Evangeliving – Higher Expectations

This past week a couple of articles and sermons that run through my emails triggered my thinking in a new direction.  A recent article by Bill Knott, the editor of Adventist Review “A Time to Marginalize” had caused a lot of puzzled reactions.  He calls to “protect our pulpits, change the channel, withhold dollars” from those who are on the margins, and even draw boundaries and exclude some.  Then a presentation by Mark Finley from ASI seminar “Discerning End Time Deceptions” where he stresses the danger of polarizing margins in the church which lead to disunity.  He quotes from a Special Testimony by Ellen White (No.11, 1898) “Satan has made his boast of what he can do. He thinks to dissolve the unity which Christ prayed might exist in His church. He says, "I will go forth and be a lying spirit to deceive those that I can, to criticize, and condemn, and falsify." Let the son of deceit and false witness be entertained by a church that has had great light, great evidence, and that church will discard the message the Lord has sent, and receive the most unreasonable assertions and false suppositions and false theories. Satan laughs at their folly, for he knows what truth is. Many will stand in our pulpits with the torch of false prophecy in their hands, kindled from the hellish torch of Satan. If doubts and unbelief are cherished, the faithful ministers will be removed from the people who think they know so much.”   Heresies and divisive teachings are in the church, stirred by the enemy, and as long as believers are sorting out right from wrong, doubting, arguing, they are not evangelizing!

One research shows that there is high loss of members (the “back door” is wide open) because there is doubt and uncertainty in the church!  New comes, new believers cannot make sense of different interpretations, where some teach fundamentalism, others are practicing selective “pick and chose” attitude toward the writings of Ellen White, and the importance of the Spirit of Prophecy today.  The conclusion reached by researches shows that if the church is divided, and has low expectations of what people believe, people won’t stick!  And if there are higher expectations, clarity of standards, and especially if the church offers membership classes and other seminars teaching principles of faith, then people will stay!  One author says: “An inept church member is an oxymoron.  It does not exist in scripture.” Inept – incompetent, unskilled, untrained J It is our duty to make sure people have a clear understanding of what it means to be a member of a church – not an institutional member, but a member of Christ’s body.  Every member of the church must be trained, know the truth, have skills for ministry, only then the Body of Christ will be functional and no harvest will be lost.

In the past years many training seminars were offered – Adventism 101 (doctrines); Spirituality (on spiritual growth), Mission 316 on witnessing to different faiths); Q&A Bible studies on variety of subjects.  We have not exhausted the field.  The Church is the School of prophets, a field school of discipleship, and it must continue so.  It is my prayer that we would set standards and expectations from our members higher, and make our church more attractive to visitors by our commitment to grow in knowledge of God.