Energize your Sabbath School - Workshop

Sabbath School is becoming more and more my passion. Sabbath School is many, many things, many different things to many different people. But in its infancy, Sabbath School, believe it or not, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was Sabbath School before it was anything else. We were a people, and still if people outside of the Adventist Church define Seventh-day Adventists, they'll say people, Seventh-day Adventists are a people of the book. There are people who study their Bibles. There are people who, if you get to know an Adventist very long, they'll want to have a Bible study with you because we are a people of the book and we have a strong understanding and not just understanding but a desire to share what's in the Bible with other people and what we found in the Bible. And Sabbath school is where that originally happened. We were many people from many different churches. There were Methodists, there were Baptists, there were all different denominations who were going to church on Saturdays— on Sundays, going to their churches, and then on Saturdays they were coming together to study the Bible together. They were saying, I've discovered something else. Did you know the seventh day is actually the Sabbath? Did you know that Jesus is coming soon? It was first that that's what they discovered, is Jesus is coming soon. And so they were coming together to study about this advent of Jesus coming soon, and then they were studying about the Sabbath. And over time they realized, we're coming together every Sabbath to study because that's when God asks us to come together, but then we're going to our communities and we're going to church on Sunday with our, whatever our family is, with our Methodist, Baptist families, and then we're coming back to study the Bible on Sabbath at Sabbath school. And why don't we just start having church on Sabbath and come up with a name for ourselves? And so that's where the Seventh-day Adventist Church came from. So Sabbath school is the core of our identity. And yet, when in so many churches Sabbath school is now where if you ask the church, in particular at various churches around the world, not just in Australia, not just in America, but if you ask the churches, "Where do we struggle?" Sabbath school is the answer you'll get. And, um, I spent some time, um, I'm the Sabbath school director from the Victorian Conference, and I spent some time taking Gary Swanson, who's the Sabbath school director for the General Conference, I took him on the Great Ocean Road and so got to pick his brain all day. He was running a workshop for us on the Sabbath, and so on Friday— actually, no, he was running a Friday night and Saturday workshop, so I took him on Thursday and we did the Great Ocean Road and got to pick his brain the whole way and have been in dialogue with him since then over email and stuff. And he says it's not just occasionally a problem in certain Adventist churches, but right around the world there is a real struggle with Sabbath school. Why? Why do we do Sabbath school? And so what I'd like to do tonight, first of all, is to find out which Sabbath school specific groups, Sabbath school groups, are represented here. So if you are the leader of a Sabbath school department or you regularly attend a certain Sabbath school group, um, can you just tell me which group you're from?

Youth.

Youth. Okay, first let's see how many there are. So just let's see, so we got youth, kindy beginner, primary, adult, beginners. Is that the same as kindy beginner? Is that the same? Yes, so you guys together, that's fine. So there's 4. Is there any other groups? So 4, okay, so I'll break it into 4 categories on the board. That's basically what I wanted to know. This is not going to work. Is that the best one we've got? I didn't do very good, did I? That's 6. 4 should be a lot easier than that. Let's just take that line out. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to write with this though. Is that gonna— oh, you are? Okay, okay. Then think about— while we're looking for a pen— think about your Sabbath school and think about what is— if it's a Sabbath school that you run for the kids or for the other people who are coming— what's the thing that really works, the thing that's really if it's for little kids, what is it that they like the most about Sabbath school? What are you proud of about your Sabbath school? What's going really well in your Sabbath school? She's doing a good job making up for it with her feet. So someone else said she's walking a lot to make up for her voice. So let's put them up here. We've got— I came up with a— awesome. I came up with a word about a year ago now, and it's one of my favorite words to use when somebody says these two things together. Beginnergarten. Is that supposed to be a T in German? I don't know. Beginnergarten. Okay, that's Beginnergarten. Then we had— what did we have? We had primary. I don't have one for that. That'd be a good one. Primunier? That doesn't sound as good. Then we had youth. Let's put youth across the top here too. Actually, we can do 4 categories going up and down. And one more, adult. Okay, so thinking about your Sabbath school, what is it that stands out as a positive? What's going well? What do the kids enjoy? What do the adults enjoy? What is it that's really firing in your Sabbath school? Discussion, good. Yep. Sorry. Yep. Yep. Okay. So we'll put all three of those up then. So we had craft, singing, Bible study. Good. Anyone else? Yeah.

Hands-on. Interaction. Hands-on.

Yeah. And at that age, nearly everything can be hands-on, can't it? Even the songs, you get things in your hands to shake. When I was at college, I graduated graduated from Avondale in '98. And in my final of Church Ministry 3, we had to do a presentation to whatever it was that we had to say. And everyone was doing PowerPoints, you know, that was the huge thing back there was PowerPoint presentations. And I brought in a felt board and I had my wife and I the last night had been up till like midnight cutting out every little arrow and every letter that I wanted to put on the board out of felts. And I did the whole thing. I had no idea I was going to become a children's ministries director one day. But I just, I was talking to, because one of the points in my lecture was how as we get older and older, we become less and less physically involved with worship. And about the most physically involved we get, I guess, is standing when we sing and sitting down or kneeling when we pray. But the actual tactile stuff that they get in kindergarten Sabbath school and beginner Sabbath school, where everything, you touch everything and everything has a feeling and everything has a motion to go with it, and we lose that. And so I think there are ways still to get tactile involved in the older levels, but some of it, like a lot of people, they laughed, you know, when I brought my felt board out and put everything up on it. But it was more fun, and a lot of people remembered my lecture more than other people's because— and many people afterwards wanted to come up and feel the felts. Anyway, what about youth? What's happening in youth? What's going well? So the study? Why? Okay, so that's when the people are there. And what is it that's going well about the lesson?

Yep. Okay.

Yep. Anyone else want to add anything to theirs? Things that are going well or that you're proud of in your Sabbath school? Which one's that? For adults? So that's actually social. Oh yeah, yeah, the— I like what you said though, the kapa. That's good. Ah, that's a very valuable ministry to recognize you have in beginners.

Parent.

That's awesome. Yep.

Yeah.

And they're there. They don't— you can't leave, can you? Yeah. That is so good. That's— I've never had anyone say that in beginners, in beginners or kindergarten. The time that we spend for the parents. Even though the parents are there. They're the captive audience, aren't they? Normally, we're the captive audience of our kids. McDonald's knows that, that the parents will come. If you build it for the kids, there's a playground, you have to go. And churches, we're learning that more and more. I know your church actually has an active, a number of active children's-based ministries. Well, one that's— what's it called again? Your music school? Kids Music. And then you've started a playgroup following that, that is bringing people into this environment. It's just so important. One of the key things is to run things in your building that help community members see your building as a non-threatening place. Because then when you run things of a spiritual nature and you put an advert up or hand it to the people that are walking out, that they go, "Oh yeah, it's in that place. I know that place. I'm comfortable there." Anyone else want to add anything else to what they're proud of or what's going well in their Sabbath school?

Sorry?

Breakfast. Good. How often do you do that?

Every week, there's black cereal. Okay.

Very good. Anything else? Anyone else?

Yep.

Okay, I'm gonna draw a line here, and now I'm gonna tell you about when I first started as a Sabbath school director. When I first started as a children's ministries director, which I've just handed that over to someone else in our conference who I've been training up for the last few years, but I was the children's ministry director for 3 and a half years. And, uh, when I first started, I knew what I wanted to do. I had like had all these ideas. This is what we need happening in our conference for kids. When they asked me to be Sabbath school director, I was like, what do I do? I have no idea. Go and tell people, go to Sabbath school. And that was basically what they told me. Yeah, you need to get people going to Sabbath school. How do you do that? You just go to churches and wait till everyone shows up late and then go, where are you? Where have you been? Go to Sabbath school. Um, and so I started doing lots of reading and stuff about Sabbath schools, and that's when I found out this amazing story about our church, that we were originally Bible study groups. We were Sabbath school, and then we grew into a denomination from our Bible study groups. And the core of those Bible study groups is still the core identity of Sabbath school today. But because it's 150 years old, like anything that goes through multiple generations we lose the reason for why we're doing what we're doing. Many of the things, we keep doing them, but we lose the idea, the knowledge of why we do what we do. A good example of this, recently, well, last October, I was at a children's ministry advisory, which was in Townsville, and Ray Stanley was, he's 94 years old, and he was running an evangelistic crusade in Townsville at the same time. Man, that man, you talk to him at the table and he's quiet and he says, "Yes, I'm here running an evangelistic program in the evenings." And I thought, he looks, you know, he's very old. Is it safe to have him running an evangelistic crusade? And then he stands up and he doesn't even use a microphone. He had a room full of like 60 people and he's just like, "Ladies and gentlemen." Oh my goodness. And he can stand facing a whiteboard and everyone in the room can hear him. He's got this huge booming voice. For those of you who do know him and aren't aware, he actually had a stroke earlier this week. So I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but just thinking back about Ray, when he was sitting at this breakfast table one morning with me, I said to him, "Oh, how long have you been a minister?" And he said something ridiculous like 70 years or something, 74, 75, something. It was just this huge number. And I said, "I have always wanted— I've asked many ministers this, but you're definitely the one with the most history. Can you tell me why, when we baptize people, why do we put our hand up in the air? And he said, hmm, um, well, I suppose it's just a tradition. I said, so there's no biblical reason why we put— like I said, when I baptize people, I'm like, is it supposed to be the right hand? Is supposed to be the left hand? Am I supposed to put it really high or out here? Or I said, or Is it okay if I baptize without putting my hand up? And he said, oh, I don't think I'd do that. And I said, why not? And he said, well, people kind of are expecting to be baptized in a certain way, and if you were to do it without putting your hand up, I'm afraid some people wouldn't feel later that when they watched the video or saw a picture that they weren't properly baptized. And he's a really loving guy, and it's like he wasn't trying to be, you know, control me or anything, but the idea, I was just like, so somewhere, who knows how far back, because that's been in the Christian church from, I mean, John the Baptist does it in the photos of him. So it's been happening for a long time, and nobody that I've talked to, lots of people have really good reasons why probably, but nobody says, ah, it's written here, here's what it says, this is why, yet. And if you've ever heard a reason or seen it in print, Let me know, 'cause I just, I find it fascinating that what we do as humans is tradition is extremely important to us. And tradition helps us form identity. And it's important in many, many parts of our lives to have traditions that we maintain. But sometimes we're gonna have some young upstart come up and ask us why we do what we do. And then we hit the kind of the, "Well, if I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing, then maybe I'm not supposed to be doing it, or maybe I'm doing it wrong." Sabbath school hit these speed wobbles, not— maybe one or two generations ago. I don't know. When I was a little kid, I can remember Sabbath school was really well attended. I can remember going to Sabbath school with my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters, and we would sit together for the first probably half an hour, and they would ask all kinds of weird questions, and people would raise their hands. And the questions were things like acts of service done, how many parcels delivered, How many? And, and that somebody up the front was taking record of it all, and then they would send in that, that record sheet to the conference office, and that conference office would transfer the record sheet onto the big record sheet. And then once a quarter or once a year, I don't know, it would come in print to all the churches, and here's how you're doing in Sabbath school. Now we don't do that anymore. At least I haven't seen a church that still has people say, you know, how many items from the Dorcas has been given out, and And because of that, we've largely lost the connection. Did you realize that the food parcels from your church were originally to a— they were, they were something that one of your Sabbath school classes had as a passion, and that Sabbath school class owned that as their act of community service? Or did you realize that the Dorcas Room that— and we may now call it the Adra Shop, or we might call it, um, clothing for the poor, whatever. We have different ways, but when somebody needs some clothes, we have a place where we go to get clothes, whether it be from the conference office or we might have it at our local church. That used to be part of Sabbath school, and that was one of the Sabbath schools would say, we're the ones, we care for the food parcels. Yeah, we care for the clothes. How many, how many clothes? Okay, we gave out this many. Okay, good. And all of those things, there's 4 aspects of Sabbath school. And when we think of Sabbath School, we tend to— the things that we've kept doing are the things that have meaning to us, that we can figure out why we would do those things. So obviously the Bible study and the discussion is really important because we know that's our foundational identity as Seventh-day Adventists. We're still passionate about studying the Bible. So when we come together, we study the Bible. So you look across there and the involvement of Bible study, discussion, discussion, Bible study, even with the kids, hands-on activity. Based around the theme for the week, around getting those Bible stories into the kids. So Bible study is one of the four attributes of Sabbath school. Worship, which is, um, you know, singing, and also Bible study. But then there's three other aspects that have been there from the core of the time of Adventism, since we started doing Bible study and Sabbath school together. And those have largely— in some churches, some of them have been carved off, in other churches, other parts of them have been carved off. Because they— I think mainly because we don't recognize that it's part of Sabbath school. And those other 3 things are— so first of all, we have Bible study, which I'll put worship, which has Bible study as its main feature. But of course, we also have, um, Bible study. Then we have what we call nurture. Which is something we do quite naturally if we're friends. How are you? How was your week? How did it go this week? You said your mom was sick last week. How's she doing now? Those kind of things where when we're sitting in a small enough circle, we ask about each other's needs. And when we know, particularly when we know that that's actually a really necessary part of our Sabbath school, we won't stop doing it. But a lot of Sabbath schools have said, um, and I'll tell a story of one a little bit later, of one in Victoria that completely cut out all the preliminaries because they wanted to focus on these two. And they said, we know that small groups grow when you spend time together and nurture each other, so we want to nurture each other, and we're going to do that by meeting for the whole time of Sabbath school and studying our Bible together and having hot drinks together and stuff before, and then having the Bible study, and we'll grow by doing that. But by having just those two focuses, they completely let go of the other two. So nurture is just that the bonding that happens when you spend time together as a family or as a small group. Then the next one is outreach, which many Sabbath schools do outreach, but they just don't report it anymore. Many people in Sabbath schools will say, "Oh yeah, I go to the market and I run a stall there where we give out literature," or No, I still drop off literature on my street, or I'm still part of the local soup kitchen and I go down every Thursday night. But why would I tell anyone about that at Sabbath school? Because we've lost the connection that Sabbath school is the place where you tell your story of how you're involved in your community. Because then if I was to tell you the story of what I'd done this week and you told me the story of what you'd done, and then on 13th Sabbath they say, is there any stories from our community that we can share? They ask the leaders of each small group Sabbath school that we can share about what our church is doing for the community. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yes, I know all these stories, but so many of our stories we just never tell anymore. And it becomes— and this is something I've noticed about Australians, because I don't know if you've picked up I've got an American accent. Um, Australians— let me go the other way around. If you go up to an American and say, hey, what are you good at? That American will tell you, I am good at about 7 things, and let me tell you about all of them. And they'll happily share with you their skills and gifts and everything else. Spiritual gift seminars in America go wonderfully. We're gonna do this itemized list of all your gifts, and we're gonna find out who's gifted in these things, and then we're gonna do these things. And they go, that's fantastic. And once you've told them they're good at that, they go, yeah, I am, and they do it. But what I've noticed in Australia is if you ask an Australian, what are you good at? They'll go, I don't know, ask someone else. And how can I tell you what I'm good at? Ask You know, they might not even say that, but if you ask someone else, "Hey, what is she good at?" They'll say, "Oh my goodness, have you ever heard her sing?" Or, "Oh, have you ever seen her when she prays for someone? It's just amazing what happens." And so one of the key things that— and this is a little bit on another workshop that I do, but two questions to ask to find your spiritual giftedness. The first question is this: What do I love doing? For my church or my community? We have giftedness, and some of us are outreach people, some of us are in-reach people. What do I love doing for my church or my community? And the second one is, what do other people say I do well for my church and my community? Because sometimes it can be hard for us to say, well, I do enjoy doing that, but I don't know if I'm good at it. But if somebody else comes up to you and says, When you sang that song this morning, it touched my heart. Or that sermon you preached today, it just really hit the— I just know exactly what God wants for me now. And you hear someone else say, thank you for using your gift of X, it touched my heart, God spoke through you to me, then that person has seen their spiritual gift identified. One Sabbath, there was a lady who said the prayer. I was visiting a church and she said the prayer and it was very clear that she was mentally or at least verbally handicapped. She just talked really slow and you could tell that, well, it seemed like she was struggling to find every word and how to pronounce it before she said it. So it was really slow prayer. But I was just about to get up to preach, and my mind— typically I see everything happening up the front while I'm preparing the sermon in my head, but I'm not actually getting it because my mind is racing. But her prayer was so slow and so careful that I don't know what happened. I just stopped thinking, and I just focused in on what she was saying, and I listened to her whole prayer. And she actually prayed for me in the middle of the prayer, and please be with the speaker who's here today. Please bless Pastor Dave Edgren as he speaks to us. And then she finished her prayer and she said, Amen. And at the door, as she was coming out, I just said to her, thank you so much for your prayer this morning. It gave me the courage to say what God would put on my heart to say today. You really have a gift for prayer. And she just stood there and looked at me and she said, I said, "Thank you." And then she left, and I came back a year later, and she said to me, "Do you remember what you said last time you were here?" And I said, um, she said, "You thanked me for my prayer." And I said, "Oh yeah, yeah, thank you for your prayer because," and I still remember it, it was a very special prayer. And she said, "You said that I had the gift of prayer." And I said, "Well, you certainly do." And she said, Well, before that, I would always say no whenever they asked me to pray, and I would only say yes once a year. And that was the time I said yes for this last year. She said, but now I say yes every time. And I didn't even mean to have that impact on her. I just said what I felt her spiritual gift had done for my ministry that day, and I thanked her for it. And not only thanked her for what she did, but then identified it as a spiritual gift. And if you can speak that into other people's lives around you, "Thank you for the way you came up and greeted me today. You have the gift of—" What's that called? Hospitality. Or, "Thank you for the way that you were so generous, in the way that you cared for that other child. I saw you take that family home for lunch. You really have a gift of generosity." Or, "Thank you for the way you said the prayer. Thank you for your music." Or, "Thank you for leading in the lesson this morning." Thank people for everything, but then find the gift that goes with that and identify that gift in their life. Life because it helps them to own it. And when we know our gifts, we become extremely effective in these two areas. Worship also is— there's gifts in there, of course, but these are the two that seem to be understaffed often because we just see it as kind of, I do it if I have to or when I can or whatever. But if you know your gift is in that area, you'll stand out. Um, one of the things you can have to have a, a strong nurture environment in your Sabbath school group is to actually have somebody— some churches call it a nurture elder or a nurture leader— have someone in that Sabbath school that their goal is just to ask the questions. How was your week? And to remember— some people are really good at just remembering, other people take notes. I would have to take notes to say, last week you said your brother was sick. How's he feeling this week? And to keep that nurture as structured as the lesson is, as effective, because it's as much of a ministry in Sabbath school as the lesson study is, and very few people would come to lead out in the lesson without preparing ahead of time. But we'll often wing the nurture section and just say, "Oh, let's just go around the circle and say what's happened this week." And most of the time when we do that, we're just thinking about what we're gonna say when it gets to us, where if we have one person who's focused on the nurture, they will actually develop the nurture that's happening in that community. Then outreach, you can do the same thing with outreach, have one person who's in charge of the outreach. So that your small group can be— or your Sabbath school group can be committed to the soup kitchen, can be committed to playgroup, can be committed to running a stall at the local market, can be committed to painting houses for the poor. Anything, any outreach that your Sabbath school could say, "What are we doing this week? Okay, we're gonna go out and do this," or they know, "We always do this, that's our focus." And then they could say, "How is our outreach going?" And then the final one is— final focus of Sabbath school is global mission. So this Sabbath school that, um, had decided they wanted to have more time for these first two, so they canceled prelims. After they'd been doing that for 5 years, I came and ran this Sabbath school workshop for them, and I said, so, um, I said, "What do you think after you've heard all 4 of those things? Where do you see your strengths?" And they identified them, it was just obvious when you looked at these 2 and then looked at what they'd said. And I said, "Where do you see your weaknesses?" And one of them said, "You know, I just realized that I haven't seen a Mission Spotlight in 5 years. We've never— we don't watch them because we don't have prelims." And he said, "And so I suppose that would mean probably our—" I said, our mission offering on 13th Sabbath is down. And the treasurer's nodding his head, yeah, our mission offering has been going down steadily. And I said, maybe it's just because nobody knows or has a passion for what it's for. He's like, yeah. And so I said, so what could you do to fix that? And I was thinking, you know, have prelims. And this one guy said, we could put a TV up in the cafe and we could just show the Mission Spotlight on a loop. And then when people come in early to Sabbath school, and when they're standing there between Sabbath school and church, they can watch the Mission Spotlight. And I said, that's a brilliant idea. And so every week you just change what's showing on the loop, and then people would get the stories. And then they also— so they noticed they had no Global Mission focus at all at their church, and their outreach as well was very much focused on just, hey, who's doing what this weekend? Oh yeah, we'll come out and help you with that tomorrow. It was kind of just off the cuff, it was random. Um, then another church I went to, um, this one was a Warrnambool church. This was just recently, and I got so excited because when I asked them to list the things that are going well, the things that they're proud of in their Sabbath school, the first guy, he just, he smiled and he said, "I love this, the Mission Spotlight DVDs that we watch." He said, "I just love those stories." I said, "Oh, so you watch those a lot, do you?" And he goes, "Well, we watch one every week." And I said, "Oh, really?" And I said, "Don't you repeat them?" He said, "Yeah, but sometimes we find other ones about that part of the world and we watch one of those, but we always focus on that part of the world." And he said, "It's just, yeah, I just love that. I love seeing the big picture of our church all around the world." I said, "Okay, anyone else? What are you proud of about your Sabbath school? What do you enjoy?" And this lady said, "Oh, you know what we did with the youth this last week? It was Mother's Day last Sunday, and on Sabbath we made all these little cards and we just did took them out and it just said, "Happy Mother's Day, you're appreciated, from the Warrnambool Seventh-day Adventist Church." And she said, "We just went out for Sabbath school time, we just walked the streets and we gave it to anyone who looked old enough to be a mom." And I said, "How did that go?" And she said, "Oh, people were thanking us and some ladies even cried, and a couple ladies asked us to stop and pray for them." And I said, "Oh, that's fantastic." And I'm thinking to myself, okay, the first guy said Global Mission, then the next lady, now she's just said outreach. And then I said, "Anyone else? Is there anything else that you're proud of about your Sabbath school?" And a few people said the discussion and, you know, and the Bible study. And then one guy said, the one thing I really like, he said, I run the junior Sabbath school. He said, I love hearing when the kids come in, and sometimes they come, you know, they don't all come at the same time, so I kind of just keep the ball rolling until the group's big enough. So I ask them, you know, how was your week and stuff? And he said, they tell me the most amazing stories about what happened to them that week. And I'm able to call them during the week if they're struggling with something because of what they told me in that prelim time. And he said, it's like, I don't even mean to have those conversations, but because they don't come on time, I get to have all this amazing one-on-one conversations with the kids. I'm thinking, so he's got nurture happening. And I said to them, okay guys, this is amazing, but do you guys actually study the Bible in Sabbath school? And they all started laughing. Oh, of course we study the Bible. And then I shared this with them. And what, what was so amazing is nearly every church I go to, and when I do this workshop, if you go through the categories, you can find the strength of the church really, really quickly. And obviously the strength of your church is in Bible study. You've got Bible study, discussion, discussion, Bible study. And then the secondary skill of your church is in nurture. You've got parent time, you've got breakfast. Eating together is one of the strongest factors in showing a church, a healthy nurturing church. And the social kapa. And this actually goes with the Bible study at this age group, the craft and singing. And so does that, Bible study. So you've got— these are your two strengths where you're really shining. It doesn't mean you're not doing the other things, it just means when you think of your Sabbath school and where things are really working well, this is where you're excelling. But after this church at Warrnambool told me these things, I said to them, "So tell me, on Sabbath, what time, like, is it when the majority of the people get there? Do they mainly get there for church, or how many of them would be there already at Sabbath school?" And they sat there and they thought about it for a little bit, and then the head elder said, "Oh, I reckon probably 95% of people are there from the beginning of Sabbath school." And I said, "Wow, that's not normal. It's not normal." And the reason why was somehow, on accident, they had maintained all 4 categories of what Sabbath school is supposed to be about. So people wanted to come to Sabbath school because they were being nurtured. They wanted to come and involved— come because they knew if they didn't, they'd miss out on the outreach stuff. And they wanted to come wanted to come because they could find out what their church was doing globally, and they wanted to come because they were studying the Bible. There's— everybody is ministered to in different ways, and we all speak different languages, not only emotionally, you know, the emotional love language, but we speak different spiritual languages. And some of us are very study-oriented, some of us are extremely relationship-oriented, some of others— us are service-oriented. And if it doesn't have practical hands-on it, then I'm not going to be there. And there's some people that of many people who are walking out of our churches because— not because our churches aren't doing anything for the community, but because we don't talk about it anymore. These people don't know we're doing it. And so they say, "Oh, that church doesn't do anything for the community." Where if we were just talking about it in Sabbath school, which we can do just by sharing our story in our small group, or once in a while having a special story come up the front and be part of the prelims, so we hear these things that are happening. And then the global vision as well. Some of us are very— big vision-minded, and they need to hear that big picture story. So before we go to the next section, do you guys have any questions about these 4 things or any comments that you wanna make?

Yes.

Okay, it's a good question. So what is Every quarter, we have— yep, yep, yep. And there you can read the story to them, and they get the idea of little Johnny or whoever from a different part of the world. Yep. That's when they're old enough to understand that story. That's brilliant. And my wife actually is the junior leader. What is it now? It's July. She's no longer the junior leader. She was the junior leader for the last year, and she read the mission the Russian story every week to the kids because they actually like it. And she gets them to read it. They pass it along and they read a paragraph each. But anyway, so what could we do? What would you do to be able to share a different part of the world with the beginner's kindergarten-aged mindset? Does anyone have any ideas what you could do? Dress-ups? That's a brilliant one. Yep. You're probably taking notes in your mind. Dress-ups. So from that culture, so you get some things. Anything else you can think of? Yeah. Yep. And then you'd send it to that part of the world. So to do that, you have to talk to the kids about what those kids are going to want in a Christmas box. Why? Why are they gonna want that instead of, you know, a One Direction t-shirt? You know, what are they gonna want? And you're gonna have to— the kids are gonna have to get a little bit of— I mean, they are little, but they still can get an idea that in the different parts of the world, people live differently. You could still show them videos, 'cause kids are pretty good at watching TV. At least mine are. Anyone else? Any other ideas of what you could do to make the mission story or the mission focus for the quarter come alive to 3-year-olds and younger. Okay. Yep, yep, that's a good one. Another one you can do which is more of an experience that they identify with Sabbath school, but it is— you could focus on 13th Sabbath. You know, sometimes many churches the kids come up and do something in big church for the grown-ups. You could have them practice something that they have to— maybe all dressed up as different characters from that culture, but some way that they are representing that culture on 13th Sabbath. Any other questions? Yes, Marion.

I was just going to say, with the kids, I remember in South Africa growing up, we used to sing "The Missionary Plane Goes Flying," all those songs, which I know may be out of fashion, but I knew what missions was, you know, and you had a strong sense of people going out and doing stuff and things happening, and it was fun and exciting. You put your pennies in and things zoomed around, and yeah, there are things—

Just when you said you put your pennies in, I remember the things where the pennies roll down. What if you had one that was the right size that you could drop the 13th Sabbath poster Do they still do a poster from that part of the world? I guess you could print one at whatever size you wanted, but what if you could put a picture with a backdrop of that part of the world behind where the money rolls down, and so they could, maybe with little faces, I don't know, somebody creative out there in the digital world. That's an idea. I'll have to throw that idea at Julie. She likes new ideas.

—before all of those sorts of things happen. Like, what would be a size that's too big and what's a good ideal? Like, I'm wondering if adults have a tool. If that's getting it to a size where it could almost break down into a couple of groups or— I don't know what it's not. Is there no magic number?

Well, the magic number is 12 if you're Jesus. And 11 if you're Jesus. Yeah, somewhere around 11 or 12 groups start to fragment and they— It's really hard, and for years people have been saying to divide, you know, divide your small group, but that's so hard to do because if you've really been nurturing each other and doing outreach together, you love each other and you're really well bonded. So I really like the image of plant because a plant is something a tree does, or a plant does quite naturally, it just drops a seed. And if a couple people from the small group from your Sabbath school say, 'Hey, we need to start another group. Who wants to help us start another group?' 2 or 3 people leaving and starting a new group will give room for that group to grow, obviously, but the other one to add a couple members. It's— I've just noticed it's, it's a practical impossibility for most groups to split in half because they, they're like a family. Um, but to plant something, to plant not just a church but just to plant another Sabbath school class, is quite possible because there's often somebody in your group or 2 people that have a real passion to see that happen. And when you start small, then you can invite new people, and it allows instant, quite quick growth if you plant something brand new. Any other questions? So anyway, yeah, I would say if you start getting to 8 or 9, be thinking about it, you know, talking about every once in a while, wouldn't it be great to have another Sabbath school? If there's anybody with a heart for that, just let us know and And just keep nurturing that until somebody says yes. But once you get to about, in my experience, about 15, people just go quiet. They just sit. And then you get the outgoing, you know, the external, the extroverts talk and the rest of the people are like, "I don't want to talk in front of this many people." And that's perfectly normal. So shrinking the group size creates conversation. Yeah, that's— it's a great hiding spot. It's a great place to hide if you don't want to have to be forced to say something. If you can find a big group— and you can see those people at camp meeting. They go around and they see a cluster, cluster, cluster, a group listening to one person talking. Oh, and they go and sit down because then they can just be part of it. And that's okay. But discussion, we know environments where people are having discussion and are nurturing each other grow. That's where real Bible study— Bible study isn't, "I'll tell you what I know and then we'll both know it." Bible study is, "I'll tell you what I've been thinking, you tell me what you've been thinking, and we'll both grow." And so, if we can do that more and more and more, we also create a healthier church because they're not asking for the answers, they're asking for friends, they're asking for a community to grow towards Christ. In. Any other questions? Jeremy's brought out the great silencer. I can repeat the questions. I'll repeat the questions if they ask anymore.

Sabbath— lots of churches don't focus on the 13th Sabbath anymore.

How can we sort of revive that? Yeah, the 13th Sabbath idea. The reason why I think largely why most churches have stopped thinking about or incorporating it into it, making it a special Sabbath, is because they haven't recognized that it's actually part of a healthy small group environment where if your kids are off in another place doing Sabbath school, they're having a separate small group meeting. That's already happening. So some people say, oh, we don't do small groups at our church. Actually, nearly every church does, unless you are all together for the whole of Sabbath school. You've got all these small groups running that are typically age-based and we don't know very much about what's happening out there. So 13th Sabbath is a time when we come together, and just like when you nurture at the beginning of your Sabbath school class every week, 13th Sabbath is a corporate nurturing time when you get to hear the stories from the kindergarteners, from the primary, from the adults, from the youth, what's been happening in Sabbath school and how is— how have they been focusing on mission, because that's the 13th Sabbath topic. But We can then hear the story, and sometimes it becomes something that churches say, "Well, maybe we'll do a kind of reporting idea from the other Sabbath schools twice a quarter, so that once a quarter it's on mission, and the other quarter it's about— the other time during the quarter is about one of the other things." We say, "Maybe this quarter we'd like you to talk about Bible study in primary, or we'd like you to talk about how the nurture is going in youth, or what outreach you're doing in juniors." But just knowing that 13th Sabbath is an important integral part of creating a family church, an environment where it's, it's the nurturing time for the whole family, where they all come together and hear that collective story of what's been happening in their church. Those testimonial times are really, really important, and they'll strengthen your church, and, and that will grow your church as well. A lot of churches have been picking up the slack for Sabbath school. They've been doing testimonial times, and Ellen White even says, one of my favorite quotes, no, churches should not expect a sermon every Sabbath, but should be about the— I can't use her language, but basically should be telling the story of what's happened through them by the Spirit of God during the week, because we should have plenty of stories, testimonies that are happening. And if we recognize that it's so important that I hear your testimony and you hear mine, we'll dedicate a service to that once a month where we'll tell our stories. That's a strengthener, that bonds a church. You think about what families do naturally. You come to the end of the day, you sit around a table, and somebody says, "So, what'd you do today?" And you know, the kids all say the same thing— nothing. Um, but then somebody will start telling about something that happened, and some— oh yeah, you know what happened to me? Guess what she said? And guess what happened? And they tell the story, and suddenly every— all the little things that happened become one family, and they hear the story of that family for the day. And the more time we tell the story of our family, that's what has— what's happened to our family this week, the stronger— well, the more of a family will become. So it is really important to tell testimonies in Sabbath during church. I think probably the testimonies is in the church service time, um, what it should focus on is more of the evangelistic testimonies of conversations I've had with people who, you know, that I've seen come closer to God. But in Sabbath school, it's focused in those areas of sharing how our Sabbath school has done, you know, how these three, three or four things are going in Sabbath school. One thing that I like to do, which I was telling Craig earlier today at tea, is when I'm preaching at a church that I don't typically go to because I'm visiting as a Sabbath school director, and I have been there in time for Sabbath school, I try really, really hard to find something in Sabbath school that I can mention in church and say, "Oh, like in Sabbath school when so-and-so said da-da-da-da-da, that was brilliant. Oh, if you missed that, you really missed out. Sabbath school is awesome." And just— and then just keep going on with the church service and just kind of almost like it's like a— I didn't even mean to say that, it's just Sabbath school is so awesome, it's always on my mind. And then you just move on and just kind of keep dropping these little hints to people. If you miss Sabbath School, you pretty much miss church. And then hopefully it'll start motivating those people who think that Sabbath School is outdated or doesn't meet their needs anymore, or Sabbath School's lost its vision, so I've lost interest in it. If we can let them know Sabbath School actually has recaptured its vision and we're passionate about these 4 things, and, and you share those with the church and say, come back to Sabbath School, um, Probably a personal invitation is the best way to get them to come back, but share with them that Sabbath school has a mission. Anyone else, any questions before I ask the final question? Yeah, Sabbath school basically is because Sabbath school was the foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, when we came together and studied our Bible together, it was also the time when we created our community. And we have in the Seventh-day Adventist Church something that doesn't exist in any other church. There's some churches trying to imitate it now who are saying, "How can we structure family worship?" They, they, they don't have an understanding. They do— the kids come and the adults come at the same time, and the kids go to Sunday school and the adults come to the sermon, they come to church, and then that's 1 hour long, and then when that's over, they all leave, and the kids don't come to church. Where in the Adventist Church, our kids sit next to us at church every week. And the other side of that coin, we grown-ups are going to Sabbath school every week, we're still going to Sunday school. So that two things are happening: we as adults are still studying our Bible ourselves, we're not just letting somebody up the front tell us what they studied this week. And the second thing is our kids are experiencing an adult level of communication about the Bible, because it's amazing what actually goes in. In the— you think, oh, they're way too young for this. I remember one Sabbath— he's up there running the camera right now, my 15-year-old son— one Sabbath when he was about 7, he was sitting kneeling facing the opposite way from the preacher because he was drawing something on a piece of paper. And the preacher finished his sermon, and there was time for the closing hymn, you know, and he Finished with whatever his line was for the end of the sermon and then went to sit down, and as the musicians were walking up, Cyrus was just there and he just said, "That was a good sermon." He just kept drawing. He had been listening in his own way to the whole sermon. And our kids have that experience of coming to church, of as a family worshiping together, and also they understand that we still value Sabbath school. We still value Bible study because we're doing it too. So it tells our kids a world of information when we come to Sabbath school and when we're committed to Sabbath school, but also when we get excited about it, when we talk about our Sabbath school and how amazing it is. Or on a Wednesday when we're out with our Sabbath school because that's when we're doing our mission project, or, or that's when we're getting our, our shoeboxes ready to send off to Africa. You know, that we're doing stuff together as a Sabbath school group because they're part of our church family. And so, yeah, our— who we are as a church, our identity, is wrapped up in those four things. And some churches are managing to do those four things outside of a Sabbath school environment, but Sabbath school is a natural environment where these four things are meant to be the foundation of what happens at church. And the church service from 11 to 12 should be kind of like icing on the cake. It should be the extra thing that you go, "Oh, wasn't it nice to get that little bit of extra, that charge for the week?" Rather than church being the only spiritual food we get during the week and we say, "Oh, that didn't really do anything for me today," because we were looking for so much more. And most of the time we were just looking for Sabbath school. We were looking for a good discussion where we felt included and loved and like we had a mission. Okay, let me ask you, each group, what one thing would you like to focus on? And I'd like you to not so much focus to, say, one of these areas, but what one application of one of these four areas would you like to see a renewed focus on, or a new focus on, in your Sabbath school? We can only really focus and work on one thing at a time. So just saying, "Oh, we're going to do all 4 of those next Sabbath," is very difficult. But saying, "We're going to start focusing on, you know, we're going to have an outreach project," or, "We're going to just make sure we're doing," you know, whatever it is for Global Mission. What about in the adult Sabbath school?

Outreach?

And any ideas of how you might do that? Yep, that's good, that's good. Okay, so outreach, fantastic.

Youth? I think for a long time we've talked about outreach as being practical, but never actually come up with anything.

Well, I thought it was really interesting that you said up here the stuff that really works in our discussion is when we talk about practical stuff. Yeah, so that's because you're ready to go do it. You're ready. They're saying, give us, give us something to do. So yep, outreach over here too.

That—

you've just said something that's so important, is We don't have to start new things to be able to do outreach. There are so many things already happening. There's soup kitchens that are run, there's fantastic homeless shelters that need volunteers for an hour or 2 hours a week, there's Red Cross donation places that need someone to sit there with. There's all different kinds of outreach things that we can be involved in. And if we can think bigger than just the borders of our own church and expand, like Jabez's prayer, expand my territories so that And you kind of recognize, actually, God is at work in wonderful and ridiculous places. And we can, just by being present, somebody's going to ask you, "Who are you and why are you here?" And you can say, "Well, my name's Dave, and I'm here because my Sabbath school really is pushing us to get out into outreach, and actually now I am here because I love it." And they say, "Sabbath school? What's Sabbath school?" And you say, "Oh," and you tell them. So often, and I, as having a little bit of an evangelistic background, I'm ashamed sometimes to say this, but so often we give people answers to questions they're not asking. We have answers, we have lots of great answers, and so we're like, "Let's just get them in a room and we'll throw so many answers at them that they'll go, 'You're amazing. We have to join you because we could never remember all that.'" And so they just tick all the boxes and say, "Yep, all 28, that's me." And then they say, "I could never remember it all." Where if instead we waited for people to ask the questions, "Why? Why are you doing this for me? You know, you've shown up every week, and you, the whole time that I've been recuperating from this surgery, you bring a bowl of soup every Thursday, and somebody else brings it on Wednesday, and you know, why is it that you keep doing this?" And you say, "Well, because..." And you can tell them your testimony. And once they ask, they're listening. Waiting for people to ask questions is fantastic, but also recognizing there is heaps of outreach happening right around here, and you could easily find something that you could become involved in, and then take it as an idea back to your Sabbath school class. If as a group you say, "This is our passion, this is our mission, this is where we're going to put our energy," the combined energy of your whole group going to that ministry and blessing them by being involved will have an impact. And they'll say, wow, when those Adventists showed up, they really changed the way we, you know, they really made it possible to do more. We could take the next step because of them. And if you see a need in a community that's not being met by somebody, by all means start something new. But just being involved in outreach is the most important thing. And I mean, even Jesus said that when he said, you know, when you get to heaven and they say, when, when did we see you hungry? When did we see you naked? When did we? And he says, when you did it for those people that nobody else saw when you saw them and did that? That was me. Primary, juniors? Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I like the idea too of taking it from that angle of telling those stories about other kids in that environment, which the mission lesson, the lesson mission story thing does well, but you can also find other great stories in that part of the world. That demonstrate what kids and how kids are involved. And also how kids are— well, you don't want to tell the horror stories of the really bad things that happens to kids. If you can show a story about a kid who's suffering in an environment and then say we can help them by, you know, this, then yeah, we can— it's worth doing. And it also creates a love for global mission in the kids that will last throughout the rest of their earthly experience. Begin the garden.

Yep.

Yep. Okay, so you— with this family nurture, you've already got that parent time that you can use as a platform for it, so you don't have to create a new environment. You can just, um, yeah, I know you can think about it, but be more intentional with what you're doing to minister to them. There's great programs out there if you want to extend it to having a night during the week for like 6 weeks, you can have Raising Boys. It's a great series. That's been a while ago that was made, but that was a great DVD series by James Dobson that was just focusing on the unique needs of boys, and they had a workbook that went with it. There's numerous ones like that: Raising Families, Being a Parent in the 21st Century. You know, if you go to Word or Kurung, or maybe call your ABC and find out if they have anything like that, But there's lots of specialized— this is one thing that it's both a blessing and a curse in America, in the churches, not just in the Adventist Church, but it is true in the Adventist Church as well, is specialized ministries. There's enough Christians in America that you can decide that your ministry is going to be 13 to 15-year-olds, and you're going to just produce resources and run training seminars for that age group, and you can make a living doing that. Or if you tried to do that in Australia, you, you'd need to diversify, you need other things because there's just not enough audiences to preach that to. But because of that, there's some amazing specialists who've created amazing resources for just about every bracket of parenting and of teaching to children. And some of it just needs you to go through it carefully with a theological brush, you know, just looking to see, is it Is it leaning one way or another? And sometimes you can ask your pastor to do that or your conference children's director. You've got Darren Pratt, he'll do an awesome job. Ask Darren. I didn't even think of that. Ask Darren, "What can we do for the families in our church?" Because he's got too many ideas. Put him to work for you. Okay, any other questions? I just realized I didn't circle your guys's. That might make you feel bad. Circle yours too. There we go. Let's pray together. Dear Lord, we thank you for this Sabbath day. We thank you also for giving us Sabbath School. It's a, it's a structure, it's a vehicle, it's already here, and it's already able to be so much more. And we just ask you to, to help us, Lord, as we have committed to just focusing on one new thing We see how fantastic things are going in our nurturing and in our Bible study, and that our church is a healthy place because we care about each other and we nurture each other on a regular basis. And it's also a spiritually healthy place theologically because we have discussion and we're talking and we're not bottling up our thoughts, but we're able to share them and feel safe enough to do that because of the nurture that's happening. Help us as we now invite people to come to this amazingly wonderful place. Help us to, in our outreach, to be able to share the story of who we are through our actions, so that as we help the poor and as we feed people and clothe people and do projects to help the community grow and become a happier, healthier place, that they'll, they'll recognize through our story, that we're doing that because of you and your life in us. And we ask that you would help us to, as we prepare for them to come into this place, that you would make this a place of safety and refuge for them so that they could grow to know you through us and with us. In your name, amen.