Mark Finley: Faith Story and Life Lesson from a Leading Evangelist

we are exploring uh through a series the idea of getting to know the gc or the general conference i have with me uh today mark finley pastor findley how are you going today i'm doing well i'm thanking the lord that it's another good day great so we have a few questions for you um they're just i guess we know you as somebody who's an author a pastor an evangelist we also just want to get to know you a little bit and your journey so i'm going to ask the first question to get us started and it's actually i find it it's a possibly a very long question to answer but the question is um tell us about your early life and if you've always been an adventist sure ruth i was brought up in a lovely roman catholic home my mother was a catholic my father was a protestant actually but my father made an agreement with my mother that when the children were young he would allow them to go to the catholic church and we'd be catholic so we were when i was 17 years old dad began to share jesus with me and in a new way a fresh way i felt a new peace and a joy in my life that i hadn't felt before and god moved in some special ways and so at 17 i became a seventh-day adventist i want to hasten to add though that my father had been a protestant we married my mother and later became a seventh-day adventist but i never saw my grandmother argue once over religion my mother didn't drive my father did my father would drive my mother to catholic church on sunday morning sit in the car studying his adventist sabbath school lesson while she went to church deep respect i i can remember this ruth in our home easter time came mom would fix this wonderful well not so wonderful today we thought it was beautiful ham and uh to put ham and mashed potatoes and salad and corn and peas my father would fill his plate with mashed potatoes salad corn peas pass the ham by and say to my mother what a beautiful meal my mother smoked my father did not it was when i looked at my background in my home i saw my father lovingly reaching out to mom demonstrating by example what christ-like living was he was not a perfect man but he was a godly man and uh in my life when my grandmother died and that was an opening and my father shared christ with her and mom became a seventh-day adventist i had become an adventist before so it was 17 years old when i became an adventist wow and it just sounds like you've had this experience that i would argue a lot of people don't get to have with that that deep sense of respect and um i mean you think about catholicism and adventism being seen in the world as possibly the most opposite forms of christian faith and here you are within your own house having this deep sense of respect and appreciation and love for one another modeled to you um and i have a feeling that that's actually impacted your own call to ministry and your walk in it it impacted me greatly i recognized right away that although god has an ideal in marriage and in life many people don't meet that ideal ultimately we live in a very real world and to be able to relate to one another and i learned also from my father that um there was a time when he knew that he had to witness very strongly to my mother not only by his lifestyle but by sharing biblical truth and what had happened is my grandmother was like a two-pack a day smoker and she eventually died of lung cancer and i remember when my mother came home i was at home and she came home that day just crying and crying and said she's gone my father came home from work and i didn't know what happened until years later but he went into the room with my mother put his arms around her and she cried and said you know mother suffered so much with cancer but now she's suffering in purgatory and my father said to her gloria said very little to you because i didn't want to offend you but let me share with you the truth about death and he shared about the beautiful peace and the sleep of death and that her grandmother my grandmother wasn't in purgatory burning between heaven and hell's suffering my mother was greatly comforted with that that was like on a tuesday or wednesday roof and then sabbath my mother got up took a shower put her best dress on fixed her hair and my father said we're going today she said i'm going to church with you and he was the local church walked in with my mother on her arm that um that day and you know people are weeping because it was such a moving experience and she didn't miss sabbath after that uh she it was at that moment her life when she was open and you know john wesley calls that prevenient grace he says that in everybody's life there's going to be a time of openness and receptivity so when i'm counseling with people like who have teenagers who maybe are on rebelling or they they're not interested in church i say to them look demonstrate christ in your lifestyle and when you do that watch the way god works i remember i was 17 years old and i was playing on a basketball team and uh and we were very good team but we had nobody that would coach us we just argued and argued and we lost four games in a row and we were zero and four and it came in the newspaper you know this team and we were so embarrassed and i came home and said to my father you know dan i'm so embarrassed and we lost four games in a row and dad said to me who's your coach i said nobody will coach us you have to understand my interest in sports none but he knew boy and he said i'll coach you and he began coaching us and we qualified as the last place for the major city tournament it was on a friday night and dad said to me mark you know i'm a seventh-day adventist and i i will not be at your game friday night i'll be home studying my bible my sabbath lesson but he said i want you to go and immediately after the game call me and tell me what it was like because he knew that you know he i mean i was not an adventist at the time but he was very smart because he wanted me to come home after the game not go out with the guys so immediately after the game i i didn't have cell phones in those days and i put my dime or quarter whatever it was in the pay phone and i called him and he said hey that's so exciting come home and tell me about it i came home and told him and he just sat and listened and asked questions so he had that balance of standing firm for christ in principle but reaching out to a wayward son and it was that influence we worked together when i was 17 because dad by that time had a factoring and i was working in his factory and he shared with me because he knew i was going to go off to college and that just broke my heart and the adventist message made so much sense to me much peace and hope that um i became the seventh-day adventist wow i just your example i think we're we're living in a world now and and especially i mean it's been like this in the past as well but i find that there's so much pressure on all of society and i think that sometimes it trickles into our church experience as well whereas people that are meant to reach out to others we feel this compelling um pressure and and this push to minister with with haste but without real recognition of the needs of others in that time and you've shared a story here that's obviously impacted your entire life um and your approach as well um and when you were when you were sharing about your um your grandmother and your mom's experience um in my own loss i lost my mother a couple of years ago and just knowing that peace about where she was and and what was going on for her which which turns out to be nothing because she's resting was such a beautiful you know you you've referred to this peace and this hope um and this assurance um and that's something that's really special that your dad was as you said was able to share in a in a really important time i wanted to ask you because you're stepping now obviously your dad's been um ministering to you as a father but also um sharing truth as you did with your mom um when did you first feel or sense a call to ministry and what did that look like for me it was no flash of light it was no um overwhelming um um time of you know i just sensed and saw that this was it i think the difference between an impulsive impression is this an impulse is something that's flighty it's here today it's gone tomorrow an impression is a growing constant awareness that god wants you to do something that could do nothing else and so at the end of my senior year in high school i began to sense the leading of god to ministry i began to sense that the holy spirit was moving in my life but that didn't happen overnight it was a period of weeks a period of months and the impression became became deeper and it was at a point ruth where i could do nothing else and i have counseled many young men or young ladies who want to go into god's work and i have said to them if you can do anything else do it the call to ministry is a life call and it's a life commitment um take your time think about this pray about it and let god impress you because it's a commitment of service for the rest of your life and it was a conviction for me that took place over a period of time not a um not a flighty impulse did you ever feel as though you felt that yes god was leading you but you yourself were hesitant or did you feel like you actually wanted to make that jump i i don't think i was hesitant i was uncertain and i think there's a different thing um it wasn't i was i was not sure at initially and you know i think there are really four aspects of guidance first you pray and you listen to the voice of the spirit in your life you study the word of god and see if there's anything in the bible that helps to guide you for your decision thirdly you counsel with others and so i began to counsel with others and ask them what do you think and fourthly you look for the open doors of providence and what how is god working somebody said wisdom is finding out which way god is moving and moving with him and so for me the lord the most convincing things in this particular decision to go into ministry were one the deep conviction god was giving me and two people that i trusted that i counseled with said that they really encouraged me in that area is there somebody that stands out to you maybe an example of a pastor or an evangelist that you felt really spoken to your life in that season at that particular time uh now i've had many mentors since then but at that particular time the pastor that baptized me pastor marion kidder was always a real blessing to me um i had a master who i got to know as well was pastoring i was living in connecticut he was passing in hartford connect his name was o.j mills and he was a real influence in my life so those two men were very positive influences my in my life early in those days and then later pastor ron halverson became the pastor of our local church and he was an influence so early in my ministry those three men were really a powerful influence that's beautiful so when people talk about ministry um i know we have avondale college here in australia and as an undergraduate degree young men and women can go in or men and women of any age can go in and study theology and ministry and chaplaincy but what i notice about you is that you've stepped quite heavily into evangelism or i guess quite a public figure um in a sense for our church how did that come about how did you was there a transition time how did that uh ruth i was pastoring uh for a number of years smaller churches and then some that were a little bigger and uh working at a very small supporting ministry school through the conference in the south a school called when i was employee at the conference and i was there at the school teaching some teaching and evangelism and i held a couple evangelistic meetings in that area and sensed that god was leading me into full-time evangelism and my wife and i and again i don't want to suggest that god always works this way but he did with us i came home one night and talked to my wife teeny about it and i said you know i think god is leading us to evangelism i'm really i was holding meetings in a tent and then holding meetings in a small auditorium i was young and um as i uh talked to teeny about it we prayed and we just earnestly prayed that night now again i don't want to give the impression that this always happens but the next day i got a call from the ministerial secretary of the southern new england conference in massachusetts connecticut rhode island area and he said to me we were in our office yesterday thinking about a new conference evangelists and your name came into our mind would you be interested and i after my prayer experience that night and that experience and i said to him you know i i really believe god is leading us but i have certain conditions because i recognized even back then that society was moving toward a more secular post-modern society so most american evangelists at that point were doing like three weeks of evangelistic meetings or four and i wanted to look at a different model a model where we came in these and spent three months six months in those cities a model where we worked with church members in prayer and bible studies and a model where we reached out in a multi-faceted approach with stress management classes and natural lifestyle cooking and exercise classes and family life and and also i wanted to work in a model where i worked with a team of young people and that i would recruit them and so the conference was excited about that model so i went into evangelism there in southern new england and worked there then went from there um to the chicago area to work with andrews university and to train in evangelism while we did evangelism in the master divinity program and then went of course and had an opportunity to work in norway sweden denmark england i was a minister of secretary of the trans-european division and worked in uh uh socialist countries uh poland hungary yugoslavia then later russia and then at that point went to it is written and began to hold a lot of satellite evangelistic meetings and then in 2000 the general conference and so i've been at the general conference now for almost 17 years it's just amazing how it and in a sense that there is evangelism um i mean ministry you know when i asked earlier when did you sense that call of mine to ministry um we tend to think of it as that small box of ministering to a small small or large church or a community and and moving around every four or five years depending on where you are but ministry can be so much more we can be i could be talking to somebody right now that has ministered in papua new guinea doing missionary work um or for your your example you know having done so many different things but with what seems to me is this deep love for people and um just a recognition of where they seem to be at and their needs at the time um you've mentioned things like the the cooking classes or family dynamics and assisting people with the actual perceived needs that they have um first and then being able to bring the gospel to them which sounds a lot to me like christ's method alone yeah you know i love that statement in ministry of healing christ's method alone will bring success in reaching the people you know he ministered among men we um have followed that method we believe that as you meet the felt needs of people you are their hearts open for you to meet their deeper spiritual needs we don't meet the felt needs as a method to manipulate them we meet their felt needs because we care for them we're interested in them we love them and because christ created them in his image but as you meet the felt needs of people god opens the door he opens hearts he opens minds for the sharing of the gospel and we have seen this so many times here uh when tiny and i were going to retire in 2010 which we have not done yet actually the church books may say i'm retired but i think i'm working more now than we did before but we moved out into an area that had no seventh-day adventist church it had it's a gated community has a couple of golf courses and we live in a little retirement section of that but they have some very well-to-do homes many people who work for the government in washington dc live in our area and it had no church economy there was a little church about 15 20 minutes away and um we went to that little 40-member church and then began working here we've now built a beautiful church a facility where we have our church we have a living hope school of evangelism we have a nice church of when before cove at 180 200 people come each sabbath and many young professionals uh this last sabbath five couples in the church that were not seventh-day adventists but all professional couples who are studying but the interesting thing is we've had between seven and nine hundred non-seventh-day adventist visitors come to our church ruth in the last um four years between seven and nine hundred um coveted on monday nights regularly we'd have health programs we'd have um stress management exercise classes wellness classes cooking classes tuesday nights we had a bible class and that people came to so we have an ongoing outreach into the community at christmas we have all kind of christmas programs that we run concerts and invite people to come in for maybe herbal teas and some little homemade cookies and come to christmas programs so the whole philosophy is you win a friend then you win a christian friend then you win a seventh-day adventist christian friend but we try to build any relationships in the community as we possibly can so that the community becomes aware of who we are and what we're doing and the essence of evangelism is not friendship alone but neither is it proclamation alone a lot of people say we make friends well now i can make friends on the golf course i can make friends at a bowling alley i get friends in a variety of places but there comes a point where you share jesus there comes a point where you open the bible and study with them and so our life is wrapped up with people jesus was wrapped up with people the reason for programs is not for program's sake but it's for people's sake so even now in the busyness of our lives with everything we're doing we have a school of evangelism here we have a media ministry we have a pastor's retreat center that we just bought that's about seven minutes from church where pastors come for retreats but with all of that we still give bible studies i mean i have each monday night i have marriage counseling that i do and so we're interested our lives are wrapped up in people we believe that christ died for people and that's what we're interested in um and it's it's been uh something that's been on my heart a lot there's a deep side just there um i've just got the fact that a lot of us talk about um ministering to the needs of secular people but we have sometimes quite a narrow perception of what that means um and you've you've shared that there's a community that you you dwell in and you spend time with that on the outside of things seems to not really need help in life so to speak but you've been able to step in and say well you know there's things like loneliness or there's things like past hurts or there's things like marriage struggles that um you can deeply minister to and it sounds like it's not only been a blessing for your communities but also for you i mean you've stepped into that since retiring um which isn't you know an incredible statement of um i guess your faithfulness but also the passion that jesus has in your life and how that's reflected for you you know ruth i think one has to evaluate their community if we were in an inner city community i would probably run a food bank i'd probably run a very extensive program to be sure people at close we might run an after school a program for children who need tutorial help and extra help with math i might run a computer class so that would be quite i might run a job skills program in the community we live it's a very upmarket community what people are interested in here we looked we took a look at a demographic study when we first came they're interested in family they're interested in their health and they are interested in moral spiritual values they may not be interested in studying the bible but they are interested in ethical moral values so we concentrated in those three areas based on the community that we live in um yeah and that's so important i mean it sounds like you've lived and ministered to such a multitude of communities i mean you mentioned earlier as well that you spent some time actually mentoring and working with young people in andrews university um how is that experience for you i love it we do it today um so now today we you i was at chicago for six years from 19 um to 1985 before going to europe and so we taught then master divinity students but when i went to europe we'd always have long term field schools of evangelism three months six months where young people were with us early in our ministry we had a lot of young people living in our home i would have my own family and six seven young people in our home at one time now we have our school of evangelism here and we it's the way it works is we have a five-day intensive symposium it starts on a sunday night goes to a thursday night typically we do that seven times a year so we've had 250 pastors come to us from the sunday night to the thursday night in addition to that we now have a pastor's retreat center we can take we can sleep 13. it's beautiful it's like a five-star hotel we have two saunas we have a jacuzzi we have a cold tub we have massage rooms wonderful food and so pastors come there and they spend time there getting physically mentally emotionally rejuvenated and then we we mentor them we spend time with them in addition to that we southern adventist university and they have a master's degree program their students can take nine hours of academic credit with us they so in the summer time for two weeks they send their students we're working with another supporting ministry called heartland college and they bring their students to us as well so what what our whole goal is even now is work with a lot of young people we have young people on our team now i have one two three uh young people we rent a apartment for them and then they work on our most of them working on our media ministry team because our media ministry has just exploded now um it's uh some of our video some of my dvds now they will be on youtube you'll 500 thousand eight hundred thousand views many of them a hundred thousand just did one last week and i think i looked at it this morning was 107 000 views so um we are really working hard on digital media and um that's an area we also have a university in our university we have 150 courses it's an online university we have 150 courses and our students are taking about 25 000 26 000 classes now um much of what we do is all tuition free we do charge a little bit for us classes in our university uh many of them are free but some are charged a little bit but when pastors come to us like from sunday to thursday we don't charge anything we just say you come if they want to eat they they pay a little bit for the meals but that's it at our retreat center we don't charge anything we provide everything for them and um we just tell them if you want to make a donation you can do that and we do better that way we do better that way have people coming and then they just get so excited about the ministry that they say look what can we do for you so when we find what we jesus said it's more blessed to give than it is to receive so when we give people say how do you run this operation you know it's a huge operation how do you do this with no subsidy from the church we don't get one penny from the church's subsidy how do you do this and i tell them when you give it's a residual effect it says shall we press down and run over you know so we believe that god is in it and he's able to take care of it and i think as well you know how it says in the story of abraham it it was he was blessed to be a blessing and and we experience um both god's blessing to us so that we can bless others but also the blessing of actually being a blessing to others and when people are so thankful to us for what we do i always step back and say no you know thank you um which seems to be the case for you you seem to have such a you know we're talking about calm and peace and hope and you've seen the the australian word i don't know if it's really stated much in america around the world but we say that we just seem stoked or um i guess excited or delighted i'll look that one up in webster's dictionary yeah yeah i don't know how it's going to go but yeah we definitely use it um use that statement i wanted to like shift just a little bit because we've been talking about ministering to i guess a community that you you're dwelling in and you've also mentioned that you worked in um you know socialist countries and things like that now when i first became a cr um a christian again as an adult it was about five years ago um and we were doing this mock trial in a church in england pretending that we were on trial for being adventists and they were testing i guess it was it was fun testing our knowledge in in scripture and understanding and some of the students at the back were whipping out this little red book called studying together right and i wanted to ask you a little bit about that you know you've published this guide on connecting with people from other faiths and perspectives um and it's widely used in the church there there was at one point i think an app um what do you find the most challenging when it when it comes to reaching people um from other religions or just yeah other perspectives if i let's suppose you were a muslim or a hindu and i approached you and it said ruth um let me tell you about christianity you may put up your hands but once you learn i am a seventh-day adventist if you are a muslim and i say to you ruth let me share some wonderful things that we have in common tell me the things that are important to you and you say to me well one thing that is important is praying five times a day and i say to you know prayer is very important to me as well um say to me it's very important to um to to keep my body uh you know i i i don't uh use alcohol i don't i don't eat pork i say you know that's a wonderful thing neither do we one of the things i think that many people make a mistake in is they start with not they don't have in common with others rather than starting with things that they do have in common our little book studying together i start each chapter on varying religions by these are the things we have in common these are the differences and these are approaches so i think you start always where you can agree not when you where you can't wait will you disagree um if somebody says to me if i'm dealing with for example a baptist and they say you know my grandmother just died i'm so thankful she's in heaven looking down at me what is my comment to them as my comment is let me straighten you out about where your grandmother is saying to them is what a hope we have in jesus what a hope we have for you i don't well you don't always have to correct people so i find that when we're dealing with people of other religions i want to get to know them as individuals i want to understand what they believe so i can have a strategy kindly to share christ with them and i think um you know there's a lot of people that sincerely would take a different approach to what you've shared you know you made the example and i i giggled there for a moment it was probably more than a giggle um because i've seen it so commonly happen when somebody does pass away i've got a friend who's um who's um has family and their grandmother's just passed away and a similar thing came up the exact same conversation over dinner and i just sat there nodding um without saying anything because the the person that is sitting across from you and mark you've kind of shared this we share what's in common and what's in common for instance in that example is that we have a hope that we get to see our loved ones again exactly um and when you know that that book itself has been very helpful for me because i i i came and i had an experience when i first came back to the church um where i was around um a culture of legalism that i think it came it comes from fear there's this fear of this pressure to quickly you know convert and this fear of you know losing people that are important to god and it's not necessarily out of aggression or frustration but yeah we do sometimes step ahead um and so this approach that you're talking of of um sharing what's in common seems to be um yeah it calms both the person that's that we're ministering with but also our own our own hearts and allows us to experience that patience that stems from god i call it earning the right to be heard developing so if i'm meeting with a hindu or muslim or a person who is of not is a christian but not adverse persuasion if we can focus on what is common if i can build a bond of trust i earn the right to be heard then comes a point in the conversation not in that immediate conversation but in the friendship over a period of weeks months could be longer where i might say to them may i share with you another perspective on that i love the mayor principal because you respect the person's freedom of choice may i share with you what the bible says about that topic what the ancient scriptures say um it means and so i try to bring people to a point where they are open and receptive to hear biblical passages of truth without offending them now some people you're going to a thing there's no way not jesus offended some people they don't like it some of the religious leaders of his day he offended him so much they wanted to buy him you know so you are going to offend some people so i'm not concerned that i offend them i'm concerned that i offend them because of my tactlessness and my my attempt to put pressure on them um if they're intended after i've gently shared shared with them at the right time that's a different issue yeah and it sounds like you're stemming from a place of um of love and respect for the journey that they've been on to even hold those perspectives in the first place you know we have no idea why the backgrounds i mean i had no idea and maybe i should um but i didn't know that you grew up as a catholic and so um and neither did i assume at the same time that you know that you grew up as an adventist and so we all have these journeys and these stories and i guess these this is what this interview and and conversations in general should be about is getting to know one another and being able to journey together even if just for a brief moment as well right you spend a lot of time with people you were mentioning that um you would have your family and then seven other students at a time sometimes you know living with you how do you like to spend time when you're on your own when you finally get that down time um i have a lot of things that i love to do um nature is a very i'm very fond of nature so i will we will live in a place where i can go out and walk on the trails i was out this morning and so when i have downtime nature is something i enjoy i enjoy the beach i've always enjoyed the beach if it's quiet i don't go to crowded beaches don't like them at all but they're a place to go and to swim i enjoy that very much um i enjoy riding my bike love that there was a time in my life that i'd enjoyed playing golf um so yeah we have many different things that we do i would say outdoor activities hiking we just love hiking if we go to the mountains and hike um tra biking riding our bikes and uh when you have grandkids you stay young and so we very much so yeah those outdoor activities or something and we like gardening yeah very much so we had a garden last year and we if we can spend time in our garden we certainly do that yeah and it sounds like such a good antidote to um i mean you would know doing doing so much work in in digital ministry and being in um you know artificial light and that kind of thing even in in days past of evangelistic series and it's just nice to step back into what god has created rather than what man is you know putting together in a lot of senses so i can see that brings real joy to you yeah is there anything else that you feel that you're passionate about other than ministry maybe a special hobby or you know you mentioned bike riding and golfing i would say um reading i love to read and uh constantly everyday reading i'm reading through the conflict of the ages series now uh just for my own personal enjoyment and this you already are veranda the patriarchs and prophets i'm almost through prophets and kings i've read desire of ages so the first six months of the year i'll read uh patriarchs and prophets prophets and kings desire of ages acts of the apostle great controversy um so reading is something i really enjoy and broadly reading um reading about the political situation reading about history reading about culture background peoples so um i would say that's one of the things that when i relax i love to read if i'm not outdoors doing things outside so yeah i i really enjoy that um i enjoy very much staying abreast with what my children are interested in i have three children and that just plug into them like i talked to all three of them yesterday and so we're always on the phone sharing my grandkids and my granddaughter face time with us last night and so say that what gives me the greatest joy in life is interacting with my family interacting with my friends the other thing that i enjoy i think before covet of course was travel almost every year i guided tours to the reformation to the middle east to the uh atlanta turkey area seven churches to the to britain and uh so english reformation uh european central revelation luther's time bible lands israel seven churches island and patmos so there are groups that i've taken and i really that's i look back and that's something ruth i really really enjoy just a background of it the history the culture of it and very very much so yeah and i know those places um i mean there's you know the lineage journey a friend of mine was involved in that um in that ministry kind of recording some of the the locations for the seven churches um is that is there a particular place i guess a modern culture because we can't really step back in time um you know two thousand years back and see the legitimate culture of those places but traveling around those areas is there a culture or place in particular that um you really appreciate or value i would say there are few i lived in england for five years and saint albans anytime i can go to st opens that little town division is just very very special to me it's a very very special of that um i love greek culture we've had a number of tours to greece and i just really enjoy it um [Music] in south america brazil oh it's just active and a lot of vibrant and it's a brazilian culture so it's hard for me africa i've always enjoyed africa as well when i look i guess i would put it this way i enjoy the places the most where i am um if i'm in the philippines i love it indonesia china you know i just look back over it and but i would say of all those places probably saint albans england is my it's just a special place to me yeah england was it was actually the place that i came back to the faith and um there's something very you know you're talking about small towns and small villages and the winding roads and yeah the clear seasons i guess um for me as an australian very clear seasons was really special um but yeah even just i find you know you're mentioning going to the philippines even the simple act me of going to a shop and seeing how they set up their aisles and um you know the labeling and packaging on their grocery items is speak so much of a culture in a lot of ways uh so i've got a question here um and these questions are you know we you know you and i are having this conversation but it also comes from um uh you know different community members as well and one of them is that and you were mentioning books as well um you have according to wikipedia um you've published over 74 books now do you ever check a wikipedia page that you know some people google themselves mark are you a vain person have you existed myself very much um is is 74 books you know in the ballpark of how much you it is it is it could be more now that could be but um and i'll tell you how that happens a lot a lot of the questions people say how in the world do you ever write 74 books well yeah this is the way it happens first old enough i'm 50 some i've been in ministry 53 years so when you're in 53 years you better have something back or not if i live to 100 you know i will uh you know i will i will have even more but seriously the way i do it is this i um just wrote a book hope for troubled times it's on the pandemic so for example here are some of the chapters the ultimate vaccine is one chapter and i talk about vaccines that i talk about christ is the ultimate vaccine for sin ppe personal protective equipment and the best for the christian is prayer bible study etc then another chapter is how to deal with worry fear and anxiety another one is um on pandemics pandemics pestilences and prophecy so tell you the story on that the general conference called me march i think it was last year they said mark we need a new book hope for troubled time we need a book on the pandemic the cloven 19. but we need this in about six weeks because of the translations around the world can you write a book in six weeks well here's the point it was easy for me and the reason was easy for me is i was preaching those sermons and i preach manuscript sermons so every one of my sermons is about 3 500 words to 38 words so and i i don't preach out of an outline i write everything out of manuscript and it takes me about 15 hours to prepare a sermon so i already had of the say whatever i really forget the number of chapters but say there's 10 13 chapters in the book i already have like nine or ten of them written because they were my menus i've been preaching so somebody calls me says mark we need a new book on the second coming of christ i look back over a hundred sermons and pull eight sermons that are already manuscript for the second coming of christ refine them we need something on grace i look back so every week that i preach i am writing a new chapter of a book so that's how i'm able to do it because i i take advantage of the time that i'm using to prepare a sermon to make that a chapter of a book then you can shorten it you can lengthen it etc so that's that's the secret of that ah nice you know it's actually so smart i remember um last year during covert in fact um i was asked to um preach for my church plant and we had to do it via zoom as well um and i remember writing this out and because because i was staring straight at the screen i just i had the um the manuscript as you said just there but i reflected and realized that it's good content for an article or like a devotional thought or something so oh you've made it so much easier for me now i'm looking at writing my first book so great yeah maybe maybe 74 books later i don't know if i'll get time with the way that the world's going but um yeah you've mentioned the hope for trouble time and i know that there's also videos available for that um on the seventh-day adventist church youtube channel which is awesome um and it seems like you know you mentioned that you're meant to retire in 2010 but you know you and teeny just keep going keep going why aren't you kicking back and just stepping into adventism retire you know whatever the retirement version is of adventism i think there's a couple reasons um we do take time we we in we do you know when you get older you don't have the energy you have when you're younger and i notice that but we continue to minister and we minister i think our ministry right now is as broad as it ever has been because we can use digital ministry we can use a variety of other things as well so um but there's something within us there's a passion within us i feel that if i were doing nothing for christ and simply uh tried to retire and put my feet in the ocean water and sat there week after week now occasionally it's not too bad to tell you the truth yeah sounds really nice but um if if i didn't do anything i think that would be my death now um for me activity is really important and uh and but again we do have to cut back we can't you you don't have the energy at 75 76 that you do when you're 40. so we try to live a more balanced life spend time certainly with our children and grandchildren but we try to maximize our time so for example let's suppose i'm preaching on sabbath one i've written a manuscript so it's going to be a chapter in a book two i preached to my local congregation three we put that live that particular day that i'm preaching so last sabbath i preached a sermon on the resurrection because it was easter ten thousand peach people watched it immediately so then take that i can also um the next sunday take that same material sit in a webinar and then that webinar becomes a class which we put on our university site so what i'm trying to do now ruth is maximize what i do to make what i do more reaching more important not more more far-reaching than simply um having to work seven days a week into fatigue or six days and take one day off now although i try to step back and relax some i try to focus and i ask myself how can i maximize my energies so that it has a greater impact for christ yeah it sounds like you're working smarter rather than harder which is a lesson that all of us need to learn because obviously jesus took time off and um you know he had a limited amount of time in ministry but even now it's still ministering just in a different way to how how he was when he was spending those three and a half years um deep in the trenches in a sense um so you've got the book the series which just went live you're you're preaching every well every weekend also or ministering through this through this school um is there anything else that um you haven't mentioned to us yet that you're working on or like maybe considering that you'll venture into in the future right i want to clarify i don't pastor our church so i don't preach everything oh right yeah we do have a pastor who works there a couple of things i'm really excited about i'm working on a project called the three cosmic messages which um is uh just wrote a book on the three angels messages and i just wrote 13 sermons i think and pastors are using those now uh people can go on a site called three cosmicmessages.com they can download the sermons download the graphics we think that they're some of the latest graphics then also um my sister is an educator she did a doctorate at boston university she um has taught for many years she's been principal of adventist schools she joined us a small team i'm working with about a year and a half two years ago she had been the principal of a particular school and she's taught both in secular universities and adventists and her specialty is curriculum development she has developed a curriculum from the kindergarten children to the high school children um are the three angels messages it's a two-week curriculum it has teacher's guides it has books appropriate for each age there's multiple books in the series there's videos there's interactivity and so we're really excited about that project we we really believe that the essence of adventism has to do with revelation 14 rightly understood and many people think it's mystic symbols and cryptic images and beasts but they don't see jesus in it and so we really with a whole team of us worked on that and we're really excited about that project that's one thing we're excited about we're excited about expanding our our internet presence um and our youtube presence we think that that has real real potential and uh although i don't preach every week i do try to do a new um youtube program every week and so we're really encouraged about that our pastor's retreat center is just coming into its own we've only had it for a year but that i think has real potential for the future because many pastors are tired they're worn out they want to come to a place where they can get council guidance and they can rest and get some good food and so we um we're encouraged about that there's so many things ruth that were encouraged about here's a here's a question that's kind of related to that um and it's kind of just popped into my mind you know um i have like a deep so my background is that i do counseling um and so observing as as i as i do get to travel um i guess within australia and visit different churches as well i see a lot of pastors that are um that are working really hard and and contributing in a lot of ways to their local church and to ministry as well what is your suggestion for pastors or ministers or evangel evangelists um to avoid burning out or experiencing spiritual fatigue i think there are a few things that immediately come to my mind um the first is you become spiritually fatigued easier if your devotional life is weak the stronger your devotional life your bible study and prayer life the more you will be fueled by christ to give so what i would say to young pastors particularly is put emphasis on your personal spiritual devotional life that's number one number two you become more burned out when you are physically and emotionally fatigued put emphasis on exercise and a good diet adequate sleep so spiritual and physical health contribute to a lack of burnout high stress jobs where you get up in the morning you start running and i don't mean jogging i mean running from one place to the other will tend to burn you out more quickly so prayer bible study meditation secondly um is the physical aspects of your life getting adequate water getting adequate rest get good diet but there is a a number of other elements a third element is this many pastors see a dichotomy between ministry and family so there is this dichotomy where they are in ministry but yet their family they say i feel so guilty because i'm spending this time ministering not spending time with my family if that is your view you're always going to be have be conflicted so but if you have a different view and that is that ministry is a team ministry so even if a wife works outside of ministry she's not employed by the church which is most of the cases today in the industrialized developed world most a pastor's wives will have some job what i counsel pastors to do is this sit down with your wife find the area of her gifts and skills if it's in cooking let her be involved in the encourager to be involved in the church in using nutrition classes if it's with children's ministry encourage her to be involved in children's ministry if it's hospitality get encourage you to be involved in greeting in other words husbands and wives discuss together each of their roles in the local congregation and they navigate that the same with children we have young people 13 years old 14 years old that we've taught to run camera they have to be responsible but some of them are great at doing it they really take it responsibly we have other young people that participate in a praise team and weed out in worship with us so the whole concept is particularly for pastors that you look like what our pastor's son for example is going to turn 13 now he is 13 now and he's running camera and he's just comes to church every saturday he just loves it you know the technology so the idea is find a collaborative team ministry within your family um the prospect is you tend to burn out more if ministry becomes problem centered rather than mission oriented and that's i think a key point if your ministry is problem-centered if you're looking at all the problems at the church you're going to burn out much more much easier but if mission is the top of your church board item if outreach and what fuels you is seeing people come to christ and seeing them um seeing what god is doing and hearts converted uh so here are four things one deep spirituality will keep you from burning out two is adequate physical exercise and a good diet and rest three sharing with your family your own heart desire and ministry and finding rules for each family member and and for being central on mission i think those things can be helpful to pastors yeah and it sounds like those things that you and you've had and and probably journeyed in and maybe at some moments possibly even struggled with um oh sure the nature of two humans coming together um but it's such good guidance for young people that are at university and um obviously meeting people of the opposite sex and um exploring the idea of finding a life partner and i think it's such a good question to ask like how are we going to approach these four areas how are we going to work as a team as as one flesh on this um right look this this this conversation has been such a blessing for me um and i hope for you to be able to share just just some of your i guess your areas of understanding um and to you know share wisdom i hope that's been a blessing for you mark as well yes it's been enjoyable just a very relaxing conversation i really appreciate it ruth thank you so much yeah thank you so much for um for sharing and and i just have a quick question as well um if there's one one last um piece of advice that you can give for a young person starting out in this broad area called ministry what would it be i think if the one thing i could say to them is you we never give will succeed unless we give ourselves permission to fail fail don't be too hard on yourself early early in ministry there's a something i call skill building my first sermons were quite weak but i was building a skill i kept writing them writing and my first evangelistic was in a tent we didn't baptize anybody um but i was learning building a skill first time i ever ran a stress management program my knees were knocking i was so stressed out to run that program you know but i was learning um the first programs i ever did with it is written television pastor george van damme couldn't use them we had spent thousands of dollars on them my programs were so poor we couldn't use them we had to throw them away but he got me a mentor hollywood who taught me how to do television so as i look back over my ministry when i'm talking to young people don't be afraid to do something because you think you're going to fail the worst failure is you didn't do it always push yourself beyond if you feel content in what you're able to do and capable of what you're able to do you're not doing enough always take another step i knew nothing about tv took that step do nothing about satellite ministry took that step knew very little about youtube ministry so i think what i say to young pastors is don't be hard on yourself the worst failure is the failure not to do and you do it and you go over do it again and again and again and you let the holy spirit lead you and guide you and strengthen you and you build this skill then you build another skill you build another skill and pretty soon the things that were hard for you become easier for you and pretty soon you're able to have a broad-based ministry that touches thousands of lives for the kingdom yeah that that statement don't be afraid to fail um i think that just sums up everything so perfectly no matter like what type of ministry whether you are um you know if you're working in medical ministry or you're a teacher or um you're even just working in you know a nine-to-five job like an accountant or anything i think that it's such a such a beautiful example of good advice you know that we can take um as we work not for men but for god himself amen awesome thank you so much for your time um and i hope that you enjoy the rest of your day thank you so much ruth

Channel: Seventh-day Adventist Church

Views: 30,752

Keywords: mark finley, seventh day adventist, bible, Faith Story, Mark Finley Evangelist, mark finley sermons, pastor mark finley, mark finley sermons 2020, book mark finley hope for troubled time, hopelives365, seventh-day adventist, seventh day adventist church, christianity, god, jesus, sermon, christian, bible study, adventist, hope, faith, seventh-day adventist church

Id: t7B4iioz6C0

Length: 59min 53sec (3593 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021