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Moving Beyond Programs and Entertainment Meet John · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: My name is John Hofelenya. I pastor a church here
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  Speaker 1: in Manila. I came into a traditional Southern Baptist church.
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  Speaker 1: We made relationships with the college students. That's how they
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  Speaker 1: they attracted me in the first place. Come into the ministry.
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  Speaker 1: The ministry was vibrant. It was full of young people music.
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  Speaker 1: Everything that I learned about ministry I learned from them
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  Speaker 1: from that church. It was through activities and events and
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  Speaker 1: programs that you kept people in the church. We listened
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  Speaker 1: to the problems of the people. Usually, we tried to
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  Speaker 1: relate to their stories, encourage them that God loved them
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  Speaker 1: even though they were going through problems, that God would
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  Speaker 1: accept them and would help them in their lives. And
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  Speaker 1: so we asked them if they wanted to accept God
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  Speaker 1: into their life that way, and of course they would
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  Speaker 1: say yes. We started thinking about what would attract them.
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  Speaker 1: Started ministries like a cafe ministry where bands would play.
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  Speaker 1: And bands were a big thing at that time. So
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  Speaker 1: every Friday we would have cafe ministry. We'd start off
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  Speaker 1: with some worship songs. We'd have some bands play a
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  Speaker 1: sort of mini sermon right there in the middle, but
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  Speaker 1: people would just come and flock in because of the bands,
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  Speaker 1: we thought that was the sign of a successful ministry.
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  Speaker 1: Right around twenty ten, a friend of mine pointed me
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  Speaker 1: to the direction of some reform materials. Started with don't
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  Speaker 1: waste your life, and then when I don't desire God
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  Speaker 1: and God is the gosp Well, then that kind of
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  Speaker 1: led me towards into looking at the Design God website
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  Speaker 1: and digging into all the materials that were there, and
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  Speaker 1: there were a lot, So there was a lot of
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  Speaker 1: painful things in that journey, that of realizing my complete
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  Speaker 1: disregard of God's word and of who he was. If
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  Speaker 1: you're not convinced of how big God is, then you
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  Speaker 1: can't really preach that to your church. So there was
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  Speaker 1: like a wonderful, painful, yeah, but wonderful journey for me
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  Speaker 1: and my wife kind of rediscover reading the Bible for ourselves,
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  Speaker 1: looking at the Bible, understanding who God is and being
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  Speaker 1: able to talk about it. And we kind of decided
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  Speaker 1: that we had to start moving away from the entertainment based,
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  Speaker 1: activity centric kind of ministry youth ministry, but just basically
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  Speaker 1: preach the Bible. There would be music, of course, but
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  Speaker 1: this was not like the big band great music that
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  Speaker 1: they heard from us before there was just it was
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  Speaker 1: just a little more torn down because that wasn't the
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  Speaker 1: focus anymore. The focus was the preaching of the Gospel.
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  Speaker 1: There is a lot of good that that desiring God
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  Speaker 1: is doing, and we pray that desiring God would be
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  Speaker 1: able to continue doing more good. And for people who
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  Speaker 1: funded understand that God is using you to make sure
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  Speaker 1: that people like us get a chance to do things right,
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  Speaker 1: that we get pointed to the God of the Bible,
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  Speaker 1: that we get pointed to Christ, that we get pointed
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  Speaker 1: to the right way of doing church. There are other
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  Speaker 1: churches in other parts of the world that are going
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  Speaker 1: through the same exact thing, and they're struggling in the
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  Speaker 1: same exact challenges and that they're being encouraged by God's
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  Speaker 1: for it to endure. So this is an encouragement for us.
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  Speaker 1: So thank you, Thank you so much.