Dominican Republic Day 2

DR Blog, Monday, March 2, 2015

Parkview Baptist Church

The day started with Geraldine Snipes leading our devotions before breakfast. She shared Acts 15:36 and a personal story of a church she and Charles worked on and then revisited several years later. The church, once thriving, was now in disarray--a great reminder that our church must remain on mission and outward focused, always ready to do the kingdom work God has called us to do.

It was awesome to see Pastor Cavier leading pre-workday devotionals with more than fifteen of the workers when we arrived on site. He was teaching them about the parable of the wheat and tares. Much like many small groups in our churches, the men seemed reluctant to speak when the pastor asked questions, but a few did and for the most part, the majority of men were engaged in the teaching. Devotions are not mandatory, so we are praying that God is using Pastor Cavier to do a great work here among these men.

Work today was much like yesterday. We painted the interiors of two more houses bringing our total to four (one more than expected.) After lunch we primed the exteriors of three houses to get them ready for paint. We were grateful that God blessed us with cloud coverage and a good breeze. It made painting outside very enjoyable. We met some of the neighborhood children as they stopped by to see what we were doing.

The ladies did a great job in two Bible sessions with the children. The morning session had about twenty children and the afternoon session had more than forty. Our team was prepared with enough snacks and balloon animals for everyone! The Bible lesson for today was the story of the Good Samaritan and the theme of the lesson was "be kind."

We met a pastor from Santiago, DR, whose ministry focuses on impoverished families who use their children to scour garbage dumps for items that may be resold or recycled for pennies. They help get the children away from the garbage dumps and into schools.

Highlights:
Jennifer met a young man, twelve years old, who was caring for four younger siblings and the conversation was a blessing even though it was in really broken Spanglish. Mike learned how to roll a bicycle tire using a cut plastic milk jug tied to a stick (a trick he learned from Luis.) Jim souped it up by painting white walls on it. One young lady, about thirteen, had to leave a little early because she had to go fix lunch for her younger siblings. We realized today just how important family is to this culture and we feel blessed to to be included in their family.

Dominican Republic Day 1

DR Blog Sunday, March 1, 2015

Parkview Baptist Church

We are grateful to God for a safe and uneventful travel day, yesterday. A few of us immediately began enjoying the cuisine choices that are not readily available in Lake City--pastelitos in Miami and empanadas in Santo Domingo. I promise that these posts will not be all about food, but we enjoyed fresh mango this morning as we gathered for breakfast and our morning devotions. We have certainly enjoyed the hospitality of our hosts.

Our first day on site was a blessing. We worshiped with the gathering at the Community Transformation Center. The pastor taught the people two new songs, "Draw Me Close to You," and "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High." Of course they were sung in Spanish but we sang along with them. Pastor Cavier preached from John 2:1-8 and really pressed the fact that Jesus is our only hope because Jesus is our only true God. (At least that is what we think he was saying.) I do know that he preached verse by verse and appreciated the expository method by which he preached.

After worship, the team began painting the interior of a house and very quickly worked up an appetite for lunch. After lunch, the men finished up the interior painting of two houses (with multiple coats.) The ladies had a great Bible time with almost thirty children. They introduced the Golden Rule and talked about caring for others. The children were excited to color pictures and get their snack.

Since we were still adjusting to the new schedule, morning devotions were moved to the evening. Pastor Mike shared some thoughts about the four different types of missions commissions in the Bible and encouraged the team to make much of Jesus during our stay.

Some highlights:

As our ladies were teaching the children a song, the children began singing it in their own language. It was a joy to see the families together. We were grateful that so many children came back in the afternoon.What a great reminder that the kingdom is much bigger than any one ethnicity or nation.

SBC, GCB: Is It Really About Our Name?

Over the past year, there has been much discussion about the possibility of a name change for the Southern Baptist Convention. This idea is not a new topic of discussion among Southern Baptists. But with the renewed SBC emphasis on church-planting, many of the church planters claimed that identification with the SBC created a hindrance to their planting efforts. Bryant Wright, President of the SBC, appointed a task force to research the implications and impact of a name change. What they found is what most most of us already knew--legally changing the name would be expensive and rebranding would be very difficult.

But the task force did make a recommendation that would allow church planters to identify themselves with the SBC using a non-legal SBC descriptor, GCB or Great Commission Baptists. SBC churches and church plants are autonomous, meaning they are self-governing, self-identifying, and self-theologizing within the framework of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (or like-minded confession.) This means that churches can call themselves whatever they want and include any descriptor they choose in their name. Many SBC churches have already made name changes and have removed "Baptist" from their names because they believe they serve areas where that label is a hindrance to their work. They did not need convention approval to do this. Neither do Church planters need our permission to use this kind of descriptor.

At the convention, there was much debate over affirmation of the addition of this descriptor to the SBC. Those against the descriptor missed the point of what this motion was really about. They rightly said that the motion wasn't necessary. They at times incoherently tried to make a case against rebranding. One even argued that since we were not fulfilling the Great Commission, we would be lying to call ourselves Great Commission Baptists. I was saddened by some of these arguments simply because this motion was not about the name of the SBC. The motion was really an opportunity for our convention to overwhelmingly support our church planters and the evangelistic work that they are doing in difficult areas of our nation. Many of these arguments really affirmed how little the churches in our denomination understand the difficult dynamics of church planting.

This motion was a plea from our church planters, many of them young and just out of seminary, for support from our denomination for their work. It was a chance for us to empathize with them and appreciate them for what they do. It was an opportunity for us to show them that they too have a voice in their convention. Debate over this motion only added to their skepticism about the SBC. It gives them cause to abandon the denomination that they may feel ultimately abandoned them. We will continue to wonder in amazement why our denomination is in decline if we continue to indirectly ignore the voice of our new generation of pastors and leaders.

The resolution passed, 53% to 47%. I am glad that the motion passed. I am saddened that it was such a close vote. At some point, Southern Baptists (at least 47% of us) are going to have to stop looking backwards, longing for the glory days of the way things used to be. We need to be forward thinking and that means affirming our planters who are theologically and doctrinally like-minded and giving them the tools to be successful Southern Baptist church planters, planting Great Commission focused Baptist churches.

Book Review: The Meaning of Marriage

Today our society offers many views of marriage. We are challenged to overlook or redefine the traditional roles of husband and wife in search for a more “relevant” institution—one that abandons the biblical picture of marriage in favor of a more culturally acceptable and politically palatable one.

Bob Dawson offers the following review of Tim Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with Wisdom from God. Just click the title for details and other helpful reviews from Amazon.com.

The Meaning of Marriage

Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

By Timothy Keller

With Kathy Keller

Are you getting married next month? Have you been married for fifty years? Perhaps you are some where between these two extremes.

Timothy Keller makes his case for the complexities of marriage by drawing heavily on Ephesians 5:18-33 where Paul talks about a man leaving his mother and father and clinging to his wife.

A man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery….

Ephesians 5:31-32

In the first chapter, The Meaning of Marriage” he states: I’m tired of listening to sentimental talks on marriage. At weddings, in church, and in Sunday school, much of what I’ve heard on the subject has as much depth as a Hallmark card. While marriage is many things, it is anything but sentimental. Marriage is glorious, but hard. It’s a burning joy and exhausting victories. No marriage I know more than a few weeks old could be described as a fairy tale come true. Therefore, it is not surprising that the only phrase in Paul’s famous discourse on marriage in Ephesians that many couples can relate to is verse 32 printed above. Sometimes you fall into bed after a long, hard day of trying to understand each other, and you can only sigh, “This is all a profound mystery!” At times, you marriage seems to be an unsolvable puzzle, a maze in which you feel lost.

“I believe all this, and yet there’s no relationship between human beings that is greater or more important than marriage……And that is why, like knowing God himself, coming to know and love your spouse is difficult and painful—yet rewarding and wondrous.”

In the chapter The Secret of Marriage Rev. Keller quotes ethics professor Stanley Hauerwas as follows:

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change……The primary problem is…learning to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

Rev. Keller goes on to explain that a biblical marriage is not a contract but a covenant. He goes to great lengths to explain the difference and how that difference is vitally important.

So if you are looking for a spouse or trying to strengthen your marriage of many years this book is for you. Whether you are a man or a woman, it will clarify what you should be looking for in a future spouse and it will point out how you should be relating to the spouse you have.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make their marriage the truly biblical covenant marriage that God wants it to be.

May God bless,

Bob Dawson

  

Keller, Timothy. The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with Wisdom from God. Dutton Adult, 2011. 288 pages. $25.95 ($14.34 at Amazon).

The Hypocrisy of Dan Savage

Last week while speaking at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle, Dan Savage hurled insults at students who left the room because they were offended by his remarks concerning the Bible and its position with regard to homosexuality. The irony is that he made his comments at a conference that was themed around an anti-bullying message. He even implicated himself as a bully when he said, “It’s funny that someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-a*** some people react when we push back.”

Forget the irony for minute. Savage makes the claim about the Bible that pro-homosexual activists have been making for years, that since the Bible got its views of slavery wrong then there is a one-hundred percent chance that its views on human sexuality are wrong as well. He basically levies the accusation that bullying towards homosexuals takes place because the Bible calls it an immoral act and that Christians justify their bullying from a biblical worldview.

Savage makes many assumptions in his argument. First and foremost he seems to assume that Christians who operate from a biblical worldview are the primary source of homosexual bullying. He assumes that Christians simply ignore other types of sexual behavior that the Bible speaks against. He also assumes that people who attack homosexuals are true Christians. Because he does not understand biblical Christianity, Savage creates what he thinks is a Christian for the explicit purpose of arguing against Christianity. In philosophy, that is called a straw-man. My response to Savage is that his own worldview, secular humanism, logically concludes that homosexuality is unnatural, and that we do not need to create straw-men secular humanists to make our case.

Darwinian evolution teaches that animals evolve in such a way as to maintain survivability in their respective environments. We have many different species of animals that came from a particular genetic descent because they evolved through chance mutations in order to fit their environment. Darwin also argued that species that did not evolve became extinct. Darwin assumed that the species that were the most fit survived. For Darwin life was all about survivability and the perpetuation of the species.

Evolution is to humanists what the Bible is to Christians—the underlying foundation to their worldview. The problem with humanists like Savage is that they fail to see that there is no place for homosexuality in their own worldview. Biologically, there is no way for a population that is entirely homosexual to perpetuate itself. The only way that homosexuality can exist is if it does so in a heterosexual society. According to Darwinian evolution, homosexuality should cease to exist because it biologically, genetically cannot survive on its own. It would have to evolve to heterosexuality in order to do so.

Christians can argue against homosexuality from multiple worldviews. Humanists like Savage can only argue for homosexuality by attacking the worldviews of others. In order to justify homosexuality, they have to step outside of their own worldview and admit that there is such thing as morality and then they have to convince people that humans are capable of defining their own morality, hence the attacks on the Bible and Bible-believing Christians.

Nobody develops their worldview in isolation. Every thinker is influenced by other thinkers. Because we are thinking beings, we choose the influences that form our worldview. Christians that operate from a biblical worldview have chosen to let the Bible stand as their authority. Others, such as Savage have chosen other forms of influence in the development of their worldview. Here is the difference: Savage’s worldview allows him to hurl insults at people that he would call bullies. A biblical worldview mandates that we love those who are trapped in the sinful lifestyle of homosexuality. So, who are the real hypocrites?

Concerning My Patriotism...

Now that the dust has settled on September and we are through the busyness of hosting gospel-centered meetings with the Strength Team, I want to take a moment to reflect and proverbially “clear the air.” Evidently, there has been some backlash with regard to the message I preached on September 11, “The Cage of Fear.” http://www.pbclc.com/home.aspx?igid=30035

I am not exactly sure what parts of the message were offensive. I cannot find anything in the intent of the message that would be considered biblically or doctrinally unsound. But something was offensive nonetheless and since I made statements that contrasted our country to heaven and patriotism to the gospel, I at least want everyone to be clear as to where I stand with regard to the privilege of being able to live in the greatest country in this world.

I cannot state it more simply than to say, “I love this country.” I am as patriotic as any American. As often as we are able, our family participates in an annual Independence Day boat parade. Every Memorial Day I mourn the loss of life sacrificed for this nation. I have served this country in the US Army and would still to this day defend it and its ideal of freedom against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My heart was broken on September 11, when our nation came under attack by coward terrorists who possess no sense of honor or courage and settle instead for taking innocent, civilian human life rather than facing their enemies on the field of battle. They have created a new battlefield and I for one am grateful for a government that is willing to take the fight to their lands.

Many of you do not know that I had the privilege of serving at ground zero with SBC Disaster Relief efforts. I was involved in serving the first response teams that were required to sift through the rubble and debris looking for evidence that would help to bring justice to the terrorists and vindication to the victims. I counseled with them and wept with them as they worked to unravel the mystery of the event that changed our nation. I carry the same weight of emotion, concern, and memory that many of you do when it comes to commemorating the events of 9/11.

At no time did I ever intend to communicate the idea that justice should not be served and that the people that are responsible for terrorism around the world should not be held accountable for their acts. Evil exists and it exists in the form of people whose hearts are not inclined toward God and the truth of His Son, Jesus Christ. The church empowered by the cross, sits in opposition to this evil by demonstrating in words and actions, what it is like to live under the glorious lordship of Jesus. We have the privilege of experiencing in part, the kingdom that will come at the return of Jesus. We oppose evil by living out the principles of the kingdom. And given the tension between a citizenship in a perfect, heavenly place and a residence in an imperfect, unrighteous, sinful place, we may find some of the kingdom principles difficult to live out in our everyday experience, especially when we are forced to choose between these principles and our cultural/patriotic/political worldview. Dr. Russell Moore (Dean of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) was right when he said (via twitter), “Toby Keith and Jack Bauer don’t speak for us today [9/11/11]. Let our neighbors hear from us justice and mercy, with a Galilean accent.”

The point of that message, which for whatever reason was missed by some, was that fear paralyzes us and keeps us from standing opposed to evil in a godly way. We may oppose it but in our sinful nature, that opposition manifests itself in hatred, bitterness, and yes, even racism when we are trapped by fear. Parkview is a healthy church (regardless of the rumors that surfaced in Lake City the week after that message) because it is willing to be confronted by the message of Jesus and wrestle with statements such as, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Mt 5:44).

I stand by my conviction that as great as our Declaration of Independence is, it does not come close to the freedom that is proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as great as our Constitution is, it does not compare to the principles that govern the lives of citizens of the kingdom of God. May we “if it is possible, as much as depends on [us], live peaceably with all men” (Rom 12:18), especially others who claim the name of Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Quarterback Churches

In an effort to promote increased giving to the Cooperative Program, the Florida Baptist Convention is kicking off a campaign to encourage churches to become Quarterback Churches. The idea is for churches to increase their CP gifts by .25% (1/4 of one percent) each year for the next four years, which when you do the math increases the church’s overall giving by 1% by the beginning of year four.

Increased CP giving is absolutely necessary if Florida Baptists are going to remain faithful to the mission to which we have been called. I hope that many of our churches will become Quarterback Churches and begin the process of increasing their CP gifts. Whether we like it or not, the Florida Baptist Convention must make changes in order to compete with other mission agencies for local church dollars. The more our churches invest in the CP, the easier it will be for these changes to occur. Quarterback Churches will be on the front line of helping our convention become a leader in mission and missionary efforts in our fields of receptivity.

In an effort to recognize increased giving among some churches, we forget that there are churches in our convention that have not wavered in their commitment to the Cooperative Program. They will never be Quarterback Churches because they have for the past ten to twenty years been Fullback Churches, churches that were willing to carry the ball into the trenches and stretch their ministry dollars in order to invest in a Cooperative Program that many had abandoned. The Quarterback Campaign is designed to move the average giving levels of churches from 6% to 7%, which will make an incredible difference. But Fullback Churches have consistently led this Convention with their gifts of 10-12% each year.

This year there will be churches recognized as Quarterback Churches because they increase their giving by 1% over the next four years, but their backstage, boardroom strategies that reduced their missions giving in the past will remain unnoticed. While I am grateful for the churches that will step up as Quarterback Churches, I want to make sure that the Fullback Churches know how much we appreciate them. I love the campaign idea and I hope the Florida Baptist Convention leverages these increases to maximize efficiency in its mission. Listing names on a website, and most likely in a newspaper article in the future, alienates those who have sacrificed for years in order to give to a cause that is bigger than any one particular church. In my estimation, these churches are already included in a list that will probably never be published, Fullback Churches. But then again, rarely does the fullback expect the attention.