New Year resolutions for Healthy Church

As I travel this week I had been listening to Dwight Nelson’s sermon series “the Gift” which he preached through the fall semester of this year (you can access it online, for mp3 downloads, or video files at www.pmchurch.tv) His emphasis is on the Gift of Prophecy given to humanity by God for the sake of communicating since the catastrophe of sin and disobedience. Prophecy is how God stays in touch with us. Number of sermons addressed issues and questions about Ellen G. White and her role among Adventists.

In his last sermon he quoted statistics from a recent research by Roger L. Dudley, and Des Cummings, Jr. at the Institute of Church Ministry, Andrews University. Thousands of church members were surveyed across the North America comparing twenty criteria with only two variables – those who read versus those who do not read books of Ellen White.

Here is only portion (few select categories) of the results:

top bar “READERS” bottom bar “NON-READERS” (in %)

I presented this with more details a couple of years ago at the seminar we held on Ellen G. White’s role in our church.

Today I invite you to make a resolution and a commitment for the new year 2011: Read works of Ellen G. White! Our goal is Revival and Reformation for Mission. My dream for this year is to see more of you have stronger relationship with Jesus, more being sure of being saved, more praying, more into Bible, more family worship, more witnessing. All this, and more can easily be achieved by a simple commitment – hear the prophetic voice, read her writings!