This sermon-only transcript omits timestamps, worship music, announcements, and session logistics. YouTube’s automatic captions may contain errors.

Wow. Good morning. What a what a way to begin the morning. Uh I had the privilege of I wasn't here for the 7 a.m. devotion because we were having our own devotion on the tennis court. A lot of fellowshipping happening there. Um, so those of you that um want to be a little bit more athletic than the pickle ball players, welcome to We had a few of us right here. Um, if you want to join us, you're welcome to come out to the tennis court and play with us there. No, I I I I know I I I love pickle ball players. Some of my best friends are pickle ball players.

Yeah. No, I I tried playing pickle ball, but I I really couldn't get it. So, that's why I play tennis is because I can't play pickle ball. Um I'm grateful to be here with you again. I I love camp meeting. Um I love uh the time that we have here. What what a what better way to begin the morning than singing together, praising God together, worshiping God together in community. So, I'm grateful for all the hard work of the camp meeting committee, this the host churches, everyone who contributes, all of you who go into the kitchens and cook so that we can enjoy wonderful meals for lunch and for dinner. Thank you so much. Um because this is this is a this is a time of the year that I always look forward to whether I'm speaking or presenting or just attending. I I love it. And so, want to start by saying thank you to all of you.

So, we're talking about church, and I I love the church. There's a reason why I'm a pastor. It's not because of the, you know, the amazing pay that we get. It's because I have such love for for the community. And I grew up attending church. I I grew up in the Spencerville church in Maryland. Um, and so I remember my some of my first memories is attending Vespers on Friday nights, right? Um, we would out of that old blue um Adventist song book. Do any of you remember that one with the It's like a rainbow on the cover. Yeah. We would sing songs like Side by Side and uh Pass It On, He's able. Some of you are nodding, some of you have no idea what we're talking about.

Yeah. I I remember singing he's able and then my friends and I, we would change the words at the end, you know, he's able, he's able. I know he's able, but sometimes his name is Cain, you know. So, yeah. So, I we we had so much fun. I looked forward to going to church every week. Sabbath was like the best day because I got to see all my friends. Um we would after church, we would go out into what we called the forest. Later on, I visited and it was just a little bunch of tea trees, but I it seemed like a big forest back then. And we would play, you know, pretend being Voltron.

Any of you remember Voltron? Yeah. Um, you know, Rnado was always the the Black Lion because he was the oldest. Um, David David Shin, who's speaking tonight, uh, tonight, he he was the red lion because he was like second in command. Um, I was I was the green lion because I was always the smallest one. And nobody wanted to be the blue lion because the driver of the blue lion was a girl, right? So that was the everybody wanted to avoid. Um we we would have so much fun. Uh and then I remember pastor um came as our very first youth pastor and he tells I've talked to him since and he tells he shares that that was a very difficult um role for him because he had just come from Korea. His you know his English wasn't very good.

People would you know make fun of his his accent. But all I remember is that he was someone I looked up to. He was our He was our hungarako teacher, right? On Sundays, on Saturdays, Saturday nights, he would do different activities like a lock in. I remember vaguely, and my sister will have to correct me on this, vaguely attending a lock in, but I was only like eight or nine, so I must have been really young. And all I remember from the lockin is we watched an American tale with Vival the mouse and then I was so afraid about falling asleep because I was told the first person to fall asleep would get whipped cream on their face, right? So I just like was death deathly afraid of falling asleep. I think my parents came and picked me up at some point in the night because there was no way I was going to stay up the whole night. Uh so that was those were my memories and then and then we eventually moved to Northern California and a group of different

college students would come down from here from PUC and they would they would minister to us. They would lead the the Sabbath schools and the and the worship services. People like Danny an who is now in paradise, right? Um, and there was another guy, I think his name was James. Joe. Joe. Okay. Um, his name was Joe. He was a he was from the East Coast as well. He um was a gymnast. Do you remember when gymnastics in Adventist schools was a thing? Any of you remember that? It was because we couldn't do competitive sports, so we did gymnastics instead. So, on the East Coast, we like I remember my PE was like walking on a balance beam. That's what we did for PE.

We we did the you know the the horse. I forget what that's called. That pommel pommel horse. Yeah. Um so I I remember um him coming down uh and I don't remember any of their sermons. I don't remember any of the Sabbath school lessons or anything that they said, but I do remember looking up to them so much. And one time Joe, he took us, we went camping together and he was trying to teach us about faith. And so he did this trust fall, but nobody wanted to actually get on to the table and fall back and have the rest of us catch them. Do you guys remember doing trust falls?

Some of you? Yeah. You would stand on a table, you'd fall down, everybody has their hand out, and then they would catch you, right? And so finally he's like, "Okay, I'll do it first." So he climbed up on here and he fell and we didn't catch him. He just fell straight onto the dirt. And you know, it was kind of his his fault, I think, because he didn't warn us. He was like, "Okay, I'm going." And he just went and none of us were ready. Uh that that really did a lot to damage my faith. But really, you know, I I don't remember again the things that they said, but I do remember who they were. And I remember that they they had something that I wanted. They had a relationship with God. They had they had this devotion and commitment to following Jesus that that I wanted in my life. And that's part of the reason why I am who I am today.

And I I would guess that most of us in this room have stories like that. Have people that made that kind of impact on our lives. So I want you to take a moment right now and turn to the people to you and share some of your favorite memories of church. Maybe it's something more recent, something that's happened more recently. Maybe it's something from the past like I've been sharing. What What are some of your favorite memories of church? I'm going to give you a minute to do that. Go ahead. Am I too close? It's okay. Remember that's My father's story. I was thinking about They don't have to come back.

I think question. All right. I hate to interrupt the conversation because I think that's the best part of everything. And I I will pause to say if you haven't had a session with me before, I prefer dialogue more than lecture because I I think we just learn better when we're in conversation with each other. So, I hope that you'll participate with me starting now. So, I'd love to hear some of the stories that that were shared. It seemed like a lot of stories were shared of of memorable moments when you were when you were growing up in the church or memorable moments from the church community. And you're welcome to share your own. You can share your neighbors because if theirs was better, that's fine, too. Yeah. So, what's what are some memories? What some stories of um memorable moments when you were growing up in the church?

Yeah. Thank you. And you're this is your first time here, right? Welcome. Hi. That's so beautiful. I'm glad that you found a community that did that for you, that surrounded you, showed you love, welcomed you in, and I hope that we do that here at camp meeting for you as well. So, welcome. Welcome to your first camp. Can you remind me of your name again? Yeah, Stephanie Kim. Love it. All right, Stephanie. Everybody say hi to Stephanie. Oh, you're at Rock now. Okay, great. Yeah. All right. Others, what are some stories, some memories that you have growing up? Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, those liberal LA Adventists playing football on the Sabbath.

Yeah. Um, yeah. I was taught that you can't go any deeper than your knees in the water, otherwise it's swimming. before then it's waiting. So, um, yeah. Any any of you remember potlucks and spending time just hanging out with friends and Yeah. Yeah. There's just something about there's a reason why in in Korean churches like worship is here and potluck is like right here, right? It's it's very close. Yeah. You know what's interesting about the stories that were shared is that both of these stories they talked about relationships right I mean there's some program there's potlucks there's things but that was just like the context for relationship to happen that's that's really fascinating because a lot of times when we think about church we we imagine like worship services right we we imagine the programs BBS Sabbath school. Those are the things that we think about when we imagine church. We picture church. But the things that seem to stick with people

are not so much the programs. It's more about the relationships. So that's what we're going to take a look at throughout the rest of this week because we are sort of at an inflection point when it comes to Christianity in the United States. you know, all the way up to 2020, Christianity, attendance at churches was steadily declining. Um, and there was there are a lot of factors, but two big ones was one, the rise of the nuns. Have you heard of that before? The nuns is a category where there not all of them are atheist. Um, some of them would say that they're spiritual, but they don't identify with any kind of organized religion. Right? So, that's the category of the nuns. And, um, the latest number that I saw ranged from 28% to 34% of Americans now identify as nuns, which is crazy. It's never been that high before. So, that that was one reason um for the the flagging attendance of churches. The second reason is that

people are were attending church less frequently. Have you noticed that in your churches? Like it used to be that people thought to be a regular attender you had to go three times a month. Now, nowadays it's ranging around 1.4 times a month is a regular attender. And so that so what even churches that are growing numerically um as in having more baptisms and members, they're still either staying plateaued with their attendance or it's dropping because fewer people are coming to church every Sabbath or Sunday. So these two reasons was were part of the major factors for the declining attendance in our in our churches. But something changed with COVID coming out of co COVID the the attendance rates they sort of plateaued and in some churches they started to rise again. Um the still the majority of churches especially the smaller ones are um experiencing a decline in attendance.

that that plateau they pointed to again two factors. One is a re both of these are s surprising in their growth in these areas. One is that for the first time younger men are outpacing younger women in attending church. So there's a growth in the number of young men actually coming to church which is again a reversal. The second is that younger generations are attending more frequently than older generations for the first time as well. Millennials are actually the highest um rate of attending in in church currently. Any any millennials here? I sort of call myself a millennial right there on the line. I'm an exenial. You're a millennial. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so millennials are actually um are are the highest attending group generation of all the generations who attend attend church. So, we are I we can talk a little bit later and I think we're going to dive into some of the these statistics more on Thursday when we have that special conversation. But what it says to me is that God is doing something. God is on the move right now. And the question is, how do we figure out what God is doing and come alongside him in what he's doing, right? And so with that in mind, I thought for the first two or the first three sessions of this week, I would look at what's at the heart, what's at the core of what it means to be church. So I want to ask you when you think about the church, what would you say is the prime purpose of church?

What's the reason why we, you know, practice praise and we we uh prepare for VBS and we we prepare for Sabbath schools that we put on camp meeting and and all the work that goes into garden cafe and preparing for potlucks and and um all these different programs that we do. Why do we do that? What's the reason for church? I want you to think for a second. If you were to pick one or two reasons like this is the reason why we have church, what would you say? Then I want you to share with the person next to you. And then again, I'm going to ask some of you to bravely share in this room. All right? So go ahead.

All right. So, I would love for you to share with me some of your ideas and please don't get worry about getting anything wrong. I'm not looking for a specific answer. Um, think of this more like a brainstorming session. Um, what are some things that you would identify like this is the reason why we have church or this is the reason why I I go to church? What's the purpose of church? I love that. Say more about creating a safe space. So for those that may not have community, may may not be a part of the church already also having a space for them to come and explore and to learn about Jesus and to connect with him.

Love it. Yeah. Others, what's the purpose of church? Or why do you go to church? Yeah. So, it's that discipling of the next generation and imparting faith to them. It's part of the reason why we do church. See, Yeah. So part of it is is an opportunity to come together and worship God and to not just a worship service but as an acknowledgement that God is God. Love it. Others. Oh yeah. Say more about that. So that that group of Christians helps you to also stay more accountable in your relationship with God. Encourage you along that way. That's great. I love this. Anything else? Yeah. in the back. Yeah. This is actually a word that's repeated throughout the Old Testament is this word remember. Right. So that church allows you to remember who God is and the community, the larger community that you're a part of. Love that.

Anybody else? Yeah. Yeah. That is not just about us. We're a part of this body, but the purpose of the body is to follow the instructions that the head gives us. I love that. Sandra, did you have your hand? Okay. Yeah. Like is that still a part of why we do church? Okay. So, we have a lot on this list. Um, community, a safe place to search. I love this balance of um some inward focus as far as connect connecting with each other and passing it on to our next generation. Outward focus as in our worship is directed to God. Um and um and to lead for God to lead us wherever he wants us to go, the spreading of God's word. Um so what I want to do is add to this with two two passages. one from one from uh Ephesians and the other one from uh acts of the apostles Ellen White and I want you to tell me what do you think that they are saying about the purpose of the church okay so let's

start with Ephesians 4 11 through13 is that text big enough now getting a little older now so so Christ himself gave the apostles the prophets the evangelists the pastors teachers to equip equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ, there's that body of Christ being mentioned there, may be built up until we all reach unity in faith and in the knowledge of the son of God and become mature attending to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Now I want you to I want to highlight a couple parts for you. One is that there is there is there are distinguished roles in this body. There are different roles that people play. Some of those roles is to equip and some of those roles is to actually go out and serve. But there is an element of going out and serving.

Right? And then at the end you get this idea of attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. All right? So think about what is what is Paul saying is the purpose of the church in this passage. So keep that in mind. We're going to look at the next one. This is what Ellen White says in acts of the apostles. This is actually from the very first chapter entitled the purpose of the church. Um and this is the first paragraph. The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. From the beginning, it has been God's plan that through his church um through his church shall be reflected to the world his fullness and his sufficiency. Do you see that repeating of the word fullness?

Right? The members of the church, those whom he has called out of darkness into his marvelous light are to show forth his glory. The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ. and through the church will eventually be ma made manifest even to the principalities and powers in heavenly places a final and full display of the love of God. So looking at these two passages now what would you say according to them is the purpose of the church? What stands out to you? Oh yeah. Body of Christ. So being the body of Christ means to not just do what he says but to be who Jesus would be to the people around us.

Showing them that kind of love. Love that. What other things stand out to you on this? That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. The church did not start the mission. The mission started the church. Yeah. A lot of times we think that without us God would not do his work. But Bible is clear that God is already working. We have the privilege to come alongside what God is doing in this world. Right? So part of it is to come alongside what is God already doing in this world and go out and to do it. Anything else you like to add? So I would summarize this. This is my summary. The church is gifted to grow and it's called to go. And that seems to be reflected in what you're saying here.

There is an aspect of us coming to church and church being the context those that relationship um the relationship cauldron being the context where we grow. Obviously, we can grow in other contexts, but there is something that we were we humans were never called by God to grow individually. Our relationship with God is personal, but it's not private, right? We were all called to be in relationship with each other. And in that context of relationship, we learn more about God. So, the church was supposed to be that place, the community, the followers of God, where we grow most in God. That's part of it. So, we are we are gifted to grow because we don't grow ourselves. God grows us.

But we are also called to go. If you notice that in both of these passages, there isn't so much an invitation in as in as there is a going out. And that is a little bit of a reversal of how we typically think about church. We typically think about church is where people come to get saved, right? But in scripture and in the writings of Ellen White, it seems like yes, that can happen. But actually the the place where people learn about Jesus is not so much in the church. It's the people of the church going out into the context where people already are. That's where the learning happens. That's where the introduction happens. And we're going to talk about on Thursday why or actually yeah on Thursday why that might be why we have that current view of the church.

We're going to go through some of the principles of church growth that we've we've learned over the years. But it is a little bit of a reversal of what God seems to have intended at the very beginning that we were not so much called to to draw people in as we were to go out into the world. So we are gifted to grow but we are also called to go. So then my follow-up question would be if this is the purpose of the church, how effective are we in our churches in doing this? Like when you think about people, the people who have been attending, who have been participating in church for the longest, do they grow and do they go?

Is that what happens in our church? I know that's a personal question, so I'm not going to ask you to reply to that alive out loud, but I want you to think about that for a second because we're talking about building church, but we have to know what we're building if we're going to build, right? So, starting today and then we're going to go deeper into this um over the next couple days. I want to look at what's at the core of growing and going like what does it look like for us to prepare to grow and go in the context of a church and that's found in John chapter 15. So this is a passage I preached about recently. Um but let me before I get into that let me let me share two two stories. one John Ortberg uh in the book The Life You've Always Wanted, he stares shares a story about a guy at his church named Hank.

And he writes that Hank was a very cranky guy. He was the kind of guy that would talk about the joy of the Lord, but never let that joy show on his own face. Um he believed that compliments actually hurt people because it made them have a big head. So he was the self-appointed head deflator in the community. Have you ever met someone like that? Someone who makes it their mission to ground people in reality and the reality is always bad. Right? That was Hank. And Hank had been attending church for all of his life. He'd been participating. He was a deacon in the church. And yet Hank never grew.

He was the same cranky man that he was in his 20s that he became in his 50s or 60s. So why does that happen? Why do some of the people who attend church most regularly, who participate in church, how come they don't grow and go? Where's the disconnect there? and yeah sometime it it has fallen on the pastors as a pastor I can myself I can I can attest to that that there have been times when I've approached ministry in the church as I am the minister and the other people are there to just receive what I have to give. Right? Um it takes a different frame for us to actually say the church is not a restaurant where people come to be served. The church is a refilling station for food trucks to go out into the world, right? It's a different frame of reference. Yeah. So sometimes it starts with leadership.

Why? Why else does this happen? Why why why is there this this disconnect? I'm going to share another story with you or actually not a story but a a principle with you or a statistic. Let's go to the statistic. So according to Fuller Youth um Institute uh their best estimate is that 50% of actively engaged youth will leave their faith after high school. 50%. Now I want you to look at the wording of this. This is not 50% of youth who attend church. This is 50% of those who are most actively engaged. These are the leaders. These are the people who show up. We used to have a saying when I was a youth pastor um of throw up kids, right?

Because whenever you would have an activity, they would throw up their hands. Yeah. Who wants to go to a gymn? Who wants to go camping? Right? Who wants to go on mission trip? Right? These are the throwup kids. Um 50% of them will leave the church. Does this resonate with you? It It's heartbreaking for me. Yeah. There is no followup. So many some of these may come back but this this well it could be so this is leaving Christianity. Yeah. So different faith as in maybe they find spirituality elsewhere is possible or they may be among th those nuns. Yeah. question. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's great. Yeah, there is that personal initiative that's involved in developing your own connection to God.

Yeah. Um that actually transitions well to what I'm going to say, what I want to wrap up with. But before I get there, just a little bit more about the statistic. Um, so I don't know if you can think back to the people that you grew up with and who were a part of your youth group back then. Um, how many of those people have come back? They left the church, left following Jesus and have come back. What What would you say is the percentage? I know as a youth pastor, I was a youth pastor for six years and thinking about this really breaks my heart because I sometimes go through the list of my youth members and I pray for them and I think of how like some of them were such devoted leaders in the in in the youth group. They're so committed to following, so passionate. They give testimonies and They're not there anymore.

They've left their faith. They're not. And I don't know what God is doing in their lives. I'm sure God is still working there. So, I'm not writing anything off. But it makes me wonder all of the the youth activities, all the things that we poured our energy into, what did it do, and why does this happen? I'm going to end with one one thought. It's a passage. Um actually let me say this saying I I'm calling this session the future is ancient because uh this is a saying by John Mark Comr and he talks about how the future church um needs to be rooted in ancient practices and by ancient we mean coming from the time of Jesus, right? Um Jesus the night before he was crucified, he had a message to share with his disciples. And he said, "This is the type of people I want you to become." And then he showed them how. And so I'm going to read that passage and say something quick about it and then we're going to break up into small groups.

Jesus writes, Jesus says, "I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. While every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Now you may notice that there is one word that Jesus repeats over and over in this passage, right? He actually uses it five times in just two verses. In six, he uses it 10 times. And that's the word remain. It is the drum beat of this passage. It is the key to

understanding the meaning of this passage. And what it really means is stay. In fact, in the in the uh living no the message bible translation of verse four um he Eugene Peterson actually puts it this way. He says live in me. Make your home in me as I do in you. So there is a there is a um connotation of constancy in this passage. So what Jesus is saying is remain the most important thing that a a a branch can do is to remain connected to the vine. Not just connect once in a while. Not just connect when you come up come to church on Sabbath mornings. Remain connected. And I know that may sound a little overwhelming, but Jesus isn't asking us to do something that he's not already that we're not already doing because all of us remain in something.

All of us make our home somewhere. All of us graft our branches to some kind of vine. And that is the thing that we go back to when we are tired or lonely, stressed, or bored. It's a thing that resides in the back of our minds even when we're not consciously thinking about it. For some of us, it's that infinite doom scroll of social media, right? For others of us, it's our latest addiction or compulsion. For still others of us, it's a goal that we have for our lives that's become an obsession. All of us have something that we're remaining in. power, money, recognition, success. It's what we want more than anything else. And what Jesus is saying is whatever we're remaining in, it forms us. It not just forms us, it forms our families. It forms our communities. It forms our churches.

It forms us. And what Jesus is saying in this passage is that all those other branches that we all those other vines that we graft our branches to, they can't lead to life. They can't lead to us having the life that we that God wants for us. It they can't lead to us growing in a way that we can go. That doesn't happen with the other branches. It only happens with Jesus because he says, "I am the true vine. I'm the only true vine." So the only way that you'll be fruitful is to be grafted to remain in me. So what are the habits? What are the rhythms of your life that are allowing you to remain in Jesus?

or what are the rhythms of your life that are causing you to remain elsewhere? So, those are the questions I want you to answer. We're going to break up into small groups in a moment, but as you think about what we're remaining in, ask yourselves, how are these patterns forming us? How are they changing us? Um James Clear in atomic habit says all big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.

Success is the product of daily habits or daily remaining, not once in a lifetime transformation. So it's the little things that we do every day, the things that we remain in every day that eventually forms us into who we are. So we're going to talk about the big picture of church later, but when we think about our personal journey with God, what are the little things that we're doing in our days? What are they forming us into? All right, I'm gonna pass it off to small groups.