The opening session of ABHE happened Thursday afternoon. The theme of the conference is “Moving in step with the Spirit and the Church.” All of the speakers are from churches who have joined the role of biblical higher education.
The first speaker was Wayne Cordiero of New Hope Christian Fellowship, Honolulu, Hawaii. He started the Pacific Rim Christian College.http://www.enewhope.org/aboutus/pastorwayne/
This is one of the fastest growing churches in America, with satellite campuses around the world. Over 80 churches have been planted by this church. Relevance magazine named the church one of the top 5 churches in church growth, church size, influence on other churches, and church innovation. George Barna said that Hawaii was one of the only states where evangelism numbers grew faster than the population. He has authored several books, including Leading On Empty. Above all, Wayne is a servant-leader.
You know I love the Bible colleges to leave Hawaii in order to fly 5,000 miles to stay in a hotel.
You never dim the light of your candle by lighting the candle of another. The church started on the big island and moved to Honolulu in 1995. They call themselves a “homeless” church, because of the economic needs in Hawaii. 1 acre of land outside the city limits is $2.5 million. To build the church that they would need would cost $110 million. Their monthly mortgage to do that would be $370,000 per month. They rent a high school with 1200 inside an auditorium and tents outside in tents. Collectively there are 21 services every weekend and 1500 volunteers to set up and tear down.
They own 6 shuttle busses running during services to get people where they need to go. It isn’t a lack of resources that kills churches, but a lack of resourcefulness.
Will this recession be remembered as the great recession or the recession that made us great? Recession times pulls away all the extra stuff and gets us back to “fighting weight.”
One woman showed up there thinking it was a craft fair, but accepted Christ at the end of the service.
Matthew 13 is the reason I’m here. “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
The New and the Old
Our greatest ministry will be in the next generation. 1500 people are leaving the ministry every month. In the next decade, 1/3 of the churches will have a leadership changeover. That’s 126,000 leaders that will change in the next 10 years. The baby boomer pastors are retiring. There is an attrition in the churches, because everything rises and falls on leadership. One denomination last year recorded zero conversions. Another denomination spent $369 million in the last 5 years and planted negative 21 churches (with those who closed). God is calling more leaders to churches (John 4, Luke 10; Matt 9).
Right now we are moving 66,000 miles an hour through space, which is faster than the spin cycle on a washing machine. Job says we’re like a sigh, the Psalmist like a breath, James says we’re like a vapor.
God could have had us born at any time he wanted. But instead, he has taken us and placed us right here, almost at the end of time. We are running anchor in the relay of the saints. It’s a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. God has asked us to be part of training that 126,000 new leaders for the next 10 years. God believes in us, so we have to think carefully about our role.
The great theologian Dr. Seuss talked about how important we are: “If you had never been born”
You are so important to God’s plan, but we forget about it and miss the very reason we exist. One day we will stand before the throne of God, and he will ask how many did you bring with you? What will you talk about? The buildings, the choir, the programs? Our reason is to evangelize those on a course to hell, turn them around, disciple them, and send them into the harvest.
A friend turned in a college term paper with the comments: great bibliography, stellar illustrations, excellent grammar. Grade: F. Wrong assignment. In the end, God will not hold you accountable for what you have done as much as he will hold you accountable for how much you have done that he has asked you to do. This is why the mission statement of a Bible college is so important.
Your heart should pound with the most compelling vision you can arrange, and you set your sights accordingly. In the movie Terminator, someone from the future comes back to alter history by killing a lady and her son. Another person comes back from the future to protect that person who will be born. In our schools are people like that, who are going to change history. They have the potential to do great things. The Enemy is doing anything possible to distract them from their call, give them head knowledge without heart knowledge, and to keep them from obeying. God is using us to protect them, make sure that they get what they need to be successful.
Russell Christof was walking down a supermarket aisle one day and he saw his picture on the Folgers Coffee can. Ten years earlier, he had gone in for a preliminary photo shoot. They took some pictures but never called him back. They had been using his picture for 10 years. He sued and the court awarded him $15.3 million. It pays to recognize who you are!
Something New . . .
A new starting point: You are the shapers of tomorrow’s leaders because you are teachers and mentors. You hold in your hands the DNA of tomorrow’s leaders. Tomorrow’s leaders will become just like you. There is a deep tendency to respond or make decisions according to the way you have been mentored. Even in four years, there is a lot that we can inculcate and contribute to them. If we do it wrongly, we will be passing on a mutated baton for the future.
You and I must remember that we may teach what we know, but ultimately we will reproduce what we are. If we want our students and disciples to be devoted to God, we must be devoted to God. If we want our students to love their spouses, we must love our spouses. If we want our students to be genuine life-long learners, we must be genuine life-long learners. Students don’t need more brains, they need more motivation. They will only receive motivation from sources that are credible.
If your relative needed a life-saving operation and your parents said they would pay for it if you made straight A’s, every student would make straight A’s. They just need motivation.
The first day of Bible college, having been a Christian only 3 months, he cut his hair and went to Eugene Bible College with a paperback New Testament. He sat down for a devotion in class, and the teacher asked him to turn to Jeremiah. He turned around and said, “Who is Jeremiah.” A student said, “In your Bible, stupid.” So he looked in the NT, but couldn’t find it. So he felt like quitting. The second class was taught by a lady who taught Old Testament History and asked the class to share what their dreams were with fellow students. She assigned them to write down what their dream was. He wrote his and turned it in. When he got the paper back, her comments said, “I noticed from your comments that the hand of God is on your life. You keep walking strongly. We are so honored that you are here. The kingdom of God has been waiting for you.” He read it a dozen times before he went to bed that night. That gave him enough purpose in his life to continue with school and finish it well. Whatever we want them to be, we have to become. No one wants an heirloom that is oak veneer on pressed board. You need to be oak all the way to the core if you are going to pass down to another generation. They need their motivation from credible sources.
If you want to walk through this life and leave the footprints of Jesus behind, then who has to be in you all the way to the core? It has to be the light of Christ. And all you do is walk. You don’t leave your footprints behind, you leave his.
A new learning style: We used to learn through our brains. Now students learn through their thumbs. Email, phone calls, or text messages. Right now in America, there are 4.1 billion text messages sent every day. This is the way we communicate today. For us not to harness and use that is to miss something. As fishers of men, we don’t start at our starting point, we start at their starting point. Then we redeem it in such a way that they can understand.
There is so much new technology that we have to start learning again. Twenty percent of brand new knowledge enters the workforce every year. If you are in computers, there’s 100% new knowledge every 18 months. If we don’t start learning again, then you are intellectually instinct in 5 years. Those who have stopped learning have become very territorial. They are afraid of new people coming in and taking their job. So start learning again. Learn something new this year. If we are telling our students to learn, then we must be learners also. Learn a new computer program.
Ever since the beginning of human existence, the key to human survival has been to do things just like your ancestors did. For instance, farming isn’t something that was reinvented every five years. If you messed up, you would have a crop failure. So you did it exactly like earlier generations. The hay baler was invented in 1850 and it’s basically the same now. The pneumatic nail gun was only invented in 1990. For hundreds of years before that, people drove a nail the same way. It can be devastating to education when we refuse to change. It leads to extinction if we fail to change. Technology and science are moving forward.
“May you stay in one place the rest of your life” is the ultimate curse for a Bedouin group.
What is old . . .
The old time gospel is the unchangeable truth. People are not tired of the gospel, they are just tired of tired presentations of the gospel. Isaiah 40:8.
There is a trend in some colleges to dilute the gospel. But you have to hang on to the word of God. God does not honor delivery systems, curricula, or programs. He honors His Word. If we don’t have the hand of God in our work, we are impoverished. Looking at revivals in different countries, you can see God with his hand on certain institutions at points in time and then moved to elsewhere. Why does one place give audience to the hand of God and the other ceases to experience it? It comes down to whether we are bringing delight to Jesus Christ. As we are learning so many new things, we are doing it for an audience of one.
At New Hope Church, if they have to move to a location where everyone can come together at one point, they plan months or years in advance. So they then found out on short notice that they weren’t going to be able to have church. The only place they could go is an outdoor park. Rain is a concern with sound and lights and things like that. So they were praying and fasting that there wouldn’t be rain at this service they were about to have. Their Saturday night / Sunday services were coming. It was drizzling on Saturday at noon and raining by Saturday at 5:00 pm. So they prayed constantly not to have rain. After the evening service with rain, they prayed more that there wouldn’t be rain. The next morning it was pouring. He continued to pray and it continued to rain. People were still worshipping. The closest he came to hearing God’s voice was in the midst of that rain say, “You’re praying for the absence of rain, but you aren’t praying for my attendance today. You are more concerned about the absence of problems than you are about the presence of God. I could stop the rain and bring the sun out, but without my presence, this would be a barren dessert. Or I can start a revival in the midst of the rain.”
Instead of praying for the absence of problems, pray for the presence of God. We are called to be anchor saints, to mentor these young John Wesley’s, Billy Graham’s, and other workers. They don’t need more brains, they need more motivation from credible sources because they can see what’s in our core. If we reproduce what we are, it will be a natural thing. When God sees the old-time gospel, his presence will be attending to our colleges, and we will see what God can do. There’s nothing greater than that. Wait, watch, and you will see.
I thought this message was very challenging to the issue of staying relevant and sincere in our teaching of students. They are looking through the surface and will see what is in our hearts and in our minds.
What are your responses? Feel free to comment on the blog or write back to this email.
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