West Point of Evangelism, trip report #2

Things went really fast on Monday afternoon. I gave a presentation on Ellen White as Model Evangelist so I was able to make it to only one other seminar on friendship evangelism by Ed Keyes (and learned about some new materials I am going to try out in January for our prayer meeting series). The thesis of my presentation is that Ellen White is the greatest evangelist in the history of our church. Her passion for evangelism was born from her own personal relationship with Christ--especially her conversion. She knew from practical experience what worked (and what did not). While we tend to not think of her as an evangelist, she held evangelist meetings, spoke to temperance groups, and was known for what we would today refer to as "friendship evangelism" (she made friends with people around her and introduced them to Christ).

On Tuesday morning I gave two additional presentatinos on what every Adventist should know about Ellen White and how to interpret her writings (the room was packed with about 50 individuals). For me this shows just how much interest there is out there about Ellen White. One of the things that struck me as I listened to the questions is that we need a new booklet similar to Roger Coon's "A Gift of Light" to introduce new members to the prophetic gift in our church.

For lunch on Tuesday we were hosted by the Pacifc Union Conference for an elegant banquet. I had the good fortunate to sit next to some people who had lived in Montrose so I thought that was really providential.

On Tuesday afternoon I caught another seminar about evangelistic preaching. It was similar to a course I had on the topic--if I were to summarize it in a sentence: be polite and use common sense!

I really feel like I earned my keep for this seminar series because Wednesday morning I gave one final presentation about Ellen White. We wrapped up with a challenge from Lonnie Melashanko to evangelize. He used some of the latest Barna statistics to show that we as Christians are not reaching the 18-35 demographic. At the very end we stood in a circle as we concluded the conference with prayer and the song "Side by Side We Stand."