the Seminary and become pastors so I'm going to give you our our email uh
• 24:30 - 25:00 website uh andrews.edu slmd or MD andrews.edu share it with your young people we would love to have them here absolutely thank you so much Dr Ortiz can you have prayer for us as we get going this afternoon thank we'll be happy too let's pray precious Lord today is a very very special moment because we're coming here to be inspired to be energized to be revitalized to go back to our churches to our
• 25:00 - 25:30 districts to our schools to our conferences to our unions and change the world for Christ so may every presenter uh be once again used by you and the Holy Spirit so us so each one of us can take back to our churches and our places uh H information that is pertinent to the kingdom and how to win souls and how to start a revolution a good revolution in our communities thank you for allowing us to be here in Jesus J name we pray amen amen thank you let's
• 25:30 - 26:00 put our hands together once again for Dr Ortiz from Andre University he works very hard to equip train and prepare church leaders and pastors for the church so we're very very grateful for everything that he does this afternoon we will be dealing with the actions of evangelism baptize and equip amen and we're going to hear from some best practitioners and as you know right here you will not hear lectures we're going to hear why some people are doing things that are working and the first uh
• 26:00 - 26:30 presenters that we have to today will be Pastor Robin Lopez Robin Lopez is the director for church planting and for volunteer L pastors of the Texas conference and also coordinates programs for the southwestern Union and he will come to this stage with a person that will have the majority of the time for the presentation Danny Salo who is a volunteer lay Pastor in the Texas conference amen amen who's next amen
• 26:30 - 27:00 after that we're going to have Bob Windsor he's going to be talking about some of the Innovative things that he's doing at his church in napan out this is in Canada all the way from the Ontario conference in Canada after that all right anybody from Canada in the house all right very good all right very good I see I see that you are alive after that we're going to have Kristen Thomas she's a youth pastor at the bellsville 7th Day Adventist Church that's a great church right there that's a former Church Tim that's a great church right there and she will be talking to us about how to reach students and younger Generations amen amen immediately after
• 27:00 - 27:30 that we're going to have Roger Hernandez is in the house and he's going to be sharing with us some of the things that he's doing in evangelism always always great content that he shares very relevant stuff that he's implementing at the so he said evangelism director director of the Southern Southern Union after that we're gonna have Dave Fernandez Dave Fernandez is one of our pastors doing an awesome job in the Georgia Cumberland conference Dave it's really good to have you here the Carolina conference is doing some pretty cool things we're excited about having
• 27:30 - 28:00 the president and evangelism coordinator here Leslie Lewis and Glenn altern not here to share with us some of the stuff that they're doing very excited about this and team I want to say something about uh Glenn Alternet Glenn Alternet has been a faithful a faithful and loyal attendee of the ehar H his conference for the last two or three years they have baptized over a thousand people in their Carolina conference and Glenn we're going to miss Glenn Glenn has said that it's time to open up their way for
• 28:00 - 28:30 younger generations to come in for someone else to come in but we want to thank Glenn for the great work that he has done he's retiring soon and this is his last let's put our hands together for Glenn someone whom we love dearly Glenn we're so happy and we want to hear from you today as well so ladies and gentlemen welcome with a big hand all of our presenters let's pay attention to what they have to say God bless
• 28:30 - 29:00 [Music] Elder Lopez can you go to Wide Rock Lake Church and close it uh can you give me some background what is going on well uh in the good Sabbath we have 10 to 15 people attending the church have been in declining for the last 10 years and we cannot sustain that anymore so can you go so I went
• 29:00 - 29:30 there I preach we have about 15 people attending I said well look we need to start uh um the process to close the congregation so I will come back in about two three more Sabbath and we're going to have an official meeting so I go next time what happened was special was amazing as I'm get to church I see the parking lot full of car cars I mean the church had a capacity for about 100
• 29:30 - 30:00 people about 100 people so it was full I said well am I in the right place yes but what what is going on so I get in they welcom me I mean amazingly and then Danny approached me said pastor Lopez um um I just got here from New York uh New York right yes New York and I know you're coming here to do something that is not really good but would you let me
• 30:00 - 30:30 give me about 3 to six months and let me see what I can do for this congregation brothers and sisters this is the volunteer L Pastor Danny saletto I didn't have to close the church and the rest story I feel like if I want to say happy Sabbath because every time I'm I'm around 7 Day Advent is it almost seems like a happy Sabbath to me um just well first of all I would like to start off by saying that all honor and praise uh
• 30:30 - 31:00 be strictly and solely to God Amen so approximately almost 6 years ago I was contacted about possibly leading this church the church had been in existing uh had been in existence already approximately 4 years and uh they were wanting a change I was I had a job in healthc care and I was working everything was going fine um and I got the call it was approximately I think it was June 2018 and I said let me pray about it uh about 6 months had passed by
• 31:00 - 31:30 and then um December they approached me again I said you know have you made your decision and I said sure well by the time I actually got installed it was July of uh 2019 now mind you I really believe that there is an advantage to not knowing how to grow a church because then you really have to solely rely on Jesus Christ on the god of the Heavens to give you bright ideas and one of the things that I have learned over and over again is that I pray to God for good ideas I say Lord just flood my mind with
• 31:30 - 32:00 something that I am possibly not seeing I am here to tell you that I'm probably the least qualified to open up and run a church or even make it flourish but with God's help let us see what happened the White Rock Lake SDA church was a church plan from the Richardson 7th Day Adventist Church that was founded in May of 2014 as you could see some familiar faces there Pastor Tom Evans I believe he was at that time at the Richardson church and um I met this uh guy his name
• 32:00 - 32:30 was Dustin peslin who was from upstate New York and I was from New York City and then we met in Dallas by chance I don't believe it's by chance I think it's providentially now uh but Dustin had a really a real big Zeal for uh Bible worker training and he said hey Danny why don't we form a Bible worker group we became friends and at the Richardson church we started teaching people how to give Bible studies in Mass we really wanted to cover as much of the city of Dallas as we could which is a huge Metropolis so we started getting together and we became friends and then an opportunity came when the Texas
• 32:30 - 33:00 conference wanted a church to be planted a approximately in the 75218 zip code of Dallas uh so Dustin was a primary leader and he said hey I'm going to need all the help I can get and imagine I was at a church I was comfortable everything was going fine however said Lord how am I going to grow if I stay in my comfort zone so I decided to go and we went so the church was founded in May of 2014 the White Rock Lake is church is approxim 1 and a half miles north of White Rock Lake that's the lake right
• 33:00 - 33:30 there on the map as you can see it and um the let's see there we go the 7521 75218 zip code the population is approximately 23,000 people the median income is approximately 110,000 this type of income sometimes it's a little bit difficult to reach right because according to them everything that they need they already have so we started doing activi to try to reach that that demographic or that
• 33:30 - 34:00 uh socioeconomic um age uh income group but it it proved a little difficult at the beginning it did immediately to the South you have 75228 which has a population of 68,000 and with a median income of 36,27023 disparity as uh compared to
• 34:00 - 34:30 75218 this is where it gets interesting we started giving invitations to Bible studies as much as we could who do you think responded more from what ZIP code the 75218 or 75228 the 75228 so we started somewhere and we started working that area as much as possible and the Lord was blessing in this manner we were literally doing like old school evangelism I'm like literally knocking on doors we didn't know any better okay now I I have no nothing I'm
• 34:30 - 35:00 not opposed to that at all I just think that there's so many other different ways of doing it but little by little people started coming however we finally found the church cuz we were looking for a church first we were meeting in somebody's home then we found this church the bethl Romanian Apostolic church and we were there at that location for S years we were growing but imagine that there we could only barely fit 100 people and you could imagine what happened during 2020 Co
• 35:00 - 35:30 hits right so nobody wants to sit next to each other and we are outgrowing this place so what ends up happening there Scott is preaching another angle right there we only had two classrooms they were upstairs no foyer no Fellowship Hall whatsoever you know when you're Building a Church you want to build Fellowship in community and that can be quite difficult at times especially if your church your physical structure is so small but we pressed on and let me tell you friends if I can leave you with something
• 35:30 - 36:00 here it's God's responsibility to grow your church it's God's responsibility to grow your church you must just cooperate with him and by cooperate I mean if there's an idea that comes think about it try to see how you're going to strategize it and then execute it I do believe in failing quickly okay and then moving on uh to the next idea so we only had two Sabbath School classrooms there we were there for seven years and the the challenges that we had there we had SE seated that was uh limited seating
• 36:00 - 36:30 limited to 80 people and as I said before during Co this presented challenges to a growing church only two classrooms only 20 parking spots no kitchen no Fellowship Hall no baptistry now if you're putting me into something like that I would ask my leaders well are you expecting me to fail but I said you know what there's nothing like hard work and friends we must work hard at all times especially in the initial stage of planting a church so a culture was created of seeing challenges
• 36:30 - 37:00 as opportunities and a culture was created among the Brethren of working and financially giving as if we were in survival mode I literally told the church there has been chatter about this church actually closing so we're going to have to work harder than we've ever worked before now when we were at that location imagine that our rent was only $850 you can't even find a one-bedroom apartment in Dallas for $850 so we stayed there for for a number of years seven years and we saved as much as we could we didn't even have a
• 37:00 - 37:30 fellowship hall so what did we do we created our own Fellowship Hall we actually bought four commercial canopies and we set up our own Fellowship Hall let me tell you that this was a major major hit with our Brethren they're there enjoying themselves with a meal you know those are actually parking spots that we just designated for our canopies there um people are fellowshipping this lady right here on the bottom left looks like she's really enjoying her meal and uh it was just a
• 37:30 - 38:00 great time you know um it was almost like Carnival atmosphere because PE some people would actually come that they were driving down the road and they would see us having a meal and we would invite them and while I am not suggesting that when we invite people that all we do is invite them to potluck Friends by all means if they come and even if they don't go to your service continue to invite them anyway eventually the holy spirit is going to touch their lives so that they could actually walk into your doors so we were outgrowing our location and after 7
• 38:00 - 38:30 years in October of 2021 we moved to the Central Lutheran Church of Dallas let me tell you how this happened really quick a church member by the name of Steve Tandy left his Bible at the bethl Romanian Apostolic Church where we worshiped before on a Sunday and I said Steve don't worry about it I'll go get it on Sunday so I got his Bible I'm driving to down Eastern Road toward his house and I feel that the spirit of God tells me look right so I look right but me in my Zeal to get things done I was
• 38:30 - 39:00 driving too fast so I get to the corner where the stop sign is and I said I Googled Church eastn Road and there it was Central Lutheran Church of Dallas and I said Lord are you trying to tell me something I get to Steve Tan's house and I tell him Steve I think I might be on to something I think the Lord told is telling me to call this church so on a Sunday at 8 uh 11:15 p.m. I emailed them and by 10:00 a.m. the central Luther Lutheran Church of Dallas says we want
• 39:00 - 39:30 to talk to you we are interested in talking to you of course I was jumping up and down right we had been looking for quite some time to make a long story short we moved to the new church the church still had no baptistry so we bought our own portable one have any of you seen a portable baptistry yes it has wheels you could climb onto it they retail for about $10,000 through searching and searching we found this one for $4,000 with a heater amen amen so if we have a
• 39:30 - 40:00 baptistry we need to put it to good use and we have our first baptism there at the White Rock Lake SDA church we were so excited we didn't even think this was possible me of little faith okay but I'm I I I'm like Lord I don't want to give up on this church because I think it has huge potential so we move on here's uh baptizing some some individuals here we have we had people that got baptized let
• 40:00 - 40:30 me tell you this every single baptism that I've have uh every single baptismal candidate that I have baptized we did not solicit not even one time friends let me tell you what's going on out there there are people that are studying about the Sabbath truth out there by themselves without any intervention so to speak from from from ourselves and they're finding these Sabbath truths and they're walking into our church and they're asking are you a Sabbath keeping church we say yes we are we baptize three families that way friends this has
• 40:30 - 41:00 to be a work of the holy spirit so the holy spirit is the one that has to grow your church you cooperate and then you'll see what magnific what magnificent things can happen it's another baptismal C candidate and with God's help we aim to fill up our Sanctuary our current sanctu holds 525 people we're nowhere near that okay uh but we were just happy happy to have another location which had a large Sanctuary we have classrooms we have a fellowship hall there's an outside
• 41:00 - 41:30 playground the um the membership has really flourished because of that um but we were still Desiring to fill up our Sanctuary with people who were seeking answers this is our Sanctuary right now it's a huge Sanctuary for us but friends we have every intention of filling it up with God's help I don't know how we're going to do it but I didn't know how we're going to do it at the beginning either so so with God's help things are gradually coming together it has like
• 41:30 - 42:00 40ft um stained glass windows let me tell you that some people came to our church and they were enamored with the structure they weren't necessarily enamored with our church but they ended up staying anyway amen gradually they got to know us they got to know our Doctrine and they decided to stay so I wanted to mention a little bit about tithe because some people always ask okay well what happened to the tithe so I went back as far as I could but back in 2014 14 15 and 16 we were not using Jewel software but then in 2017 we
• 42:00 - 42:30 started doing that and I believe that when Pastor Robin Lopez came uh the tithe was at 14, 514 and then 2019 as you can see it jumped to 28,000 2020 Co year 27 84169 and look what happens at 2021 an increase of 100,000 now how in the world does that happened remember that 2021 people actually started coming back to church okay and then I also uh made it a goal to make sure that I was
• 42:30 - 43:00 that I was speaking continually on the the benefit of you personally that you get spiritually when you give amen so we had a culture of let us give financially as if we are about to go broke personally okay and people gave and gave and we were able to give this amount of tithe let me tell you that this is tithe only this is not local church budget and we're a small group of people and I can definiely tell you not every there's a Propet not everybody that goes to that church as a professional but they're willing to give so in 2022 we increase
• 43:00 - 43:30 to 158 2023 175 and finally last year we crossed finally the 200,000 Mark so it's been a steady a steady grind so to speak now how did we do it we prayed for God's leading personal consecration let God determine the size of his church I think this is very important because sometimes we have Pie in the Sky dreams thinking that a church needs to look a certain way but we need to leave it up to God ensure that we are a friendly church if you preach it they will come there must
• 43:30 - 44:00 be unity in the church for growth to occur Church leadership should be visible and involved in the visitation of every church member and visitor amen when you visit it makes a huge difference now we did Implement key performance indicators because I definitely am into to Excel and I wanted to see what was going on however we need to leave even those things to the Holy Spirit We're Not About Numbers however we need to understand where we're standing right track everything that's meaningful in our church we track our of
• 44:00 - 44:30 course our attendance our Sabbath School attendance um we use WhatsApp messaging to report our Sabbath School attendance uh we track potluck attendance and Al also our online attendance of midweek classes uh Believe It or Not potluck attendance we track because at potluck we have a certain amount of people and you could actually promote the events that are going on in your church because you have a captive audience um sometimes people will not go to church but they will come to potlock organize for Success Implement systems
• 44:30 - 45:00 to keep the body organized and informed if you are a startup Church treat it like if you were already if you already have 200 people attending in other words be excellent at everything that you do imagine that even if you only have 25 imagine that your audience already has 200 and behave in such a manner that you're going to follow up on every little thing every little visitor that comes to your church a general orientation for all volunteers and members held one time a month so that they know how the church operates you you'd be amazed how you go into a church and many times the volunteers don't know
• 45:00 - 45:30 what um how the church operates in general so we implemented a general orientation we also Implement best practices for conflict resol resolution what does a Bible instruct regarding conflict resolution and forgiveness we track uh our scheduling on Google Sheets we use mobile text alerts for as a text messaging system to keep everybody informed we use mailchip and canva for an uh to send out an e- newsletter every Thursday and of course we have a church bulletin and announcements uh via PowerPoint slides friends I wish I could
• 45:30 - 46:00 tell you that I had the secret formula but I don't the secret formula is the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ amen so I encourage you if you're thinking about planting a church give it completely over to God and you will see what amazing things he can do amen [Music]
• 46:00 - 46:30 well good afternoon everybody are you awake after having lunch are we awake can we say amen amen can we say hallelujah hallelujah turn to somebody next to you and say please wake up okay yes I bring I bring you greetings from our conference president Dr Yakov bovich he is the conference president of the greatest conference in the North
• 46:30 - 47:00 American Division the Ontario conference and we're here to represent Now quickly quickly I need to give I need to give a shout out to the most wonderful woman in my life and the reason I got to give her a shout out is because my wife made me come here what did I just say she made me come here and I need Witnesses and the reason I need Witnesses is because today is our anniversary and so I don't I don't want you thinking
• 47:00 - 47:30 I chose work over my wife my I am so blessed that my wife believes in what I am doing that uh she was willing to have me come here and put off our celebrations until I got home and so honey I love you so very much my name is Pastor Bob Windsor and I am the pastor of the nepan 7th Day Adventist Church where we love God we love people and we serve the world that is not a motto that is not a bumper sticker that is the
• 47:30 - 48:00 secret to the successful Christian Life and how you grow your church and so today I want to share with you briefly some of the spiritual mechanics of growing God's church when the only Direction you have is up I operate by the principle and you heard it from Troy here today it's deming's law that your systems are perfectly designed every system is perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting if you don't
• 48:00 - 48:30 like your results change what you were doing so what do you do and how do you grow a church if nobody likes your church including the people who go there right how do you grow a church that nobody likes including the people who go there how do you grow a church when even you as a pastor don't like going there oh somebody say Mercy both some of you have been there you know what I'm talking about my first two churches started out as being full
• 48:30 - 49:00 churches in their Heyday they were full and then in my first church three families decided to go to war with each other and they fought their way down to 11 members that was a good Sabbath and when we talked to them they said we don't like each other and nobody likes us my second church again started out as a full Church two matri ARS decided to go to war with each other and they
• 49:00 - 49:30 literally physically slapped everybody out of the church it was not the Church of Philadelphia it was the Church of Rocky Balboa imagine fighting people out of the church that first church year and a half later saw 41 members full attendance at Communion growing Church giving went up
• 49:30 - 50:00 families started to come the second church we grew it to over 60 members people showed up for communion a third of the church became young adults my third church was a church that hadn't seen baptisms in decades they had a reputation for scaring people away as a matter of fact if they didn't like you they told you to go up the road to to the other church when we finally opened the baptismal tank it was filled with
• 50:00 - 50:30 cobwebs spiders and creepy crawly things it looked like something out of The Adams Family I don't know but they hadn't seen baptisms in decades and yet we grew that church until we filled it giving went up we did we did we could talk about miracles in terms of giving we we did I think it was $150,000 in renovation and when we were done we were just only down $10,000 in our bank account from where
• 50:30 - 51:00 we started I have had the honor and privilege and I give God total credit for this but all of the churches I've pastored have grown so people ask me well what do you do how do you do this and so now I've got only 10 minutes brother I'm a preacher not a miracle worker let me see what I can do so uh which which one moves the slide here is that this this one here so here I am I come to nepan U conferences here
• 51:00 - 51:30 officials they can tell you a really good Sabbath this was one of my best churches and by the way this was not a fighting church this was not a problem church but they were a plateaued church and they had plateaued at around a 100 members on any given Sabbath um the head Elder told me 120 was a really really great Sabbath they had a reputation when they started out as they started out as being a monocl Cal church and they liked it that way they had a reputation for
• 51:30 - 52:00 being the most conservative Church hadn't seen a baptism in years in the median age was 55 years today 250 to 300 worshippers On Any Given Sabbath 47 different cultures called thepan home and we have cross-generational cross-cultural worship 70% of our members get this are 45 years of age and younger we had an outreach program called the people Matter project that is
• 52:00 - 52:30 known throughout our community and politicians in our community love our program giving is way up and we have baptisms every single year and people ask me well how do you do it what's the secret sauce like like how do you make that happen right I mean how many of us would love it when on a communion Sabbath it's standing room only and you run out of emblem how would you like it if on a communion
• 52:30 - 53:00 Sabbath your head Deacon and Deaconess come up and complain pastor we need more room because there's not enough room for all the people who want to be a part of the foot washing so how do you do it and here's how I do it and so I got to kind of speed my way through this a little bit well it has to do with rebuilding the spiritual DNA of your church because your spiritual DNA contains all of the spiritual Dynamics needed for a church to grow to thrive and reproduce that's
• 53:00 - 53:30 the job of DNA grow reproduce isn't that what we want growing churches reproducing churches so key to your spiritual DNA is Vision I'm going to really emphasize Vision here today because when I come to a church I I get on my knees and I stay there and I continue there until I say God tell me what you're going to turn this church into that is the job of the Holy Spirit God's job is to tell you what he wants
• 53:30 - 54:00 it to become then our work is to help make that happen and let me tell you something the vision is God's word over his church and so for my first two churches the word I spoke over them and it you have to speak a good word over your church you have to change the way they see themselves and you do that through vision I can promise you this if you listen
• 54:00 - 54:30 carefully to your church they will tell you how they see themselves the Bible says as a man thinks in his heart so is he as your church thinks in their heart so are they and so I had a church that said we're hard on pastors hardly had a pastor that stayed more than two years I was the longest serving at five another church said we're a Pastor killer Church they put four four
• 54:30 - 55:00 Pastors in psychiatric care and so if the pastors weren't suicidal they were homicidal and many of them left angry I promise you if you listen to your church they will tell you how they see themselves and they live it out dying churches have the language of death preacher you've got to speak a word of Life over your church sir you got to there is the power of life and death in the tongue and if
• 55:00 - 55:30 you're not speaking life into your church who will because Satan won't do you hear me this this afternoon you hear me so if you're not if you cannot see God doing something in your church it's not going to happen so my first two churches you know what God said he said Bob I see fellowship and friendship and I'm like Lord for real but but I spoke that over them and they started developing programs one had
• 55:30 - 56:00 a soup and sandwich program we we had to turn off the lights to get them to separate from one another two sisters in the church hadn't talked to each other for 10 years met in the middle of the church and asked for forgiveness because we spoke a Word of Life over the church so when you combine your vision for what God tells you this church can become and you mix that with a mission you now have a spiritual DNA upon which
• 56:00 - 56:30 the people can get behind your people want something to follow they want Vision they want Mission and they will follow you if you have something they can get behind so give them something to get behind vision and Mission our mission at neion is to invite equip and Empower others to follow our Jesus combine that with love God love people serve the world and now you've got a powerful spiritual DNA upon which
• 56:30 - 57:00 to grow your church and get into replication so your vision is looking into the future and seeing there a reality that does not yet exist but it is possible your mission is knowing why your church exists communicate that and and you can look into this a little bit more again my time's running out so I got to move this along so what our spiritual DNA produced at theion is a mission-driven church whose core culture is evangelism every member of our church
• 57:00 - 57:30 understands you're not here to be a member you're here to be a minister and so when you play the piano you're a minister read a scripture reading you're a minister offering call you're a minister our greeters are our greatest ministers everybody at nepan is a minister and you come to our church that is our culture and so that culture is something we build upon you have to do this work
• 57:30 - 58:00 first if you want to grow your church do the work of helping it to begin to change the way it sees itself and it understands its place in its community so spiritual mechanics sister white talks about this it's how things come together to actually make things work in the spiritual and I'm going to give you the secret sauce to actually reaching people and growing your church and again I go back to the brother just before me it's a holy spirit thing okay this isn't a bob Windsor thing it's a holy spirit
• 58:00 - 58:30 thing check out mind character and personality spiritual mechanics begins with understanding people and you heard this today this is not going to be new people are needs based and as such when they have a need they will seek out the agency that will readily meet that need and you learned that at a very early age I was talking to two young girls in my church Daddy was there at a potlock and I said if you're outside and you're running and you scrape your knee and
• 58:30 - 59:00 you're in pain who do you go to mommy or daddy and they said Mommy and I said well why and they said because Mommy gives the best kisses and dad was like yeah yeah Mom does and I said well if you want to have some rough play who Do you go to and they said well mommy's not looking we go to Daddy we've learned from a very early age to seek out those agencies where our needs can be met I don't care if you're an atheist a
• 59:00 - 59:30 Buddhist Jehovah's Witness Jew every single person has needs and they will go wherever they have to to have that need met especially if it's a desperate need and so there are four things people look for when they're looking for a church and you'll find all four atan first as a cultural connection Community I need to belong I need to know I'm safe here I need to know my family and I we are going to be
• 59:30 - 60:00 accepted here so our greeters we train them and and thank you Dr Tim because we we use his uh nurturing and hosting and greeting program to train our treat our greeters so from the parking lot to the Pew to the pulpit everybody in between understands we are here to welcome the world Listen the holy spirit is not going to send somebody to your church church if he can't trust you to minister to and witness to them think about all
• 60:00 - 60:30 the work people go through to go to church and get to church imagine they show up at your church and nobody talks to them I've told my church if you ever do that I will fail you and they all go listen I give them a bar I give them expectations I give them things to aim for they also want to encounter God through worship and so at our church we have a cross culture worship 47 different nations you can hear a song sung in Rwandan French and English when
• 60:30 - 61:00 I do baptisms if I've got three different cultures represented upfront they can all speak English I've done baptisms where I do the vows in English and then you can hear the vows redone in French Portuguese and Lebanese because it's crosscultural at our church we need to represent all the nations who come to church people want to encounter God in worship and Pastor you got to preach a good word
• 61:00 - 61:30 your craft is preaching your craft is to take the Bible and communicate it in such a way that people can receive and see and encounter the real and living Jesus Christ you got to preach your word now here's another basic need and this is where we get really creative people need to do something that makes a difference I need to do something that matters in this world and if your church isn't
• 61:30 - 62:00 meeting real needs and doing real things in this world that actually make a difference people aren't interested you will lose your Youth and so at our church we have the people Matter project we do coping with depression we do parenting programs we have teams of people we actually have non-adventist who volunteer to help us make 200 sandwiches and then give them out downtown we have people who are not Adventists who volunteer to help us with people put together their income tax for
• 62:00 - 62:30 the income tax year 150 people show up for that we do a family fund day the Muslims love our family fund day no alcohol no smoking no pork they love us they also come to our worship service because it's safe to be there we don't beat anybody up but we have if you want to know more about what we do creatively as a church look up peoplematter pro.com because we do all those fun creative
• 62:30 - 63:00 things you do but those fun creative things do not matter if you're not a safe church if you're not an inviting Church a church with a mission a church that is determined to reach the people around you and your church needs to be a place where people can heal every single church I've pastored has grown when they they got to handle them one and two did you hear
• 63:00 - 63:30 me if you can be a safe Community a welcoming Community a place where people feel like they belong and they can encounter Jesus in worship your church will start to grow you give them meaningful service and yes you will have those people who are Missi driven coming from the other churches to be with you but the community will ask you and they're already asking us at pan can we volunteer to help you do what you do and the community is telling us we need a
• 63:30 - 64:00 bigger church so apparently my time is up I said I'm a preacher not a miracle worker I'm hoping that what I've shared with you makes sense I'm I'm hoping that you can go back and apply this but again these are the four needs and if you can meet them you will grow any church let's get out there and let's grow it for
• 64:00 - 64:30 [Applause] [Music] Jesus good afternoon e- huddle we can do a little bit better than that good afternoon awesome woo I am so excited to be here this is my first time at e- huddle my first time presenting and I feel so honored to be surrounded by so
• 64:30 - 65:00 many amazing leaders who are changing the world uh my name is Kristen and I come from the DC Metro Area Belville 7th Day Adventist Church and I'm going to be sharing with you discipleship at our Adventist school now I want to sort of take you through my journey uh being here is very nostalgic For Me 2 and a half years years I graduated from the mdiv program are there any current mdiv
• 65:00 - 65:30 students here if you're currently in the program awesome so I know what it's like yes I know what it's like to go through the very rigorous program of the MD and so two and a half years ago I had the opportunity to graduate and a couple months later I was off to pic conference as a children and youth pastor for the Beltsville Adventist Church now admittedly when I steep fo onto that loving community great team amazing church family I had no idea what I was doing uh I should say that my previous
• 65:30 - 66:00 background is in Tech I got a undergrad I have undergrad in computer science worked in tech for 5 years before sensing the call to Ministry and so here on my first pastoral assignment I was I felt like a fish out of water but I knew that God had a plan and God had called me and at this church we have an amazing vibrant School of over 200 100 kids and that became one of the my focus areas
• 66:00 - 66:30 for my Ministry in discipleship and so in those early days as I was getting acclimated to pastoral Ministry some of the things that I would do is just play with the kids during recess go out there on the playground hang out with them and and do tag and just run around with them that was helping me get out of my shell and to form relationships with those young people that I still develop even to today and so I want to go over a little bit more about what we're doing in discipleship at the Belville Adventist
• 66:30 - 67:00 school I should also mention this is a team effort this this is a number of pastors and churches and communities that are investing into these young people so I'm going to continue here there we go all right so one of the key components of discipleship at the school is our weekly Chapel service every single Friday a different speaker will come to share a message to share
• 67:00 - 67:30 about the word of God to teach these young people about Jesus and this is an opportunity for them to learn about Jesus Christ to learn about their personal Savior and so one of the things I love about the chapel experience is that it's interactive it's participatory that young people from kindergarten all the way to eighth grade are spending time together learning about Jesus now one of the key things is that young people are naturally receptive they are naturally enthusiastic about learning
• 67:30 - 68:00 about God and so one of the key things about Chapel is about inviting them making an appeal for them to make a decision to follow Jesus and so for example we've had a week of prayer we've had a student council week of prayer and after those weeks of prayer there is a followup where a where an appeal is made an invitation is given for these young people to take their next step in following Jesus this is key in the discipleship Journey also you'll see
• 68:00 - 68:30 through these Chapel experiences is that we have young people who help out in the message that they get to come up and participate in the object lesson that sermon illustration learning what it means to not only be a receiver but to be a communicator of the Gospel message and so the chapel experiences are really key in this discipleship Journey when an invitation is made made young people have the opportunity to go through Bible studies and this is where students can learn and delve deeper into
• 68:30 - 69:00 their relationship with God either through individual Bible studies or through group Bible studies and so last year after the student council week of prayer we went through a 10-week Bible study with the kids that you see here pictured on the screen where we learned about how to make Jesus our best friend and so week after week Friday we met after school and we went through the Bible study together from third graders to seventh graders learning dialoguing
• 69:00 - 69:30 asking questions now one of the key Parts about Bible study is that it's not just information depositing but it's an opportunity for me and for the pastor whoever leading those Bible studies to grow as well young people are asking very important questions that we are to wrestle with we are to dialogue with and to help them understand as they deepen their faith in Jesus I've gotten questions from young people like why did God create humans if he
• 69:30 - 70:00 knew there was going to be evil or young people trying to wrap their mind around creation and the beginning of time and when did God when did God first come into existence these are the questions that young people are asking and they just need people to just dialogue with them and to explore their faith in a deeper way and so Bible studies is part of that teaching component where these young people get to make that next step in following Jesus now after the invitation is made
• 70:00 - 70:30 after they have an opportunity to make that next step after they've gone through Bible studies either individually or through group then this is the this is the fun part and this is what the kids really look forward to this is baptisms now this is just a small part of the baptisms that are done at the school it's a team effort pastors from different churches around the school are investing into our young people baptizing them and discipling them but I'm just showing you a couple of examples here now it's also important to
• 70:30 - 71:00 realize that baptism is just a day to celebrate what these young people are doing but it's not the end of their Journey it's just the beginning of a lifelong of serving Jesus and so each of these young people that you see here pictured many of them have been involved in meaningful ways in the worship experience in serving and loving other people leading others to Jesus Christ we have Pathfinders we have individuals who
• 71:00 - 71:30 are utilizing their gifts in Praise Team singing playing piano whether it's preaching whatever the case may be these young people are being empowered to serve like Jesus and so baptism is a very big part of that but again it's a one step in a journey to knowing and loving Jesus now I want to sort of trans ition a little bit so we've talked about invitation we've talked about teaching we've talked about the celebration in
• 71:30 - 72:00 baptism but I want to also share something else that we're doing at the school in terms of discipleship and that revolves around robotics now you may be wondering what does robotics have to do with discipleship so I'm going to share with you that now so the bille Adventist school has a longstanding history of a robotics program it precedes me but when I came to that school environment I had the opportunity to help with the
• 72:00 - 72:30 robotics program and this is an opportunity for young people to learn about STEM Science and Technology and Engineering and math the robotics Club meets at minimum twice a week where they get to learn about engineering coding programming Legos Hardware engineering the all the fun nitty-gritty technical stuff but that's not all that robotics is for us at the beginning of every robotics practice a young person is
• 72:30 - 73:00 assigned to be the chaplain for that practice where they have to read a verse selected for that day they have to explain that verse connect the verse to what we're doing in robotics so for example if the verse is about faith what does faith have to do with robotics having faith in Jesus and then they pray for their peers they pray for their team members we're helping these young people to know what it means to Have a Heart Like Jesus to understand scripture to share the promises of God and then to
• 73:00 - 73:30 intercede for one another and so this is how we combine faith and learning and so you'll see here pictured in the uh picture on the top right you'll see the students from last season were super excited because we would have advanced to the championship in Florida that season the team Below in the gry hoodie we just competed two weeks ago at our qualifying tournament and one of our two teams will also be advancing to the
• 73:30 - 74:00 championship and then on the left hand side you see young students young Engineers who were in The robotics Club who are now sharing what they're learning with the younger generation younger grades showing what their what the robot is doing and that is what it's all about uh that mentorship that role model that example pouring into people relationship building and ALS so mingling and so this is how we incorporate robotics into the discipleship journey of these young
• 74:00 - 74:30 people now I want to give you a very specific example to take this to the next step in the picture on the left you'll see a young girl holding a robot she was in our robotics Club a couple years ago when she was in 8th grade brilliant young girl she then would eventually want to get baptized and receive Bible studies and so we went through the Bible together week after week studying God's word together she
• 74:30 - 75:00 was baptized last year now that wasn't the end that wasn't the end because she's continually involved in Pathfinders and so forth but she's also one of the coaches for our robotics Club as a high schooler as a high schooler she's one of our coaches for The robotics club and as you can see on the right hand side when we had our qualifying tournament last a couple weeks ago she was praying for her team members praying for them interceding that God would be with them in this
• 75:00 - 75:30 really nerve-wracking competition this is discipleship it's doing life with people praying for people and the most important thing is that young people are discipl makers as well that you don't have to be an adult you don't have to be a pastor but you can be a high schooler who is pouring into the Next Generation and this is what excites me about what I get to do so here's a question for you who are the young people around you that
• 75:30 - 76:00 God is calling you to disciple to empower to invest in to build relationships with who are the young people in your church your community your workplace your neighborhood whatever the case may be who are those people that God wants you to focus on to pay attention to now this can be extremely trivial and simple for young people they make it extremely extremely easy and here's why young people live in the the generation of Technology So Gone
• 76:00 - 76:30 are the days where we have to show up at their house all we have to do is just send them a quick text literally hi insert name how are you and that simple text message goes a long way to recognizing hey I see you I care about you how are you doing I want to see what's going on how can I be of support I'll give you an example of this there was a young person she doesn't go to bille Adventist school but she's a young person in our church community and I
• 76:30 - 77:00 reached out with a very simple Hi how are you and that started up conversation where this young person now feels comfortable in sharing with me what's going on in their life and now that continues the discipleship journey of building a relationship and investing in that person I want to end with this quote by Robert Coleman and it's from the master plan of evangelis M and it says this one must decide where he or she wants his
• 77:00 - 77:30 ministry to count in the momentary Applause of popular recognition or the reproduction of his or her life in a few chosen people who will carry on their work after they are gone it's a question of which generation we are living for now this quote is first first and foremost directly impacting my life because I real realiz that the ministry success that I have is not on the platform but it's the relationships that
• 77:30 - 78:00 are being fostered week after week and so my challenge for us all here today is to invest in the young people who are not the leaders of tomorrow or the future but are the leaders right now and these young people don't have to be college graduates they can be middle schoolers preaching sharing the word of God they can be high schoolers they could even be Elementary School students for our upcoming Adventurer day that's going to be happening in a couple weeks
• 78:00 - 78:30 we have a number of young people who are excited to be able to share the word of God during that Sabbath let's continue to utilize and Empower our young people to change the world thank you so much job [Music]
• 78:30 - 79:00 good afternoon everybody I would love uh for us to put our hands together and uh thank the organizers once again Jose has done a tremendous job and his team let's put our hands together because every year it gets better I have been tasked to speak on two topics uh making appeals and retention so you have a book uh on appeal so I'll just concentrate on retention I'd like to tell you in 15 minutes seven things that you can do to
• 79:00 - 79:30 make sure that the people in that join your church stay some statistics say that we lose about 41 some statistics say we lose about 49 so between 41 and 49 of people that join our church end up leaving there's no other industry where this percentage is acceptable you wouldn't fly in an airplane
• 79:30 - 80:00 that 41% of the planes go down you you wouldn't you wouldn't eat at a restaurant that 41% of the meals give you diarrhea you wouldn't go see a doctor 41% of their patients are are dying so why do why do we normalize and accept this fact so I just want to share with you uh seven things that you can do to make sure that the people that we baptize um are connected number one
• 80:00 - 80:30 first thing you have to understand is that there are no bad baptisms there's no there might be bad retention but there are no bad baptisms Jesus who is our example called a dude that was a thief and he kept them on perro as a treasure even though he knew he was a thief he didn't say well you know you don't rise up to the level of people
• 80:30 - 81:00 that we want so we're going to keep you out it's about building bridges and not walls so there's no bad baptisms every single one of those 42,000 311 every single one of them was a good baptism because it takes a lot of effort for somebody to give their life to Christ and we celebrate every single person who says yes to Jesus every single one all right number two the second thing we have to understand is that it is going to happen there are some people who are
• 81:00 - 81:30 going to disconnect in scripture there are several passages that tell us that not everybody who joins is going to stay in so this is a fact of light that does not mean that we're not going to grieve and do everything in our power but you have to understand that there is a fact that some people who are going to be joining the church are not going to stay in the church there is a parable what percentage of people people stayed in this Parable the parable of the of the of the
• 81:30 - 82:00 S how many people end up staying 25% so we're doing better than that one right even you see Jesus was a better Pastor than you somebody say Amen well at least a better Pastor than the person sitting next to you so I want you to look at the person right now say Jesus was a better Pastor than you and Jesus who was perfect who had no issues who had no
• 82:00 - 82:30 trauma who had no problems who didn't have a difficult upbringing Jesus lost Judas so it's a fact of life that we are going to lose some along the way I think at some point in your ministry you you need to focus on the one you need to reach versus the one that always want to concentrate on
• 82:30 - 83:00 the ones you want to keep here's the fact you cannot guarantee the retention but you can improve the probabilities just like our kids some of us in this room have kids that have strayed from the church and from God you can't guarantee your kids would choose Christ but you can improve the probabilities so how do we do that you have to understand that whatever you brought them in with you
• 83:00 - 83:30 need to do more of to keep them in and that has a positive and negative connotation so if you bring him in with gimmicks fear or bad theology you're going to have to give him the same thing going forward you can't it bring in crazy and then expect sane Behavior so I don't believe in gimmicks
• 83:30 - 84:00 I believe in compassion but I believe in gimmi I'm we we do a lot of compassion in our meetings but we're straight up about what people are going to expect we God does not need gimmicks just be straightforward with people honesty for example there are some people who cover up signs and they don't want people to know there's an Adventist Church there you know there's something called Google like they know who you
• 84:00 - 84:30 are you don't need to make people afraid that this is your last night bad theolog there are churches in North America right now they are growing because from the puppet overtly or underhanded there's a gospel of Christian nationalism that is attracting and your church is growing for the wrong reasons you can tell a lot about the church about the things they choose to be silent about number four you have to ask
• 84:30 - 85:00 yourself why is this happening why is this happening people don't usually leave organizations they leave people when somebody says I left the church they didn't leave a building they left the people in the building right so I I had to ask myself why are people leaving one of my favorite quotes from James Clear is you don't
• 85:00 - 85:30 rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems so you have to ask yourself what's happening there there's a story is a it was a village the right by the river and people are drinking the water and getting really really sick I mean really really really sick and but the water seemed clear it seemed fine and they've always drank from that water and nobody got sick so they try to figure
• 85:30 - 86:00 out what happened and they sent a party Upstream to see what was going on and they found that there had been a storm and a tree had falling in the water and a pig with some piglets had fallen in the water drowned and were trapped in the tree therefore contaminating the water Downstream people will make a decision
• 86:00 - 86:30 where they're going to stay in your church before they hear you preach or listen to a song at the door there's some deacons that have been baptized in vinegar that that you have to ask yourself so what are the systems that we have in place right now what is going on Upstream that when the water gets to them it's contaminated people don't leave
• 86:30 - 87:00 organizations they leave people number five retention is engagement and engagement is retention I love the way Carrie newoff says it engagement is the new attendance there's a church in Memphis we did a meeting in that church baptized 25 people the next morning after the series ended on Sunday morning the church board got together and gave every single one
• 87:00 - 87:30 of those people a specific job to do in the church they don't sat them down for a year they didn't say well we'll see what we can find they were intentional every single person who got baptized on Saturday had a job on Sunday engagement is the new retention membership is a byproduct of Engagement my goal in life as a pastor is not to
• 87:30 - 88:00 make members is to make disciples and the way to do that is to engage them I I love the way my my friend Alan Parker says it some churches are a funeral away from a Revival because we've hogged the power and the decentralization of power in the church will bless your church there's a reason why some churches are 40 members and have been like that for 40 years number six is my
• 88:00 - 88:30 favorite in order to retain people you have to develop a characteristic called curiosity notice in our society we tend to minimize curiosity we don't like when people ask a lot of questions in fact we have phrases like curiosity killed the cat I don't like
• 88:30 - 89:00 the cats so probably had it coming but but it proves the point so I have to I have to ask myself there there are three types of people in the world right there's three types of people in the world one group of people are people who are settled they like the way things are and they don't want to find out anything else they don't want to know about AI I
• 89:00 - 89:30 mean they're finally getting through with PowerPoint they don't want to know anything new this is settled people then there's another group of people who are curious but their curiosity is just so they can have closure and then they stop asking questions and then there's a third group who are curious and curiosity is is not a bug it's a feature and I am asking myself and I am asking you as leaders and pastors how what
• 89:30 - 90:00 space are we making for Curious people who are always asking questions if the truth is the truth it can withstand any questioning I welcome your questions questions and doubt who is unexpressed is like pants ants in the pants of faith the worst doubt is unexpressed doubt I want all the questions I want people to ask
• 90:00 - 90:30 me about why do we do this like this and why do we do this like that and why do we do like the problem is that sometimes we have leaders in our churches who are settled and don't don't want anything new well we want to change Sabbath School from 9:30 to 10: what you have to have it on Sund on Sabbath morning that's it it can be at 1 it can be at 3: it can be at 8: it can be at 5: in the morning time is irrelevant so what space are we making
• 90:30 - 91:00 for curiosity and how curious are you you have to ask away one of the great things that we had when we had family worship with our kids that they could ask any question man and my kids ask questions and sometimes I had to say I don't know the answer to that but I'll find out for you if people want to ask questions who do you think that the best place to ask him would be Church be quiet don't
• 91:00 - 91:30 ask don't question that drives away curious people who are more artistic in nature that's why we become so structured it's like blood can't flow through the heart ends up church ends up having a heart attack and this is my my last point I want you to I I've been thinking about this lately I've been thinking about this and I'm I'm developing this concept in my mind because we used to live in a
• 91:30 - 92:00 culture that was Christian or Christian adjacent but now we live in a generation this you know gen Z and Millennials first generation there majority uh post church so I am interested in trying to figure out how do we plant churches that don't feel like churches if somebody is in the jail of
• 92:00 - 92:30 sin and they come out straight to a local congregation sometimes they don't make it right cuz not I mean people say yeah we we want we we we we love Sinners here yeah we welcome Sinners yeah what lost people are welcome like what level of lostness are you comfortable with it right and some people are not really comfortable with high levels of lense so I'm I'm interested in TR in trying to figure out and think about how can we
• 92:30 - 93:00 plant churches that don't feel like churches that will function as halfway homes for the people that have coming out of the jail of sin that had a hard life that they can spend some time acclimating themselves to what Jesus said and what the church teaches and what the Bible talks about so then they can join a congregation there is more established if we do these seven things your retention will improve you cannot guarantee everybody will stay but
• 93:00 - 93:30 you can improve the probabilities so let's do that [Music] good afternoon eh huddle how you guys
• 93:30 - 94:00 doing oh that wasn't good enough how you guys doing today all right I've been asked to share about what happened with us uh this past November when Pastor Roger Hernandez uh came to do a series with his wife Kathy and so I'm going to share that story our church um uh somebody mentioned earlier our books have two 47 members but uh only about oh that was Daniel only about like 80 kind of show
• 94:00 - 94:30 up so this all happen with about 80 members and first and foremost I want to say you know this is all holy spirit but I am going to share a couple of things that we did in the back end and hopefully that's valuable to you I'm Dave Fernandez thank you so much first thing I want to share is this principle here that kind of changed the way we do Outreach at our church meeting people's immediate tangible needs is the gateway to planting the seed of the gospel and of course this is kind of echoing what's been said already here um we did this
• 94:30 - 95:00 with Roger Hernandez that's a picture right there at our church and uh something amazing happened uh Daniel Hall came and showed us about the compassion week and uh so we started giving away uh things that are related to needs and this is a picture here of us giving away some toys maybe not 10,000 toys but uh we did what we could but uh something amazing happen basically what we did was we kind of flipped the script on making an advertisement that says hey come to our
• 95:00 - 95:30 weeklong prophecy seminar and instead we flipped it and we just made an ad that said hey we're giving away free toys and uh basically Daniel Hall helped us to think about it this way um and Pastor Bob said it too just now we are psychologically we ask we're always everybody's like what's in it for me in fact when we follow any social media accounts or anything it's it's providing
• 95:30 - 96:00 value to you so people are going to come when we flip the script this is what happened with us we we went from targeted Facebook ads and we drew people all the way to Bible studies baptism and church growth and this is a picture right here of what it looked like in our church in the hallway uh people packed getting in line and I figured something out here meeting people needs is not a distraction from the gospel and I say this because many times I've heard um
• 96:00 - 96:30 well we don't want to become the church that is a um the the church that gives and I kind of go like this to that because would you rather have one or two persons or three that come to one of these flyers that say Bible prophecy seminar or would you rather have your place packed that's a picture of our church by the way I can see about three or four church members in that picture and everybody else is a visitor that came um over 300 people showed up that's
• 96:30 - 97:00 super amazing and uh you know people come in because of the need but then when they get there they experience some of our church members and the warmth and the family and that's what gets them to stay but rather than just me telling you about it I'd love for you to hear from brtan she is one of our attendees Pastor Roger you're GNA like this um I asked her a few questions about her experience and she's going to tell you how she went from seeing a toy ad and now she's still
• 97:00 - 97:30 coming to our church so the reason that we first came to the event was because we saw a ad on Facebook for a toy giveaway it caught my attention so I informed another family member and we rode together to the event and then at each event there was was another add-on to it so we would come for the add-on what made me want to come was that I haven't had a job in a really long time
• 97:30 - 98:00 and my kids were not going to have a Christmas so I was trying everything in my power to get something for my kids and a lot of places would allow for my younger daughter but not for my older daughter and so my older daughter was not going to have a Christmas and you guys didn't discriminate on age and when I explained to you guys about my situation with my daughter being in the hospital you guys were understanding and caring which made me want to come back in the future even if I didn't get
• 98:00 - 98:30 anything out of it so when I did come for Mr Rogers sermons I really enjoyed what he was talking about it really hit home so it I didn't want to miss anything even to see it online I wanted to be there in person so that I can get the full experience of the message I decided early on in his message that I wanted to come more regularly on Saturdays for the services because I just wanted to be like I was drawn to
• 98:30 - 99:00 the church I don't know how to explain it um I did start going to the Wednesday night because it was a addon to his message and I continued with my family my children and I continue every Wednesday and every Saturday because it's starting to feel like home a little bit amen praise God you know when Pastor Daniel kind of presented the toy idea uh I wasn't
• 99:00 - 99:30 completely sold I'm going to be honest uh because I thought that toys were more of a want instead of a need but then after listening to brtan and how a simple toy really was a Lifeline for her you just you don't know what people are are going through so the point is not so much about the toy but the point is for us to begin asking the questions what are the pain points of the community that we're trying to serve and so you got to ask yourself these questions what is weighing people down and how can we
• 99:30 - 100:00 ease their burden and in this case it was a toy uh meeting needs is opens Hearts that's kind of our first key Point here and I want to share that this is not something that uh is not a marketing technique per se but it's something that Jesus knew about people came to Jesus because they were in need and they went to him so that he could meet their needs in John uh 6:26 the easy English Bible Jesus says uh you are
• 100:00 - 100:30 looking for me because you ate the loaves Jesus understood that people come because of their needs and that's okay what happens is that when you meet the needs then they are more perceptive in receiving the gospel message so again just echoing what Daniel Hall said you know the Salvation Army might meet a need but what is if we met the need and then say hey let's have a conversation so this is kind of what our ads look like this is just a sample the technique
• 100:30 - 101:00 behind it is you got to answer that question what's in it for me and it's right there in big bold letters free turkey giveaway that's the first thing and strategically in smaller font you have other details like you know the time date event and you you have right there it says turkeys will be given after the 90-minute presentation but here's something super important and that is the text number that's right there because when somebody sees
• 101:00 - 101:30 something that is free what happens they become very skeptical this has to be a scam so having the text number right there is crucial because you can respond right away and then when you respond right away you begin to build trust they say okay this is and then we send them the link and then they register for that so the next key point is timely followup this is super important uh you know prospects are cold
• 101:30 - 102:00 warm or hot and you guys know this some people are not interested some people are kind of interested but they need nurturing and then you also have those who are ready to make a decision so the key is like the saying goes eat it while it's hot you got to act immediately you got to uh not even let one week pass by so this is kind of what we did after the series we began a Bible study class so
• 102:00 - 102:30 that listen 300 people came to the series out of those 300 people a 100 people marked on the decision cards that they wanted either Bible studies that they wanted to get baptized or they wanted to join the church so we needed to funnel them in to a Bible study and listen I don't know about you but in my church on Wednesday night prayer nights only like three or four people were showing up so I said scratch that let's make this into a Bible study class and look at this video of the first day
• 102:30 - 103:00 after the Bible study hey everyone this is day one can you say hello all right all the way you notice right there everybody has little these guys in the circle over there next time next time we'll fit them in the circle so that was our our Bible study this is another attendee he says I know you send text messages about free giveaways uh like gas cards but I come to the Bible studies because they're just so good they're simple easy to
• 103:00 - 103:30 understand uh nobody asked him to say he just raised his hand and shared that this is Brother Willie Smith every time he comes in the room I say Will Smith is in the house and everybody loves that you know so listen to Brittan again and she shares now how she got implemented in the church and what she thinks about the Bible studies as far as the Ministries in the church my oldest daughter is is a part of pathway or Pathfinders and something that she does every week and they meet up at other
• 103:30 - 104:00 places and she has partaken in that um but I have not partaken in any of the out Ministries or any of the Ministries there other than the Saturdays and Wednesdays I like Wednesday a little bit better um because I'm able to speak and like give my opin and ask questions and get more details if needed where if I were to just go on a Saturday you listen
• 104:00 - 104:30 and you don't speak but on Wednesday it's interactive and I really enjoy that and I like carrying on and it's very dellic on the Bible and makes me think and then each week when I leave on Wednesdays I know nobody knows this but I go home and I back check everything and I kind of dig deeper on the subject that's been spoken about on Wednesdays so by Saturday morning I'm like I've literally done the whole lesson from
• 104:30 - 105:00 Wednesday when we leave until Saturday morning so I'm continuing in it so it's helping with my Bible studies so I have more of a focus thing to study during the week I know that's weird but that's true that's awesome you she told me that's weird I'm like that's that's amazing by the way Roger I got to tell you a story about that but our last and final step here is the Strategic funneling this was not done uh sporadically or by coincidence it was a purposeful stepbystep uh strategy that
• 105:00 - 105:30 we did so step number one is the ad impression so here's the secret you have to do the ads and again we didn't do an ad for a weekl long series we did a daily ad that focused specifically on one day of the series so rather than telling people come for the whole week you know people don't like commitment nowadays you just show one ad for one day and each day of the series has its own ad that focuses on the giveaway so when people arrived a lot of people were
• 105:30 - 106:00 telling me like oh there's something tomorrow or oh there was something yesterday because they didn't have to commit to a whole week and of course once they come you know they love to stay but the other key thing and I would say this you should invest in a text messaging software because to funnel them into the registration after they registered you send them reminder a 24 hours before and a couple hours before hey we're going to start did you notice Willie he says you send us text to this day we send text to
• 106:00 - 106:30 the Bible studies so that people could come and then you know we do the the the we run the ads for 7 days so s days before the event and we run it for seven days on Facebook step number two is to get them from online to on-site registration so remember our prospects are cold warm and hot so when they're cold we have to get minimal we have to make it as easy as possible so the only thing that we ask for is for name and phone number that's it in a case where you
• 106:30 - 107:00 have diaper giveaway or something like that we may say what size do you need but that's it because they're cold and then they have two two ways that they can register they just click on the link or they send a a a text uh to the phone number and then we send them the registration then once they arrive here let me go back uh I think uh look at the pictures right there that's the line that we had formed at our church for people waiting once people arrived they built trust has been built they went
• 107:00 - 107:30 from this could be a scam to like oh it's happening here what's going on and then they feel the energy the vibe and now we get the rest of their information and we tell them you need to fill this out so you can get your ticket so you can get your turkey so you can be first in line and we move them down the funnel and then the next thing is very strategic we put them we everybody gets a decision card which serves as a raffle ticket so the decision card has always the questions I want to join the church
• 107:30 - 108:00 or I want to get baptized or I want a visit from the pastor or I want Bible studies and it includes the topic of the night and so you turn those in at the end for a raffle some giveaways Pastor Roger are you giving some Jordans today to e- huddle I don't know do we have a raffle but uh then we get all of those decisions and again a hundred people marked that they wanted Buy Bible studies or they wanted some sort they wanted to join the church so then we do the next thing after the spirit is all
• 108:00 - 108:30 high and wow we just had a great presentation wow giveaways this is amazing then we tell them about the next two days so we put a QR code and say tomorrow we're giving away free coats and then on the next day we're giving away you know whatever we tell them and they have to register every single time to keep them moving through the funnel and then step number four this is super important at the end of the series after Roger has left not that we want to party
• 108:30 - 109:00 without you but uh we have a social connection event this is important and we give a giveaway for this one too so that people could come and this is where it happens the people here make connections with the church members in a fun environment and then all of those people who were interested in Bible studies we put them into the Bible study course now I want to share one last thing so when in these Bible study Course Rogers mentioned something just
• 109:00 - 109:30 now he said whatever you do to bring them in you have to keep doing so to this day we do a little raffle at the end and we always have the decision card which has those questions because of that four people got baptized after Roger came in but four more people were baptized about a month later and now about three or four are asking to be baptized because every single Bible study they're getting that decision card and their that option right there do I
• 109:30 - 110:00 want to join the church uh I want to get baptized and so you want to do that and then you want to act quickly if you see it that night call them the next day so that you can have a conversation thank you so much I hope this is helpful for you and here's a little picture of the funnel for you [Music]
• 110:00 - 110:30 good afternoon everyone it's an honor for U Elder Glenn alterat and me to be here on this uh afternoon of our first uh e- huddle day and uh I am uh thankful to be able to share with you a few things that have been happening in God's territory of the Carolinas that part of God's Vineyard and uh you know the Carolina conference includes both North
• 110:30 - 111:00 and South Carolina we have about 27,500 members there uh and it uh uh represents a wonderful share of God's people that we have been through a lot especially in the last fall some of you have heard of U what hurricane Helen did to the Northwestern part of our North uh of our state but by God's grace uh amazingly people have just poured out uh their love and compassion for for us and we've been
• 111:00 - 111:30 able to uh bring about a lot of relief to the people there and many of you as sister conferences have participated in Sharing uh resources that have been very helpful in meeting the needs of people that have been going through such a difficult time um you know my first uh e- huddle uh really took place uh it was the very first e- huddle that actually happened was in Orlando I believe and U un we we were there when
• 111:30 - 112:00 the Panthers went to the Super Bowl and they lost you know but uh but you know what e hudle has kept going forward and uh you know and I'm thankful for that and uh you know one of the things we did in nor in the North American Division when we embraced the concept of Pentecost 2025 we added a tagline to that called Let It Rain and uh because it is only by the power of the holy spirit that we can really engage in
• 112:00 - 112:30 fulfilling the gospel commission evangelism and discipleship are at the heartbeat of everything that we do if we if that's not what we're about we're just another social club and so we believe in the Great Commission we we endorse the Great Commission we promote the Great Commission with our pastors and I'm I'm very very grateful for that you know Ellen White wrote these words in the very first uh page of Acts of the Apostles where she said the church is God's appointed Agency for the Salvation
• 112:30 - 113:00 of men it was organized for service and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world from the beginning it has been God's plan that through his church shall be reflected to the world his fullness and his sufficiency it's been my privilege for the last 14 years to work together with my partner here in Ministry Elder Glenn alterat uh our director for evangelism and discipleship and I have such a wonderful team of ministerial leaders in in the Carolinas
• 113:00 - 113:30 uh with elder hasell Williams our ministerial director Elder Daryl Bentley our associate ministerial director and Elder Ricardo palasio our Hispanic Ministries director and these four men have really paved the way for that climate of evangelism across the Carolinas and I I thank God uh for the privilege that I have had of working with them you know one of the things that we focused on uh when I first came to the Carolinas was I said you know we've been baptizing somewhere around 500 to 700 people every every year and I
• 113:30 - 114:00 said let's pray that God will give us a thousand souls for God's kingdom and and you know it started off and we just started focusing on evangelism and saying okay what can we do you know and there are different Tech techniques and different uh methods that you know you've heard this evening from various people uh but you know the most important thing is that we pray and we pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to embrace us and to give us his Blessing
• 114:00 - 114:30 because without the Holy Spirit and without the holy spirit's blessing we cannot and so in 2022 in 2023 and in 2024 we baptized over a thousand Souls every year and I praise God for [Applause] that you know Roger Hernandez talked about retention bringing people into the church is important but keeping them engaged in the church is also important
• 114:30 - 115:00 one of the things that we have done in the Carolinas is that we have used different tools the very first tool was the discipleship handbook and there have been other tools also besides that that we've been giving and providing not only our pastors but with conference funds we've been giving this to every single member that that wants to study in other words we the pastors a request and we fund that that's not something that the church pays for that's paid through the conference and and so that they can have
• 115:00 - 115:30 the resources necessary to understand what it is to be a faithful disciple of Jesus you know one of the things we've been blessed of course you know you have to have resources and uh so I remember one time when I was in camp meeting and uh Jose roas came up to me and he said say what are you trying to get uh how much are you trying to raise for evangelism I said 'well every year we try to raise about $400,000 he Saidi want you to get up there and I want you to ask for a million dollars I said Jose you're crazy
• 115:30 - 116:00 and he says is anything too hard for the lord well how do you answer a question like that you know and and I I got up I was very nervous but I I said um he wants me to ask you for a million dollars and so guess what that year we did get a million dollars and and and and we've been averaging a million dollars in I want you to notice what happened in 2024 because of the focus on evangelism and the tremendous work that has been done by evangelism and discipleship
• 116:00 - 116:30 Department in 2024 there was one person who felt so convicted that when he was dying of cancer he sold his business and he gave us $1 million toward evangelism so that that number there is actually over 2 million this was this this slide was actually put together just before the end of of 2024
• 116:30 - 117:00 we have exceeded over $2 million and what a great year to have that especially as we approach Pentecost 2025 and so this year we have just had an amazing and and and Glen talk to us a little bit about what's been happening with our churches here I will thank you thank you so much uh Elder Louie it's it's a privilege to be able to serve with you it's it's been a Joy I I've served with several presidents and I will tell you this I believe Elder Louie is is uh in the past I've had to encourage presidents to get up and to
• 117:00 - 117:30 talk to the pastors about evangelism I've never had to do that with this man it's just part of his life it oozes out from him every single year this man holds a five-week campaign I don't know how he does it but he does it he's here today because didn't you preach last night no I actually starting this week start this weekend thank you yeah so it's it's a he's a tremendous tremendous support of evangelism and it's only by by the grace of God that uh we've seen what he's been
• 117:30 - 118:00 able to do but but in conjunction with what he's talked about doing some of the stuff that we've done is you know we believe that every every Church ought to have a plan you know if you don't have a plan you're you're surely going to be 100% successful at failure and so we believe that every Church ought to have a plan so we developed a form that our pastors work with their Church leadership the board and the elders to tell us what their plans are for soul-winning for the next year we ask
• 118:00 - 118:30 for that plan to be turned in by October 31 in conjunction with that plan um if you want to receive evangelism dollars some of that million dooll money that comes back to your church you have to turn in the seeking to save form to qualify to get evangelism dollars in the Carolina conference and so we've been doing that now for a number of of years and it's really been working out very well because we believe that not only do you fund an event but but because we
• 118:30 - 119:00 think that it's a whole cycle we believe in the cycle of evangelism and and so we've tried to put money behind that we we put money from the from the preparation all the way to the Harvest if you're going to have a community connect project we help partner with the church to fund that Community connect project because something happens when you do that when you have a community connect You're Building relationships and those relationships during that time you earn the right to speak spiritual things into
• 119:00 - 119:30 their lives that's what community does for us in in talking with other people and so because of that uh we believe great things are happening in our churches we also believe that just like Pastor Daniel talked that there is a proclamation there is to come unto me all you that labor in a heavy laden Jesus said come and I will make you to be fish of men and so there is a calling there is a proclamation that says come be part of God's church and then there's the intergration as Roger has alluded to
• 119:30 - 120:00 in the discipling process but but I think for us Elder Louie we have we have determined that discipleship isn't separate and distinct apart from it is integrated into every single bit that the church does every life of the church in your cradle role ought to be discipling in your Juniors they ought to be discipling in your adult Sabbath School classes there ought to be discipling in your women's ministry in every single Ministry and aspect of the
• 120:00 - 120:30 church there is a discipleship aspect of that and that whole thing goes along with that cycle of evangelism from preparation to the Harvest itself there's one other thing I'm going to take take a few minutes here as we close and that is something that was birthed in my heart over 10 years ago after I took to call into the office I I cast a vision with with Haskell and we said let's go down and talk to Elder Louie
• 120:30 - 121:00 and I cast a vision to have what we have termed evangelism impact what that is we take from Thursday night to Sunday noon and we have a time of training equipping and we invite all the lay people and Pastors in the Carolina conference to come to Myrtle Beach and during that time uh we we try to grow them and pour into them lots of skills actually Pastor Glenn we have more Carolina members that
• 121:00 - 121:30 come to that than even camp meeting I know I know and that's just been running out of hcal and me so so we're going to broaden that out next year Elder I can tell you that right now um one of the things that we've you know we've seen it grow every year we didn't know how many people would come the first year we had I think it was right at around 300 but this last January we had 1150 lay people that came to Myrtle Beach I said we had 1150 play people
• 121:30 - 122:00 that came to Myrtle Beach and guess what these people pay their own way they pay for their room they pay for they pay for their food we provide one meal for them on Sabbath because I don't want to drive them out to eat on Sabbath we provide that meal for them 1150 come every they came last year and then that's Spanish and English and we have a we have four sessions that we do together plenaries where we worship together we sing together we pray together we're get inspired together and
• 122:00 - 122:30 then we have breakout sessions that are tailor made for the Hispanics as well and so we don't charge any registration fee I've had people say well well Glenn you should charge a fee for them to come because they they need to they need to invest and I said this I said listen these lay people they are giving their lives they're working 40 hours a week every single week and then they're taking additional time to minister and to grow God's kingdom can't we just say
• 122:30 - 123:00 thank you for what they're doing amen and so that's what we've done we've just wanted to say a big thank you so we say thank you and then we take that time to cast Vision about what's going to happen in the following year we take that time to provide training and equipping and yes we have breakout sessions and yes we have great teaching teers uh you know I even have Roger come I've had Roger come every single
• 123:00 - 123:30 year we can't have evangelism impact without Roger that's right we can't just can't do it we can't do it so yes we want to have that learning that didactic experience but but we also want to have a worship experience a Mountaintop experience where we preach and we sing and we pray we want them to leave with their minds full of knowledge but but the greatest thing that they can leave with is their faces lighted with the glory of God because they have had an encounter with Jesus amen that's what
• 123:30 - 124:00 we're looking for you know we have 182 churches this is the highest number of churches that have have signed on to have a proclamation event 171 churches have signed on we've never had that many churches that have signed on to do a proclamation event I thank God for that 10 School have decided that they want to join and be part of a proclamation event and I'm just so grateful for the inspiration that has been caused through our
• 124:00 - 124:30 evangelism and discipleship Department to empower people to share the good news of Jesus soon coming you know every every month for the last 10 years I've been publishing a paper called uh the president's prayer Partners petitions and Praises that's kind of a long title so we just call it P5 but in every issue one of the first things that we focus on is how to pray for the Holy Spirit you've heard from other people here and other presenters that it is only through the holy spirit's empowering that we
• 124:30 - 125:00 receive you know we reach hearts for heaven and uh I you know our focus is on various gifts of the Spirit you know when we think of the gifts of the Spirit we think of love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control this month the month of Love We Are focusing on the the gift of love and how God wants our churches to ex you to just radiate God's love in every corner it is by love that
• 125:00 - 125:30 we reach people you know we can Tre we can give a lot of knowledge about various things we can preach prophecy about various things but if the love of Christ doesn't embrace the people that we're trying to reach we're going to we're missing the boat and so we're praying earnestly throughout the conference for God's holy spirit to be reigning down on Carolina W with manifestation from the gifts of the uh the fruits of the spirit I belong to the Sharon 7th Adventist Church in Charlotte
• 125:30 - 126:00 North Carolina and in our in our prayer meeting I don't I I usually gone uh to various churches so I join usually at prayer meeting time and one of the re uh books that we're reading there is this book by uh Henry blabe called Experiencing God well in this book he focuses upon time spent alone with Jesus you can't share share what you don't have and so we need to be spending more time one-on-one with Jesus and uh and as we spend that time you know Jesus said I
• 126:00 - 126:30 am the vine you are the branches if you remain in me and I in you you will bear much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing and so our connection with Jesus is the key to reaching every heart that we can for Jesus and for his sooncoming kingdom in Carolina when elder Glenn alamat said you know let's do something special during Pentecost 2025 we just said this let's pray like Elisha asked
• 126:30 - 127:00 Elijah for a double portion of his Spirit to be upon him and so we are starting to pray earnestly saying God for the last three years we brought a thousand souls to your kingdom but this year Lord we're praying for a double portion of your spirit we're praying that this year we'll baptize over 2,000 souls for God's Kingdom that's our prayer in Carolina and I pray that in every conference in every area in every corner of the North American Division we will experience God's
• 127:00 - 127:30 blessing and a double portion of his spirit will be upon you next next year Elder Louie you know I shared with you a thought for evangelism impact for next year I I know this is my final my final year but but I had to just lock in something a little bigger for next year hey go for it and so what we're going to do is we're going to expand impact to include every departmental in the church to bring the pastors and every Department leader and kind of make it as a a little Ministry Church Ministry convention where where we really begin
• 127:30 - 128:00 to pour into them the realization of what integrated evangelism looks like so they stop working as independent agents but start working together to fulfill the mission that God has given to us what purpose is it I'm tired my friends I don't know about you but I'm tired of broken relationships I'm tired of broken bro en homes I'm tired of broken churches I'm tired of dealing with the petty foolishness that we have to deal with all the time they say if fishermen
• 128:00 - 128:30 don't fish they fight I'm tired of dealing with churches that are fighting I'm tired of praying with ch with parents over lost children I'm tired of praying beside the grav sides of my friends and saying goodbye to them I'm tired my friends I'm tired of chasing the devil's rabbit what about you today it's time to refocus on the command hand of Jesus and that is to seek and save that which was lost Jesus said on this rock I will build my church and the
• 128:30 - 129:00 Gates of Hell will not will not will not Prevail against it it's time to chase after the devil in his kingdom and tear those walls down and grow God's Kingdom for his soon return [Applause]
• 129:00 - 129:30 wo he he doesn't sound tired no he said he's tired but he didn't he did not sound tired at all it didn't sound tired to me it is so so good we have heard from pastors we have heard from volunteer L pastors we have heard from church leaders we have heard from conference presidents we have heard from people that Pastor bigger Church smaller churches we have heard from pastors who deal with schools and evangelism equipping baptizing or let me
• 129:30 - 130:00 say it right baptizing and equipping is possible in North America it is possible is that okay are we are we in agreement that it is possible to baptize and to equip people in North America in 2025 are we yes it's all right to put your hands together it's all right wow look at look at this group I heard a few things there are no bad baptisms all right I heard that the end result of evangelism is not a baptism but a disciple H well I he so
• 130:00 - 130:30 much so let's go with the questions we have so many good questions here all right we got first one here for you Roger as you mentioned decentralized discipl making what does that look like how does that fit into the 7th Day Adventist framework is there a place for disciples to start house churches that are not planning to become come building based man that's like five questions want Mercy five questions on a comment
• 130:30 - 131:00 the decentralized power means that the pastor is intentional in developing leaders outside of just the two or three people that want to rule the church and that as a pastor you have you have assigned leadership and you can be intentional about um steering people and looking for people and developing people people um when we understand the blessing that not just one small group can do but more people we will start to
• 131:00 - 131:30 see um the church grow um I think that um it will be a long conversation to have so whoever ask that question just feel free to reach out to me and I'll um we we just we want to be organized but we want to share power and you have you have a preaching moment you have your church boards instead of just fighting about the color of the carpet talk about like what what would it look like to include more people where could we add them to uh how can we recruit people how
• 131:30 - 132:00 can we have an ongoing system where people who are coming to the church can be funneled into service those are conversations it doesn't happen in a day but it can happen every day that you meet with your board right good all right I have a question here I don't know if this is coming from a conference president or not but it's coming to the conference president in the panel how have you ever been afraid of being voted out of office for trying to establish goals for evangelism no no um you
• 132:00 - 132:30 know I am I never applied for this job um I never sought this job it came as a surprise to me when I was asked to serve in this capacity but when I was called to serve in this capacity i i i as the Lord to use use me to reach hearts for heaven and that's the only thing I I really want to do um I want to be faithful to that um and I'm praying
• 132:30 - 133:00 that you know our emphasis on Pentecost 2025 is not just for 2025 that's right but every year that it'll be Pentecost 2026 and 27 and 28 until Jesus comes you know we will keep praying for the outpouring of the holy spirit because I want to make sure that this is not just something that is a high point here and then everything Fizzles out my commitment to this is to see this work go forward till Jesus comes thank you so much thank you amen I Jose when I when I
• 133:00 - 133:30 sorry goad when I went and talked to him about 2025 and I said you know we need to raise our raise our baptism goal and and I was thinking 1500 and he just I didn't say it out loud I said we need to raise our goal he says well let's think about that and pray and he said 2,000 and I said I love you lesie is that okay for for a for a departmental guy to tell tell he loves
• 133:30 - 134:00 his he loves his president that's right it's okay man good good good it's all right thank you very good all right this questions for Day by using the idea of a raffle I can imagine some resistance how have you dealt with the stigma of using a raffle in the church um I think I mean I called it a raffle yeah it is but here's the thing um I think it's the Holy Spirit paved the way because we
• 134:00 - 134:30 kind of have been doing Raffles just a little bit differently in the past um but what I really like about this system is that I think it's genius the raffle ticket is the decision card so we collect all that information and then we can see literally right there who's interested which again back to eat it while it's hot you can follow up immediately well and you I've been doing evangelism for over 20 years and we did Free drawings people registered when they came in and whe you called a number
• 134:30 - 135:00 for a book or something instead of a sepsa Christ it's a turkey or something so it's the same concept yeah and I do want to say that there's a difference between the giveaway that we advertised versus the raffle at the end so the raffle was separate separate gifts people got whatever they whatever they saw the ad they got that at the very end by the way don't dis miss everybody at once I did that the first day it was Mayhem so call them by you know numbers 1 through 15 go get your turkey Etc all
• 135:00 - 135:30 right listen up everyone and I keep getting texts from ministri of directors and some conference presidents who are watching and they're saying is this person the real deal is this person you know every time that we have e huddle you know listen up every time that we watch eidle after that we have eidle after the eidle we have a lot of our presence get presenters getting calls from different conferences and we have some conference presidents that don't want their pastors to come here because they know that their pastors are going to get calls after that so if you're a
• 135:30 - 136:00 conference president ministerial director you're watching you're here at least give it three months you know to start giving calls to people all right just just want to make that clear all right very quickly here a question for um Pastor Kristen um Pastor is it okay to baptize kids is it okay to baptize children um we have parents in our church that always fight us because they don't want their children to be baptized because they are too young yeah that's a really really good question I think for every
• 136:00 - 136:30 child their maturity is different there are some young people that have been studying the Bible from a very young age and know a lot about Jesus and their faith and their relationship with God and then there are some kids who may just not be ready but I always defer to the parents if the parents are not comfortable I'm not going to push it at the end of the day it's a family decision and I want everyone to be on the same page and ultimately the Holy Spirit needs to lead holy all right very good anybody else needs to wants to join in on that I I I can you know my feelings on this one um with 47
• 136:30 - 137:00 different cultures um the parents are going to have a different opinion on this those that come from the Caribbean as as soon as the kid wants it kids's ready family's behind it I have others who come from a more Eastern European background and they like the way I was raised you got to wait till you're 13 14 or 15 you've got to work with the families and the parents and of course the maturity and understanding of the children because you do want them to be ready right very
• 137:00 - 137:30 good Dam you ready yeah this one's for for Danny uh as a as a volunteer lay Pastor revitalizing a church how do you manage your professional life and your ministry life so I was asked this question actually a little earlier by somebody um I'm I'm a pretty organized guy that's the only way that I'm able to make it um I do admit that I tend to run late and my church knows this but I'm trying to squeeze every ounce of
• 137:30 - 138:00 productivity out of my day um I'm trying to lately I've been trying to just be in bed at 900 p.m. as because then I could get up at 4:30 or 5: and just start my day uh it's a challenge but let me tell you that when I see somebody get baptized it just fuels my fire awesome beautiful excellent very good beautiful Bob tell us about how to share the gospel with Muslim family in one in in five in 30 seconds in 30 seconds again I'm not a miracle worker okay basically you in any evangelism you will always
• 138:00 - 138:30 have something in common with the person you're trying to reach with Muslims what do we have in common no smoking no pork no alcohol we start worship on a Friday we expect Jesus to return we both believe Jesus is a holy man so we start with our Muslim friends at what we have in common nice that's a miracle right there that's beautiful and he said he did he miracle worker all right very good all right you have one Tim no I don't have any questions okay I have one more here I have actually two more Glenn
• 138:30 - 139:00 after retirement are you still available to go preaching somewhere after that sermon that you just preached now amen are you going to still preach after I I didn't know I preached the sermon HH yeah yeah I'm everywhere yeah I'm I'll go anywhere right so where got that listen Jose when I was uh when I was 29 the Lord called me and uh he worked it out for me to go into the ministry and I said no and um it was six six years
• 139:00 - 139:30 later when I was almost seven when I was 36 that I took my wife to lunch and I said baby I'm not happy I have to be in the ministry and she said whatever we have to do that's what we do amen and so from that point on we've always said we're going to do what the Lord calls us to do do yeah I want to ask my my producers thank you so much Glenn do we have time for for two more questions or we we we're done all right let me let me get one more here at least one more if you
• 139:30 - 140:00 give me two all right uh Danny what do you do for living and how can you do what you do and pastor at the same time is this possible sure so um by profession speech language pathology uh right now I in my company I just manage rehab facilities and skilled nursing facilities basically the equivalent of nursing homes um what I did was 5 years you managed yes all right yeah so that really helped me when it came to dealing with people um because you know to a large extent a pastor or a church leader is managing
• 140:00 - 140:30 Personalities in order for them to be able to work together to work well um what I did five years ago was I basically told the Lord I said listen I just need to I need to quit this job I'm working way too many hours to be able to manage both things and I did and um I told the Lord this this happened 5 years ago I said Lord um you are the provider if I quit my job right now I don't even know what I'm going to do within the next two weeks but what I did uh what I did was I contacted all the previous
• 140:30 - 141:00 companies that I had worked for and I said listen I have an idea if you ever need somebody interim to manage a facility or uh while somebody's you know if somebody's been terminated or a new startup uh please call me within a month I had more requests than I could handle and but I'm able to turn down work away so it worked perfectly now I don't know longterm how it's going to work but the Lord so far has been uh giving me the energy to to be able to move on uh move for ladies and gentlemen that's a volunteer L Pastor amen volunteer L
• 141:00 - 141:30 Pastor he does not get paid but look what his church is doing all right and then and then one last question here Christen advise of pastors who have schools what can they do so that schools can be intentionally Evangelistic I think it starts with building a relationship l ing the relationship between the church and the school being present starting off by visiting the classroom and just being there as much as you can this is Paving the way for further Evangelistic
• 141:30 - 142:00 opportunities thank you let's put our hands together for this wonderful group thank you so much gentlemen and lady thank you so much and now we're going to go to our tables as this this is our final activity for for the day team and we want to be finished by 4:30 um those of you who are online don't go anywhere because our our presenters are going to the cameras
• 142:00 - 142:30 backstage right now so you can continue asking them questions and for those of us who are here we have a few questions that we want you to discuss in your tables so let's put up those questions team if you can read them for us please yes we'll put them right up on the screen question number one what type of attitudes are you presently experiencing in your context towards Proclamation evangelism the second question is how can we as a church encourage pastors and members to engage in Sharing Jesus and
• 142:30 - 143:00 make regular invitations for people to commit to Jesus and to the church through baptism the third question is list three things we can do better to retain the newly baptized in our churches we're going to take 15 to 20 minutes to deal with these three questions and after that we're going to come back here to close the program for today very quickly I see some of you wearing your hoodies already and I know that you love your hoodies tomorrow is the official hoodie day because we're
• 143:00 - 143:30 going to take right before lunch we're going to take a photo with everyone who is here at the ehad all right so don't forget to wear your hoodies tomorrow tomorrow uh so we can take our photo right before lunch let's go to the back and now let's continue with our uh questions in the tables thank you thank you all right and we're back thank you so much for joining us and so I'm with Danny Salo who is a volunteer lay Pastor
• 143:30 - 144:00 in Dallas the White Rock Lake SDA church and you had an awesome testimony and for me it was as I listened stepping out in faith even acquiring the building and what you're able to do and then just sharing about your job for those who might be thinking about you know is this something I might want to do tell us about maybe what you were doing because you know obviously the holy spirit is working on you tell us a little bit
• 144:00 - 144:30 about you know for those who might be thinking about perhaps going off and doing something like this sure so um prior to doing that I had already been doing uh Bible work or Bible Bible studies with other individuals in my church at the prior church and uh so that kind kind of got my uh my attention about perhaps you know we could scale this out uh and then in a a couple years later the call came to try to lead a church and that wasn't even in my my radar but I did have some some level of
• 144:30 - 145:00 organization skills that God had gifted me with and uh that really helped with being able to visualize and strategize and see okay what can we do to grow this church yes that's just amazing and just one you know you just mentioned when you decided that you know what maybe this is something I wanted to do talk about that yes so um I had been working already for a while and um I was wondering how the Lord was going to provide for me financially if I totally quit my
• 145:00 - 145:30 full-time job um I did resign um I got some insurance from the marketplace I remember and I said uh Lord um the only way that I'm able to do the amount of work that a new startup Church requires or one that needs a little bit more flourishing uh would be to um try to give it as many hours as I can even during the week because Sabbath you know running a church is not just on Sabbath it's also during the week doing visitations and once I made up my mind I I did for me finances was always uh if I
• 145:30 - 146:00 want more money I just work more but I really had to trust God in this area because I really felt that I had not given him this area of my life to him I was like no you know I'm just going to work more however once I took that step of Faith the Lord started providing little contract jobs here and there and uh and I was more than able to or he was more than able to provide for me that's amazing and you were the one who whereby you acquir that church building that beautiful church building that you're still trying to right right I want to uh mention my friend Dustin peslin because
• 146:00 - 146:30 he was really the person who influenced me to even want to get that involved and he was a primary leader prior to my coming here so he had a great influence on me as well what was his role was he a pastor or he was he was a primary Church leader at that time and then we had a change and then that's when I came over about 6 years ago okay yeah so what's next are you thinking Beyond now I mean the church you know they're still you know yes wanting to add more people but tell us a little bit more about what future I I kind of see myself as a kind of a
• 146:30 - 147:00 mobilizer um i' I I love metrics and I studying how things work and flow and uh I just uh feel that I don't feel that we've reached our potential yet our local church and then I'm sign trying to see how we can replicate this uh in other parts of either City or the country or the state yeah so let God handle it taking it one day at a time okay one day at a time I love it thank you so much for what you do and thank you so much for serving all right God bless
• 147:00 - 147:30 you we're here with Pastor Bob Windsor from the uh Ottawa region in Canada the capital city there and he's pastoring the nepan 7-Day Adventist Church hi Bob how are you I'm good Matt it's good to be here wow thank you so much for your passionate uh presentation um you really uh demonstrated your love for God's work and you spoke a lot about um mission and vision and you spoke about the importance of a church knowing where it wants to go and knowing how it's going to get there in your experience uh
• 147:30 - 148:00 Pastor Bob um have you been to many churches that have a meaningful vision and Mission and what's that been like okay well a lot of the past uh churches I pastored actually didn't have a mission or a vision and so they ended up either being a plateaued church or a dying Church like scripture says without a vision the people Parish so Pastor Bob when you've worked with the churches that you've pastored um you know you spoke of uh several churches and you've gone in and you've
• 148:00 - 148:30 uh helped them to formulate a vision and a mission and helped them just to see its importance how long did the process take and how involved were you as a person driving this initiative I had a young person say to me I didn't understand the role of a pastor or what a pastor could bring into in terms of change until you came along and so when I work with the church I I spend time getting to know them I talk to the members I listen to what they're
• 148:30 - 149:00 saying and then I get on my knees and I'm like Lord what do you want for this church and then once I receive that Vision I start having individual conversations and the longest part of the process is coming alongside people and sharing them the vision how how it fits in the Bible how it fits with where the church can go I I I I want to give them an an idea of what was possible for the church and well what do you think about that what do you think our church could do with a vision like that and
• 149:00 - 149:30 it's amazing uh how people want to have a vision they can get behind so would you say it's like is it a lengthy process is it a painful process like all in all like what's that experience like okay well of course any investment in change takes time you're you're I'm in this the Long Haul I'm still teaching vision and Mission what I discovered is it's not painful when you have a clear and distinct vision and it's biblical and it
• 149:30 - 150:00 actually fits the church and it's from God God said look my word doesn't come back to me empty I trust in the vision being from God and then God's going to do his work to sew that seed of vision in the hearts of his people that's amazing uh Pastor Bob we want to thank you for the great work that you're doing and we pray for God's continued anointing upon you and your family because we do understand it's your anniversary today so please give our love and respect to your dear wife thank you so much thank
• 150:00 - 150:30 you all right so I am joined by Kristen Thomas who is the youth pastor at the Beltsville 7th Day Adventist Church in Maryland and so you've been there for two and a half years and as I'm listening to your presentation and how you've been able to form those relationships with the students and being able to do so much does it feel like 2 and A2 years it feels like a whirlwind it feels it feels like it's
• 150:30 - 151:00 gone so fast but honestly those young people at the school is one of my favorite parts of what I do and it makes the time so enjoyable that throughout the week I can just see them and spend time with them so it feels like it's gone actually it feels like I've known them for much longer because of just those relationships being cultivated you know as I was looking at the pictures and I saw the smiles and your big smile with them and I could see that it's something whereby you've enjoyed and you know one of the thing that was interesting for me you know the Robotics
• 151:00 - 151:30 and your background tell us a little bit about going from a tech engineer to a p yeah that's a very interesting Journey for sure um when I went to school for undergrad and and went to study computer science I had absolutely no idea that I was going to be a pastor that was not in my Horizon ring at all but as I developed As I Grew in my faith journey and as people elders and leaders were investing in my own relationship with God I started to have an excitement and
• 151:30 - 152:00 passion to share with others the good news of Jesus Christ so the same way in which my life had been impacted with the hope of Jesus I wanted to share that with other people and so after some deliberation and some wrestling and feeling convicted I sens that God was calling me to quit my job and at minimum go to Andrews to study at the mdiv level with no plan no immediate action after that but God in his knowledge knew what
• 152:00 - 152:30 he was doing and that step of Faith uh has led me to where I am now and God knew it all but it just took him it took me trusting in Him that he had a plan for me it's amazing and he's using that background and Tech it's not going to waste tell us a little bit about how you're putting that to use yeah so one of the things that I really enjoy is finding ways to combine my love for Ministry with my background in Tech and there's been various ways that I've been able to use Tech experience um within my
• 152:30 - 153:00 role as a pastor but the robotics has certainly been a really really fun way to Mentor these young Engineers to learn more not only about the nitty-gritty science topics but also their faith in Jesus and so God has opened the door for me to combine my background and Tech with this robotics program and it's a team there's other coaches other retired ired Engineers other really passionate coaches who we work together to invest into our young people but God yeah brought that together and it's been awesome you know we saw the pictures of
• 153:00 - 153:30 those multiple baptisms you know and you know how you're sharing with them they're sharing with others you seeing the mentorship that's going on I mean give us a little idea in terms of how all of this is coming together behind the scenes because you mentioned it's not just you yeah so you know it takes a village and a community to really pour into our young people and to be committed to them and so you're seeing a very small part of that here but certainly there are parents there are
• 153:30 - 154:00 leaders other pastors other individuals who are dedicated to seeing our young people know Jesus and they have an excitement they want to be involved they want to learn they want to grow and it just takes someone to care and that's what we desire to do is just to care for them to tell them God loves you God cares about you and to see how they are continually walking in that Faith yeah yeah and it's you know to see the care that you're having toward them it's just
• 154:00 - 154:30 really for me as someone who's watching and knowing that just two and a half years ago you were a student here had no background in pastoral Ministry and then here you are enable to make this impact with these students you know for a lifetime so thank you so much for what you do than you so much thank you all right I'm so excited to have with me um some real powerhouses in the area of evangelism in the 7th Day Adventist
• 154:30 - 155:00 Church the North American Division I have Leslie and Glenn from the Carolina conference a president and evangelism director in church growth and Associate ministerial I think I have that right and uh we're just uh so enriched by not just the content you share but the depth of experience in the field and uh really is a blessing to uh pastors like myself and Leslie I wanted to ask you you know as you look for funds to do evangelism it's not always easy uh making big requests from your
• 155:00 - 155:30 constituency um and looking for funding has it been a faith Journey what's that been like and have you always found the funds you've been looking for you know when you make something a priority whether it's in your family or whether it's in the church God always provides those funds one of the ways that have generated those funds however is to tell the story and so uh at our camp meeting and in our in our Publications we tell the story of lives
• 155:30 - 156:00 that have been changed by the proclamation of the gospel and and how those lives have been transformed into a relationship with Jesus and that touches people's hearts and that opens up the resources that are necessary for us to fund evangelism and so we have seen just a tremendous growth in support support for evangelism through funding uh because of those stories and those testimonies I guess you um you know you put skin on the gospel you know skin on
• 156:00 - 156:30 the story of evangelism and and I think people can relate to that and that's very powerful thank you so much Leslie uh Glenn I wanted to ask you about the cycle of evangelism uh some people maybe that are watching have never really heard of the cycle of evangelism like the idea of evangelism sometimes is an Evangelistic series Once year once in a while you spoke about the uh intentionality in having preparation to harvest in a cycle format and I'm just wondering if you can expand on that and
• 156:30 - 157:00 then just let us know when does that cycle reset is it annually or is it depend on the church the situation sure thank you um the cycle of evangelism really as I said from from prep to harvest so that would mean you're going to prepare the soil you're going to uh plant you're going to cultivate you're going to nurture you're going to harvest and so it's it's that whole cycle as far as it having an beginning and end it really never ends it's a continuous cycle that's always ongoing and it's not
• 157:00 - 157:30 sequential and so at all times you'll have preparation going you'll have you'll have cultivation going but you'll also have Harvest going you'll also have nurture going you'll also have that that piece of discipleship that's an ongoing thing within the church I I think what's happened and it's been a detriment to us is that people have have had that mindset that says Hey listen we're going to prepare for evangelism this year and we're going to get ready for the one week or five weeks or whatever that is and when it's done they kind of sit back
• 157:30 - 158:00 and say ah I'm glad that's over now we can get back to normal Church uh that that has been very detrimental for the church so if we can get this idea that we're always we're always doing something to grow God's kingdom and expand his kingdom because that's what he's called us to do that's awesome and that's a good explanation I think that would have brought a lot of clarity thank you so much we you also spoke of Community Connection how important is building relationships when it comes to evangelism in the community and how how
• 158:00 - 158:30 does that impact um you know effective evangelism as you go out and you listen to people um most churches if the church was to disappear the community wouldn't realize it they have no connection with them they provide no service for them other than they know there's some folks that go down there they see the parking lot you know some people cars on there on Sabbath morning but they have no interaction with them and so they have in the past obviously depended upon a
• 158:30 - 159:00 handbill that's gone out and you know with all kinds of different figures on that to to bring some folks in with no no relationship what Community Connection does is it it allows people to build a relationship and to get involved in their lives um as you know as Ellen White says to win their confidence and then bid them to follow me so I think that's what the Community Connection does as I said I think it it gives us the right to speak about spiritual things into their lives when
• 159:00 - 159:30 we have touched them they're ready to hear from us and without that we're strangers to them thank you so much Glenn and Leslie just quickly just a brief comment uh to close us off in this uh interview is there any last thing you'd like to say about evangelism to our viewers at home uh not just the pastors but just the lay persons everyone watching everyone is an evangelist we all are called to be Witnesses for Jesus it's not just the person at the pulpit
• 159:30 - 160:00 you're an evangelist when you go out and you touch someone's heart for Christ simply by an act of kindness sharing a little thought having a word of prayer with somebody my wife does that all the time she'll meet somebody or somebody that comes to the house and she'll just say can I pray with you we're all evangelists for Jesus thank you Leslie and Glenn and uh we're so grateful for what you've shared with us I'm joined by Dave Fernandez who is
• 160:00 - 160:30 with the remind me again the church Park Avenue 7th Day Adventist that's right when I think of Park Avenue ritzy Park Avenue but this is in it's in Vasa Georgia in Georgia and so you gave us a presentation about some real Savvy high-tech ways in which you were reaching out to your community so talk about the process in terms of bringing the church along because I'm guessing this is something new that they had never done before so how did that go
• 160:30 - 161:00 well um yes it's definitely new in terms of the church as far as you know I can tell so we were blessed to have Pastor Roger Hernandez and Pastor Daniel Hall kind of come together and Pastor Daniel Hall he his background is in marketing and I love Communications I love marketing myself so um it was nice collaborating with him and coming up with the this funnel system to get people in from seeing the ad all the way to you know church membership so that
• 161:00 - 161:30 was cool okay and so how did the church how did you did you have to do a lot of convincing well um I think when a big shout out to like our conference and also um the union because part of the conversation is always money how much is this going to cost right and so um we received some sub from the union and also from the conference and of course our church also put in you know cuz we have to have some skin in the game but I think that support um kind of helped them to at least be open-minded about it
• 161:30 - 162:00 but in general we've been trying new things and different things and um one of the conversations that I had before this event is something else another event that we had and it was not as um I guess the expectations were you know it was not as amazing if you can say um and I just said look I think we never fail I always like to say this we never fail if we do sometimes we let the fear of failure stop us from doing anything if it doesn't work you just try something
• 162:00 - 162:30 new and something different until you get something that works and so when you went to the church and said hey let's try this this is you know Facebook ads how do they respond um they responded well because I think part of the other reason is um they also I think it's important for for us as pastors to listen to them as well and take their ideas one of the ideas that they had prior to something like this was to do a a ra a billboard ad so in the previous
• 162:30 - 163:00 one we did the billboard ad and it wasn't very effective so it was just I I think early on we just adopted the idea of let's try something see if it works if it doesn't work let's try something different and so I think God was working with us in that sense Because by the time this came they were kind of open to it they were like okay yeah we haven't tried it let's try it so uh yeah so that's basically the answer and so real quick in 30 seconds if someone might be
• 163:00 - 163:30 thinking about this a church a pastor what's the first thing that you say to do um I would say the first thing to do is um I think it's super important to get others who have had success and come to the church one of the things that I think we worked up to to that was we did have several people come to my church like Pastor Daniel Hall and others and they did trainings so kind of having those trainings and then having the conversation you know planting those
• 163:30 - 164:00 seeds ahead of time so thank you of our program today have you been blessed okay and so we will now go to the stage but tomorrow tomorrow do join us at 9:00 a.m. where we will be back again for day two of he e huddle thank you so much for joining
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