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Every week in Sabbath School we focus on mission and we often focus on the 13th Sabbath Offering
projects and these are exciting. But really they're just a fraction of the breadth of
Adventist Mission work that is taking place around the world. There are so many exciting
things happening and if it wasn't for your mission offerings each week we wouldn't
be able to see the wonderful things happening in education, hospitals, clinics, church planting‚
so much more. And so today we want to share with you an exciting story about urban mission.
You know the challenges of the cities is just growing every day. The vast majority of
people now live in cities and we as Adventists have traditionally tended to focus more on
the rural areas, in villages and on islands. But now as we focus on the cities we need to look
at increasing ways that we can touch people’s lives for Jesus. So I know you'll enjoy
the story of one pastor in Ohio, in North America and we will see how he is touching
lives by following the method of Jesus of mingling, showing sympathy, ministering to needs,
winning confidence and bidding people to follow Jesus.
Kevin: "I was asked to come in the city of Cleveland
and plant a church and I was told that you need to live in the community if you are going
to plant a church. Many pastors don't even live in communities where their churches are.
So I live less than a mile from this place. I live in the community, I shop and walk the
streets and get engaged in this community. People know me, and what we do here won't
work everywhere, I know that. You can't take and replicate this in New York City or
in Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the people that I minister to here would not fit in a traditional,
rural, small town Adventist church. These people are low education, low income, been
on social services all their lives and you are not going to turn them into a middle class,
educated Seventh-day Adventist. The people that I'm ministering to don't get it and
they won't get it just because I come in and give a health seminar or an evangelist campaign.
They need me to walk along side of them. But I think that what we're doing here,
at least in Cleveland and in the area that I'm familiar with, is reproducible and it
is effective. Now as far as baptisms and all of that, this is a long term ministry.
Have we gotten baptisms? Absolutely. I've gotten over the last four years of doing this, about
a dozen baptisms, that where people have come to me and said I want to be a part of this.
Eric is a great example of a person who came in off the streets. A person who was an alcoholic,
a destitute, who was homeless, and he was impacted by our compassion, not by our theological acumen.
And today he is just an amazing example of what can happen if you spend some time
and you care about these people."
Kevin: "I was in church one day during the week, working
on some things and I noticed, it was in the winter, there were some people out front at
the bus stop. And I asked them if they wanted to come in for a hot drink and a pastry because
I had some leftover pastries, and that's how the breakfast ministry started about two
and a half years ago. Was just simply inviting some cold people at the bus stop to come in
for some hot drink. From that we ended up with our breakfast ministry which is now four
days a week. We want to make it five. Today we had 35 people show up. Coming in we
serve them a hot breakfast. We try to serve a healthy breakfast. Saturdays we still
serve a community meal. On average we have about a thousand community members who walk
through the door of our church every month. Do people have a dependency on us because
of our services? Yes, to some extent. But they know us by name. When people come in
today for the food pantry and I'm walking around, people are calling me reverend,
or father or pastor, or whatever. They know who I am and they know what we are. They know
the name Seventh-day Adventist. They are not turned off by it. They are not offended by it.
They frequently take our literature. We give away cases of literature a month because
at our foyer we have this literature rack of all kinds of Seventh-day Adventist literature.
We give away all kinds of signs of the times magazines. People know us. They connect
the logo and the name and they're reading our materials. People are taking it because they
want it, not because we send it to their door and they throw it away. They're coming in and
reading our material. And the reason they're doing that is because they've got a relationship.
They put a face and flesh and bones to a name --Seventh-day Adventists. We have great reputation."
"We will be moving downstairs. I have a flyer up here in case any of you are interested.
We're starting Bible studies on Wednesday mornings after breakfast. It's open to everybody.
So we like to invite you to grab a flyer."
"You are not going to break into those communities, do a big event and then just drive out.
And if you've got a lot of people driving in, coming to that church, you will never make
the connections in the communities that we have done by being here, this ministry of presence.
And that's the mentality or the message of ministry of healing. You know Jesus'
method alone is that you have to walk along side these people and some of them for quite
a while, to build trust, confidence, so that they can listen to what you have to share."