Oct 26, 2018
By Jane Mackintosh
Conference President 2018-19
Last month I shared with you my theme of “People Get Ready” that was begun with seven words God spoke to me 25 years ago: “The Church is Returning to the Sabbath.” It was such a profound, startling experience. But God had not given me the “go ahead” to share this in a public manner all these years until now. My thinking is that if this means the Church, as in the entire Body, then Seventh Day Baptists are in a unique place to serve the Church since we know about the Sabbath. Thus, “People Get Ready” is an encouragement to get our house in order so we can fulfill our purpose. So how do we “Get Ready”?
I have two observations that I am passionate about as ways to “Get Ready.” The first stems from a lifetime of counseling others. I am not a professional counselor, but I have been listening to problems people have come to me with since college days many moons ago. They would tell me what they were struggling with and, when I would hear unscriptural thinking, an appropriate scripture verse would pop into my head. I learned decades ago to never take what I hear or see at face value, as it was clear to me that something else was going on that brought about unscriptural thinking. So I learned to ask questions, such as, “Who told you that?” or “Tell me about your family situation growing up.” Then we could talk about what led up to the wrong thinking and begin to replace it with scriptural thinking. Where I ran into trouble was when I began to get asked repeatedly to teach others how to counsel and I had no idea how to do that. I recognized the vast need for godly counseling and was overwhelmed with the needs of people who looked good on the outside, but were struggling with huge issues—sitting in church for decades struggling in silence. I keep saying, if you don’t think people struggling with suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, fatherless childhoods, cutting, homosexual feelings, pornography addictions, sexual addictions and promiscuity, drug abuse, domestic abuse, etc. are sitting next to you in church—then you need to think again, because I have heard every one of them. These things are very real struggles in our church populations and few are feeling like they can admit to them, much less get real help. “What will people think, I am a deacon, pastor, Sabbath school teacher, youth leader…?” My heart breaks for the silence and shame and worry that someone may find out. Thus the bondage of strongholds lives on and continues to devastate our people. Now let me be very clear—I am absolutely supportive of professionally trained and licensed
counselors, and there are many problems that need this level of expertise. In fact, I believe all of us could benefit from this kind of help. The problem is that few can afford it.
Several years ago I got a vision for how to grow our churches. Since counseling needs are too great for a pastor to handle alone, I proposed that we should find some program to train our pastors who could then train their lay leaders in Biblical counseling/discipleship. I didn’t have a program about how to do this, but I did believe that if we could learn how, then we could get our own people healed and open the door for counseling those outside our churches. If we are struggling so much, think how much those outside the church are struggling. We know we have the answers to real problems, because we serve the God of all counseling and His prices are affordable—FREE. We just need to learn how to apply the healing balm of scripture to the problems and figure out how to do it.
My contention was that as soon as we could do this, we would never talk church growth again. I have always wondered and longed for that Zechariah 8:23 day when ten people will “grab hold of the hem of our robes and say, “Let us go with you because we have heard that God is with you.” I began to see this possibility if we can provide real answers that heal people’s problems, not just throwing Scripture at them. We must sit with them, listen, discern through the Holy Spirit what is really going on. Then we tell them how God sees them as loved and accepted, belonging to Him, created with significance, really touching their felt needs at the deepest level. Then, I believe, we will have people beating down our doors to get this help. We must begin getting healed ourselves. I now have found a program to teach us how to provide this help. It is scriptural, disciplined, easy to follow, and I have seen it really work. The church I trained in and counseled through has been doing this for decades and they blessed me and said, “Here is the material’ Go, teach it in your church, denomination, spread this around.” And they gave me the material on a thumb drive free of charge.
Doug and I have been to White Cloud, MI, already, for a weekend seminar (twelve hours of training) plus the first nine chapters that they studied before we got there. They will continue to study the second half of the materials on their own. Then hopefully they will be ready to begin a lay Biblical counseling program in their church. We are headed to do the same in Daytona Beach the first of November, and New York City the first of December. We will make every effort to come to you, if your church, association, etc., is interested. There is no charge for our transportation or our housing, so the cost will be limited to printing the materials for your church which I can email you. Pastors, if you are interested in checking this out, I can email you the first half of the materials to look at and see if this is something you might like to do.
My email is: grandmamack@comcast.net.
I will talk about the second thing I think we need to do to “Get Ready” next month. These are just my ideas, but what is God saying to you about how to “Get Ready”?
