An Outsider Learns About the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

hey I'm Matt this is the 10 minute Bible hour and I like going around to other people's churches and pointing at things and asking them what it means and why they believe what they believe and what they think about what other people believe and basically just having fun talking shop about a topic that usually causes us to melt down and get angry at each other with people who don't really melt down and get angry at anybody so we can just learn and enjoy each other's company and make some friends and part of the fun of this is that I get a bottle it up put it on the internet and share it with you and further a part of the fun of this is when you give me feedback and you're like hey you should go and do a video of this church next and one that you guys have been throwing out a lot is the seventh-day Adventist Church and there are two reasons this seems like a great place to go next one because until very recently I knew absolutely nothing about this expression of Christianity other than there is a girl in high school who was seventh-day Adventist and she and her family just kind of vanished from Friday night til Sunday morning and otherwise she was normal and that is all we ever really knew and we were all afraid to ask her why or what that meant but the other reason that I think this will be a really good video to go and make is because actually one of my favorite friends from around the internet a guy named Justin ku is a seventh-day Adventist and we talk on the phone all the time and compare notes on videos and stuff he had a channel called that Christian vlogger now he does a thing called I'm listening he actually does stuff on behalf of the seventh-day Adventist Church I'm gonna bring him in right now Justin everyone everyone Justin hey how's it going Justin is my best seventh-day Adventist friend and remembered min ago saying I didn't know anything about Adventism until a couple years back well that's because I had like a two-hour conversation with Justin I think that was our first conversation with like two and a half hours yeah it was kind of a lot but you kept responding so well to all my questions I just sort of felt like it'd be okay for me to keep going at it and that is exactly why I thought we should do the seventh-day Adventist Church video at your church in Happy Valley Oregon with your pastor and so you've been kind enough to line all that up but before we go and hit that up I wondered if you could just give us the really quick rundown on what Adventism is so we kind of sense what we're walking into yeah for sure seventh-day Adventism is part of the Protestant branch of Christianity we're perhaps most well known for emphasis on Saturday instead of Sunday and a healthy living vegetarian lifestyle we've got a bunch of hospital in schools all around the world and one of my favorite facts about us is that we are the the nation's most diverse denomination cool so in terms of your name the seventh-day thing is pretty obvious and you go to church on Saturdays you have a different view of the Sabbath then a lot of other Christians historically but what is the Adventist part mean so yeah I've been just same thing like the season of Advent the coming of heavy emphasis on the soon return of Jesus Christ all right yeah oh thanks for the baseline buddy okay everybody else let's go hang out with Justin in Oregon meet the other people who are gonna show us around and get after learning about seventh-day Adventism when I got to Oregon I figured out pretty quickly that Justin had pulled out all the stops on this thing there is sound and camera people there more than I'm used to working with and they were great to talk to you I met not only Justin but also Dan from the seventh-day Adventist Home Office and this gentleman with the beard his name is Greg that's Justin's pastor so he's gonna take the lead on the tour here okay so I've never been inside this building I've never been inside an Adventist Church ever can we just go in and poke around of stuff yeah sure let's do it lead the way all right do I see that you have a Bible under glass so what version of Bible would you guys put under glass I actually don't know the version of that Bible you know what the Bible is important but the version of the Bible is I we could just say it right off like I think the best version of the Bible is as many as possible so you guys do not have a special or unique or preferred seventh-day adventists translation that everybody uses nope what's the most common our pew Bible is ESV I often preach all the New Living Translation and I think one of the things that you you would find if you talk to Adventist is that there's a whole wide range of embracing you know a language and and that that feels good to an individual rather than the denomination or churches saying like his this is the way walk in it so people mill around in here I just ate this place stay pretty crowded after church yeah get out of here as fast as I can no there's a lot of there's this is hard to shoulder your way through sometimes we have two services here and so the the space between those we have like a study our Sabbath school we call it and and that time is like there's lots of people hanging out in here and so you said sabbath-school that's what you guys call it cuz you would say yeah so you go to this Justin I do this is actually my home church so what's the difference between the two things I mean why xx Church and Sabbath school one's more community and conversation based the others kind of more sitting in some corporate worship versus like a community-based study time one of the things in North America is there is a department that like creates a Sabbath School quarterly or lesson and so I think the intention behind that was to have all avenues churches commonly united under one set of like yeah curriculum and but what I've seen in my experience travel around Adventist churches is that some churches choose to participate with that Mehta Church to say no we want to do something that makes sense with this local context so you guys have that flexibility then it's not yep it's not like top-down hierarchy is what we're teaching this year no so that so that's that feels more evangelical to me then it's very organic when you walked in you said hey this kind of feels familiar yeah and I think one of the reasons it feels familiar is because we don't like Adventist churches don't have like a specific architectural style like you could walk into ten different avenues churches and see ten different things in terms of how like their artwork that's on the walls or those kinds of things as opposed to some religious traditions that you walk in you know that you're in you know a church that's Greek Orthodox or Anglican yeah whatever so yeah that's I think one of the uniqueness is about about Adventism if you could call it unique that work we're not unique in that sense maybe and Dan you do like national communication stuff right so you've been to a lot of church how many of those sixty two hundred churches have you been to four or five hundred and I've been to every territory of the world I used to work for slack and for five hundred you know even got a ways to go yeah so what are your what are your absolute fanciest churches like and where are they we have very large churches in Southern California we've got limo Linda University as our health care institution they're the church I attend on the East Coast and Maryland is you could call it more high church we've got a nice organ and we have about 2,000 members and it's more of a traditional service but you go right down the road and you'll have a rock-and-roll church so you know and okay I know people who kind of go to burn both so this is where this is where all the sunday morning stuff happens well there's some Sunday morning stuff that happens here because there's a congregation that rinsed our church on Sundays oh I said Sunday morning again it's so dang different you're good I'm glass I have your phone right in between so yeah like since you said that that I'll just say you know Adventist Church is oftentimes partner up with other with other denominations because our buildings are largely not used on Sundays we've got smaller companies or churches are getting started where they don't have a building and still they'll rent from a Sunday church I bet this gets pretty crowded on Sundays I mean I like the layout I noticed the way I noticed we'd like the whole thing is very wise we're just gonna keep laughing when you say things like but those get crowded on Mondays it's really crazy I'm telling you is it okay if I walk up absolutely go anywhere you want this is okay yeah all right so one of the things that strikes me is that a lot of the high churches that I've been to it seems like they're very very long and this is very wide does that mean something is that intentional or is it just how the building worked out this sanctuary is a preachers dream in my opinion because you the I mean the furthest seat in the house is I can still see what people are feeling and experiencing and and I feel connected to them when I'm speaking it Justin you guys do music and stuff in here I mean I see the piano what else you do music wise I think one of the maybe trends with Adventism is that it's the leans a little bit more on the conservative side of things and so like things like a drum set are generally more absent and they are more more present but yep ya know whatever it's I think every every church has its own culture its own sound so we've actually I just pulled this out this is the back of the Pew and you probably go to almost any Adventist Church and find this sitting in the back of the Pew there's you know readings in the back Scripture readings but you also have a whole bunch of traditional film hymns that most Christians would recognize my rifle through it yeah sure of course let me see I'm giving you the camera buddy I want to see how many of these I actually know and I'm not like on a him expert right okay I surrender all I got that one so you guys this is your altar call song are you using are there any hymns in here they're like specifically hardcore Adventist hymns that advance uniquely Adventist doctrine there's a song that was written it's from probably the 80s I would guess we also called we have this hope and it's a it's a song about the the second coming of Jesus that that's the hope that burns in our hearts which goes back to an Adventist charity the second coming so I crack that open and like well it's completely familiar and that doesn't really surprise me but that I think it's an interesting indicator of kind of where we're at in terms of what we're doing theologically the using our songs and we sing your songs and they're really kind of our songs when I said that we want our kids to know the great hymns of the faith one of the reasons why that is is because there's theology there it also speaks to the shared theological roots that we have in you know many of the Adventist founders were you know came out of Methodism how does the service break down just in terms of the amount of time that you guys are in here how much is singing how much is talking about was it generally speaking you know there's a handful of songs a blend of hymns and contemporary songs and a prayer to announcement I mean it's it's fairly vanilla so it's fairly Santis what you would expect at any any other church out there I would say there's anything in our service that's out of the ordinary what's the point of church like what are you going for with the worship service what do you hope happens what do you believe happens there our Center that we are aiming at every week speaking as as pastors here is that that we lift up the gospel of Jesus Christ every single week no matter what we're talking about that it's rooted and based in in the gospel of Jesus the cross of Christ and and and the proclaiming the resurrection what are the one or two quirky unique things that I should know on the front end like stand up sit down gesture I need to make you have anything like that if you're saying for Pollak it's likely like 95% of the chance is gonna be a vegetarian Pot look so not a requirement the other thing that's one of the myths about Adventism that people think of what I have to become a vegetarian like actually I don't know the most recent statistics you could probably say but I think probably it's like 30% of of Adventist are vegetarians so it's not it's not a requirement but anything in terms of like ritually that you guys do that's different in a service then your run-of-the-mill evangelical foot-washing so basically based out of Jesus's washing the feet of the disciples and saying you know before the Last Supper he washed their feet and basically said hey because I've washed your feet you got to wash each other's feet it's just a reminder that we we we come to the table with a heart that's oriented towards serving one another lovingly my wife and I actually did a foot washing at our wedding and it's kind of like our symbol of unity people sometimes do like the rope or the sand we decided to do a foot washing as our expression of our desire to serve each other like what if you here is again and you're like yeah I'm down with Tommy I and most likely gonna get a church member asking if they could more take it for sure yeah Wow yeah one of the amazing things about Jesus is that he he dipped his hand in the dish you know with Judas even though he knew because he scented one of yous gonna betray me but right before that he had also got down on a knee and did the humble work of a servant you know and it wasn't in a time where people took a shower before they came to church and put on clean socks it was like it really was the work of a slave that Jesus did when he washed Judas's feet and it speaks to the very baseline of like when we come to the Lord's table that we come there with humility and it's the perfect places to be like when we're kneeling at the foot of a cross we're in the perfect place to be able to wash our brother's feet because the the grounds level at the foot of the cross there's no there's no I'm better than you and so you should serve me or what I mean we're here to serve each other we also have open communion word you don't have to be a member to take part in communion service if you're visiting and you want to take part you're welcome to take part what if somebody who wasn't a Christian accident like it's communion I don't I've never had that I've never seen that that's a problem if they want if they feel if they feel that moved that they want to take part in human service I don't think there's anything that says you have to be baptized to be able to do that the vast majority of Adventist churches have communion quarterly so four times a year it's not something that we do everything oh oh okay that's that's not that's the most spread out interval I think I've ever heard this church doesn't there's no there's no one that says we can't do it more often than that this church doesn't do it every week but we do we do communion much more often than that so did the bread and the cup become the body and blood of Christ when you guys pray over it we don't believe in transubstantiation the bread and the cup are - we do this in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus usually if that's the theology of a group that tends to come with kind of that lower Church assumption that salvation is a little bit more between you and God and at the church plays a reduced role as mediator is that a fair yep very fair okay I grew up in a pastor's family and there's a the the bread and the cup are treated with respect so like after communion we don't just let go throw stuff down the drain or put it in the garb it's poured out on the ground and and my dad would always take communion bread home and burn it but it wasn't from the state it was it was it was from the sense of like that this there's something sacred but it wasn't like the sense of like this is the this is the body of the literal body of Jesus I want you to bring the bag of communion bread or wafers in like that is the moment at which it becomes significant the moment at which that bread is made and designated for this purpose I think moment it achieves yeah and I think that that is it's interesting because there's no significant like theological teaching around that like if you read the if you read that our church manual would say you know handle these things with respect but it's not it's it's different it's there's this there's a respect there and there's a reverence in the sense of not in the sense of worship but just in like this is sacred it's not it's not calling I'm gonna flip around here what else in this room conveys theological meaning we have a Baptistery so when I second I absolutely hear curious yeah behind the veil because this looks pretty permanent but well we built it last week it'll be gone by midnight on Saturday night so you have a Baptistery and yep it's right here there's lights in here right now I'll just tell you so Oh whatever different than normal but yeah and normally a lot of times this is oh this is wide open according I mean what is line up like 10 people in here at once well sometimes we have to sometimes we have two or three at once if you get more than that in there it's it gets a little crowded but okay as many as the Lord senses baptism in in the Adventist context is its you know it's a believers baptism I don't have kind of spontaneous baptisms in our context why don't you do spontaneous baptisms because of Jesus's command to go and make disciples of all nations teaching them and baptizing them and so there's a teaching component that we that we engage with thank you for letting me sink back here to be each other this week yeah I want to participate that keeps the because they're ft this stained glass is the depiction of the the story of the Good Samaritan ah okay okay so you see the the Good Samaritan cradling the the the subject of the story oh and the two masters by the two people behind ya why did gets America maybe you have one bit of distinctly biblical art in here and you went with this what is this communicate that would make this be what you pick well it communicates True Religion being embodied in loving and serving and obviously it's an important story one that was told by Jesus but it was one that where there was a failure of their religious system to actually love and care for people and so it keeps it before us that the model that we see in Jesus is is that love for our neighbor and and service all of that happening in the shadow of the cross like that the cross is what motivates us to we the cross is where we most clearly see the love of God depicted and then that motivates us through through understanding that to love the world around us is it ok if at this point we pull up some chairs and I I've got a whole bunch of questions now rattling around in my head great ok bad you're all three you guys you both relentlessly yeah thanks to everybody for making this thing go and for trusting me to come and check out your church that is awesome also full disclosure for everybody I don't think I've ever done a video before where I've got three hyper capable people and we're all touring and talking at once it's hard to know like who do I direct this question to so I kind of let Greg and the edit do most of the heavy lifting but I really appreciate everybody's contribution on that and please forgive my ham-fisted ness there were a couple of questions that I still had lingering that I didn't get to ask as we were there and so I've still got Justin here and I want to run these by you real quick buddy so on the question of baptism do Adventists believe that a person becomes a Christian at the moment of baptism or do you guys believe that baptism is an outward expression of a spiritual thing that has already happened in the life of the Christian I think that conversion happens a little bit prior to baptism I think conversion for us is generally something that happens in your heart between you and God and then baptism is something that happens later on to confirm that's what happened in general you we baptize people into Christ and then following that moment that we generally vote people into membership in our church sometimes you only do one or the other if someone's already been baptized in another Church then it's simply a matter of just voting them into the church and saying yeah we'd love for you to be a part of our denomination so you guys do a congregational vote on every new member that comes into the church I'm conflicted by this because on the one hand I'm like well it seems like it's going pretty well for the Adventists but on the other hand I'm like that seems like it would be a recipe for enormous discomfort no it's not - oh maybe it might be uncomfortable for the introverts in our church but yeah it is something that happens for every individual member and so when someone wants to join the church we're usually really excited about it we end up saying hey you know Susie or Joe would like to join our church congregation and we just does anyone have a motion and like in very formal like someone will raise their hand or say motion any seconds thirds fourths whatever any opposed same sign and generally everyone just say is very silence cool motions carried welcome to the family and everyone just is really happy we have a haystack and we have a party and it's just generally a good time oh yeah the haystacks those are the meatless taco Adventists to treat that you were telling me about am I saying that right yeah okay okay so I'm curious though on the membership thing what's the criteria that the congregation uses to vote is there like a resume the the potential new member has to work up or is it just kind of on reputation it's not usually like a resume or anything super formal in that respect but usually if you're joining the churches because you know someone there you've been hanging out for a while and so I think it's generally the opposite because we are a little bit more of a peculiar denomination of Christianity generally we're more like well we want to make sure you know what you're getting into and who we are and so here's who we are as long as you're cool with that then we'd love to have you yeah that's smart I don't know if you saw the video that I did at the Missionary Baptist Church but they've got this church covenant that they put up on the wall and whether you agree with every component of the church covenant or not as an outsider is irrelevant what I really like about it is the transparency for people who are coming in to be like okay what's a Missionary Baptist Church what do you think about stuff AHA that is exactly what I'm signing up for or if I don't want to sign up for that you know that would go and look at some other churches so I really yeah I really like that thinking you're talking about in terms of the give-and-take of both parties knowing who they're signing up to do church with yep cool hey that was really helpful thanks for picking up my bonus questions here at the end buddy absolutely always happy to chat acknowledging that those of you who are watching this are coming from very diverse backgrounds I still have to imagine the pretty good percentage of you watch that video and thought that really does look like what we do that's my impression of church the building look kind of the same the leadership presented themselves in kind of the same style and fashion and tone the theology sounded relatively familiar maybe a few points a difference here and there and so I don't think there's a ton for us to break down together coming out of this tour about what the Sunday this Sunday morning I did it again what the Saturday morning experience for them looks like for me the bigger questions have to do with the the history and the more nuanced theology of Adventism I don't know everything or even a lot about Adventism but what I know is that they are part of a block of church that emerged in the nineteenth century and there's this impulse that back at this point and some people call this the restorationist movement to say you know Protestantism and Catholicism right now it's kind of weird and broken we're just gonna do an end run all the way over the top of all of those historical fights between Protestants Catholics and Orthodox and everybody else and we're gonna go back to like generation 1 of Christianity and try to take our cues from them which creates a lot of interesting dynamics because well the Catholic Church can point to apostolic succession as its source of authority the Protestants the Calvinists you know the Lutheran's they can point to reason and dedicated study of Scripture and what they would say is superior argumentation as their source of authority but these restorationist groups they weren't really in a position to point to either of those at the same level as a source of authority so there's more of this sense of new apostolic authority that includes prophecy and views of the end times and some things that frankly make me feel a little bit uncomfortable and on edge and it's a it's a strangely mixed bag and very difficult to sort out historically when you get into all of these 19th century churches that are born mostly in the United States because some of them like really punt on the core tenants of Christianity I punt on the Trinity some of these groups create different pair of scriptural documents even additional scriptures that well that's pretty problematic for everybody else in Christianity outside looking into those groups others go into a very weird conservative place others go into kind of a utopian social gospel place it's a very diverse thing and so if you know that seventh-day Adventism happened somewhere around that moment in history but you don't look closely it'd be easy to lump them in with any number of other groups and the only way to cut through that is to get past the two were time to sit down with these three guys and to really pick their brains about the very particular aspects of their theology and the evolution of their history and my understanding is that the Adventists are in part unique because of you know the Saturday thing and stuff like that but also because they've been a very dynamic group what they were at the beginning doesn't seem to me to be exactly where they're at now and I'm really excited to unwrap that present with these guys and understand not just the theology now but the story of Adventism better so that's what's up next I know that all I did right there was just throw out questions but that's where I'm at with it and I'm excited to learn more about it these guys are awesome you're awesome for being into it thanks for hanging out with me make sure to catch the next video when we sit down and do the interview and learn more about theology and history of Adventism I'm Matt this is a 10 minute Bible our let's do it again soon

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 97,483

Rating: 4.8513398 out of 5

Keywords: seventh day, 7th day, sabbath, that christian vlogger, justin khoe, adventist, adventism, about, beliefs, what do believ, investigative judgment, ellen white, great disappointment

Id: HtaK9dtIa_U

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020