DTS Magazine Summer 2018

DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

INSIDE:

HOPE IN NEVERLAND: HOW GOD’S STORY SHAPES OUR OWN

Summer 2018 | Vol. 4, No. 2

A VISUAL AND MARTIAL SENSEI: PROFILE OF KEITH D. YATES

WHAT THE CHURCH NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT GAMERS

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

God’s Creative Vision FROM: DR. MARK L. BAILEY

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rom the very beginning, we see God’s artistry—in the act of creation—creating ex nihilo, out of nothing. The world and all it contains exhibits and declares the glory of God. As do we, his creatures, fashioned from dust on that sixth day.

Our Creator’s handiwork exists in all of us (Gen 1:26). Formed in his image, God sketched his creative ability in our DNA— with a command to extend his creative work (Gen 1:28) all for his glory (1 Cor 10:31).

When sin entered the world, humanity lost its natural capacity to live and serve in righteousness. And to this day, God continues to redeem and transform from void and darkness through the work of the cross, through his Son, Jesus. Created, redeemed, and transformed—made and remade in Christ (Eph 2:10)—we serve by becoming and making something good, beautiful, colorful, and useful for him. Because of Christ, our work sparks in a darkened world and, once again, we shine as the light of the world (Matt 5:14–16).

As God’s children, we are also the stones, the living stones, and joined together as a dynamic body—his body—the church creatively equipped to do the work set before us. God’s Word lays out the design plan for the church in probably its most succinct form. What should the church demonstrate? What should we think about as we come together as his image-bearers?

God’s creative vision for his church is oneness: one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:4–6). Jesus Christ himself is the cornerstone, the keystone (Eph 2:20). He is the critical stone. And he’s at the apex of the arts.

It is from him through whom the whole body fits and holds together, by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each. Our individual role causes the growth of the body for the building up (Eph 2:19–22). With an emphasis on his love, his part is where we fit and creatively join together.

It’s an imagery of a complete system of nerves and muscles and limbs and coordination and coadjustment. And the unity of the structure and the variety of the function show a proper

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element of growth, but our creative role is the participation if his is the power and the wisdom to make it happen.

Our part is to show up, to seek him, to be chiseled off, to settle in, to create, to innovate, and to stay connected with one another.

It’s that great way in which God has commanded us to commit to what only he can do. Philippians 2:13 reminds us God is at work in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. God changes our will, and he gives us the ability to serve creatively.

Remember our Lord’s words, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:16). The world will see that it is only through Christ that we are remade into something beautiful and Christ-honoring.

Through our commitment to each other, and through our created works, people will notice that from the beginning God has had an artful, loving intentionality in the lives of his creation. And people will want our deep sense of fulfillment of knowing who we are as created beings made in the image of an artist.

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Jesus Christ himself is the cornerstone, the keystone. He is the critical stone. And he’s at the apex of the arts.

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DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Our mission is to glorify God by equipping godly servant-leaders for the proclamation of his Word and the building up of the body of Christ worldwide.

IN THIS ISSUE

DTS Magazine® Summer 2018 Vol. 4, No. 2 ISSN 1092–7492 ©2018 Dallas Theological Seminary. All rights reserved.

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Published three times a year by Dallas Theological Seminary 3909 Swiss Avenue Dallas, Texas 75204

HOPE IN NEVERLAND: HOW GOD’S STORY SHAPES OUR OWN Jed Ostoich (THM, 2014) writes about the power of storytelling and what Christians can do to rediscover and live in light of God’s story.

Mark L. Bailey, President John C. Dyer, Executive Director of Communications and Educational Technology Raquel P. Wroten, Editor Keith D. Yates, Amelia Palmer, Layout and Design Debbie J. Stevenson, Production Manager Ryan Holmes, Caroline Khameneh, Don Regier, Christine Zhang, Photographers Kathy Dyer, Matt Holland, Melanie Munnell, Margaret Tolliver, Copy Editing Matt Snyder, Ad Designer Aeriel Eichenberger, Greg Hatteberg, Alumni Connection

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SUBSCRIBE Subscriptions are free of charge to addresses in the United States. Go to dts.edu/magazine or call 800-DTSWORD and ask for the DTS Magazine subscription office.

EMAIL Contact admissions@dts.edu for information about DTS’s graduate degree programs.

Jon Campoverde (THM, 2018) writes about his ministry to gamers and what the church needs to understand in order to take steps forward in loving gamers with the love of Christ.

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ONLINE/SUBMISSIONS Visit voice.dts.edu/magazine to view the editorial policies or DTS Magazine online.

Send email address changes to ckirchdorfer@dts.edu, or mail to DTS Magazine 3909 Swiss Ave. Dallas, Texas 75204

MAXIMIZING IMPACT: GLORIFYING GOD THROUGH EMPOWERMENT Stephanie Giddens (THM, 2009) challenges ministries to think outside of the box. She writes about how the church can empower, innovate, and have a more lasting impact on the hurting.

Contact rwroten@dts.edu to submit articles, request reprints, or make comments.

DONATIONS For information on how you can support the ministry of DTS, call 214-887-5060.

WHAT THE CHURCH NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT GAMERS

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A VISUAL AND MARTIAL SENSEI: PROFILE OF KEITH D. YATES (MABS, 1983)

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GOD’S HEART FOR THOSE IN NEED: LORD, WHAT CAN I DO? April Graney (MABS, 1999) explains how every believer has received gifts, talents, and a calling to creatively use them to change the world by sharing the gospel, and by loving God and others.

Unless noted otherwise, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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I will never forget the day Neverland shut its doors to me.

The sun lazed between the BobRoss clouds that late afternoon before I started eighth grade.

Like nearly every summer before, I’d donned my homemade leather armor and taken up arms against the imaginary monsters that marched through the Pennsylvania

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behind my house.

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For years I’d plunge into a world of pure imagination. I’d stride over broken corn stalks to meet my foes while the real world faded behind me. For those moments—hours really—I lived and moved in a completely different plane of existence.

When our Creator—the designer of the human mind—set out to reveal himself to the humans he created, he chose to do so not in bulleted lists of facts or lengthy doctrinal exposition, but in story.

But that day in late August with the robins singing their farewells to summer, I couldn’t pry the doors to Neverland open.

Try as I might, the leather hanging from my shoulders and the stick in my hand simply wouldn’t morph into my fighting gear, and the corn rustling in the wind stubbornly refused to fight back.

Genesis begins like any good book—at the beginning. It introduces us to a Creator who plays with creation. There’s a childlike joy in the opening pages of the Bible as God speaks and spins the world into existence. G. K. Chesterton once described God like children playing in Neverland:

Tears streaked my thirteen-year-old face at the frustration of it.

I sensed something had died. I feared Neverland had closed its doors to me forever.

My fears proved ill-founded, it turns out. Story is to the human race what water is to fish. Every day, we tell stories—describing to coworkers the previous evening’s activities with a dramatic flair or recounting an escapade from our childhood to our peers with all the suspense of a great novel.

And when a person sitting next to us on a plane simply refuses to read their copy of a magazine, we respond to their question, “What do you do?” with a story.

We can’t get away from it. When we turn off the lights and close our eyes on the stress of the day, our brains tell themselves stories for hours. Bizarre though they may be, those dreams stay with us well into the morning.

LIKE OUR CREATOR We do it because God made us like him, and God’s primary playground is the imagination. Once he started telling stories, there was no chance we—being like him—could stop. We may become rusty in telling and enjoying narratives, but the gates to Neverland never actually close.

“It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”1 For Chesterton, God’s home is Neverland.

But the Neverland of Eden didn’t stay perfect for long. The great Dragon seduced infant humanity to self-worship, and darkness squeezed onto the page (Gen 3:1–7). Rather than lecture the human race with data, however, God began an adventure that started with a man named Abram (Gen 12:1–3).

Along the way, the Creator told his story—the story of beauty lost, warring with darkness, and brilliant light of hope. And God commanded that his people tell his story to each other over and over and over again. Why? It’s part of how he made us.

CREATED FOR STORY In the center of the brain there’s a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. It’s the bridge that ferries information back and forth between the left and right brain hemispheres. But for some people that bridge has fallen down—whether due to tumors or surgical practices used to stop seizures.

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In a series of experiments done in the 1960s, a man named Michael Gazzaniga found, with the help of these split-brained people, the storytelling part of our brain.

Each subject looked at an instruction—like “walk”—with only their left eye.

Their right hemisphere processed it, and they’d start acting on the instructions. But the left side of the brain controls speech, and with the corpus callosum snipped, information that the right side knew got stuck. Gazzaniga would ask the test subjects why they walked across the room.

Through centuries of persecution and prosperity, God's people have told his story. Now it's our turn.

The left brain didn’t know. It couldn’t. But without missing a beat, subjects would answer in a lie: “I wanted to go get a Coke.”2 Over thirty years ago that neuroscientist proved what God knew from the beginning: If humanity doesn’t have a story to tell, it will make one up and believe it’s completely, 100 percent true.

I’ve seen it in my own life. Instead of orcs and castles, I invented fantasies about my relationships and career. Often those stories included explanations for my personal vices. I recited them to myself over and over again until they evolved into my complete reality.

I’m not alone. When we tell ourselves whatever story we wish, fallen humans will inevitably end up doing whatever’s right in our own eyes ( Judg 21:25). As an antidote to these self-absorbed fantasies, thankfully, God chose to reveal himself in story.

From the beginning of their nation, the Israelites were a people of narrative.

The Passover was their own Genesis—the beginning of a new story wherein God’s people walk free of the chains of darkness. Down through the generations, the bleeding neck of the sacrificial lamb burned itself onto the retinas of Israel’s young children. And whenever they wondered, “Why do we do this?” their parents told them a story, Once upon a time, we were slaves in Egypt (see Deut 6:20–21).

Israel went astray every time they stopped rehearsing God’s story. In the wilderness they entertained notions of their own greatness back in Egypt. In Canaan they told themselves the stories of Baal and Marduk. In the end they forgot their God because they replaced his story with one of their own making.

SHAPED BY STORY Whether we know it or not, the fantasies we choose to tell ourselves shape us.

Neuroscientists have piled up the research showing how narratives change our brains. We’ve all experienced it—whether at the campfire or in a movie theater, a scary story well-told often leaves us checking under the bed and behind the closet door.

We experience stories at the neurological level as if they actually happen to us—so much so that the chemistry and cells in our brains begin to mirror the characters we connect to. Infamous Adolf Hitler fell in love with the opera. From a young age he developed a particular fascination with Richard

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Wagner’s Germanic epics. Historians credit the fantasies spun in the vaulted opera houses with setting Hitler on his course to German nationalism and, later, genocide. But he started as a young boy who listened to a story.

It’s little wonder, then, that God chose to reveal himself to us not only in facts but in the fantastic details of narrative. If we become—at a neurological level—like the character we love in our favorite stories, then it would follow that by telling God’s story, we’d become like him.

In his recent book, A Concise Guide to Reading the New Testament, David Nienhuis speaks frankly about the dismay he encounters in Bible students who, when reading the Word of God for the first time as a literary whole, find themselves utterly lost. We need to get back to the Bible as story, he argues.

Because, “stories, it turns out, are ‘irreducible’: they cannot be distilled down into a purer, simpler, ‘truer’ form.”3 Do we struggle today in knowing our God because we’ve lost sight of his story? Reading plans for the Bible have us jumping from passage to passage, book to book, testament to testament.

We strip the story of its power, turning it instead into a homeopathic soup for the Christian soul.

Like the Israelites bringing their wounded animals to the Temple (Mal 1:7–8), we make our obligatory offerings and ignore the grand drama playing out in front of us. We reduce God to a list of character traits, rattled off at the nearest hint of a Sunday school question, and then we flip on the TV to watch a rerun of Friends. Our lives change, yes, but to reflect the self-absorbed escapades of late nineties tweenagers.

RETURN TO NEVERLAND If we take the time to steep ourselves in the story of our God, we will quickly realize that we do not exist as the hero.

Throughout history God continued to proclaim his story to his people—through kings, through prophets, through his Son (Heb 1:1). Jesus’s advent among us brought the drama thoroughly to earth. He pointed to the Old Testament because it told the story of his Father reaching out to us. Jesus steeped himself in the story of his Father and proclaimed it to his people (Luke 4:16–19).

And when Jesus ascended with victory in his hand, he left us with a single command: Tell his story (Acts 1:8). After all, a witness is little more than a storyteller. In our minds we tend to throw witnesses up onto a courtroom stand and squeeze them like a lemon. We prepare to live as Jesus’s witnesses in the same fashion—arming ourselves with facts, details, and charts.

But in reality, Jesus asked his people to share his story—to take the whole drama of God that had unfolded up to that point and tell it to everyone. To whisper it on the street corner and laugh along with it by the fireside. To huddle next to the decaying in the catacombs and feast on the story of the hero-God who came to his people.

Through centuries of persecution and prosperity, God’s people have told his story. Now it’s our turn. God calls each of us to play a part in the drama that still continues to unfold around us. The cover hasn’t closed; the last pages pile up ahead of us.

As the writer of Hebrews points out, all those who have gone before us wait eagerly for us to do our tiny bit before all of us can return to the heavenly city—to Neverland (Heb 11:39–40).

In his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis put it this way: “At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. . . . But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”

We need to put aside our desire to categorize our faith in bits of data and learn to imagine again. Only then can we watch God dance across the water’s surface before light-shattered darkness. We can weep with him over the breaking of the earth under human hands. We can smile with him when the promised-boy-called-laughter squealed his first breath to the sky. On and on through the story we can join him in his work, sleeves rolled up, and promise on the horizon.

Our Neverland home lies over the horizon. We march homeward armed not with leather and sticks, but each with our own story. The story of a God who reached down to us, redeemed us from our sin, and infused us with the life-giving Spirit. As we go, we play our part—making disciples who follow Jesus. He is, after all, the hero. ______________________________ NOTES 1. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1959), 61.

2. Michael Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (NY: HarperCollins, 2006), 149.

3. David Nienhuis, A Concise Guide to Reading the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 13.

JED OSTOICH (ThM, 2014) is an associate publisher at RightNow Media and associate editor at Fathom magazine. He’s worked as a freelance writer, editor, and researcher for the last ten years, and serves as an elder at his church. He and his wife, Jocelyn, live in McKinney, Texas, with their three children.

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s a gamer who loves the Lord and loves everything about gaming, I have realized over the years most gamers misunderstand the church and the church misunderstands them. What should the church know about gamers? Can believers share their faith through a game?

the main scene First, let’s start by breaking down a stereotype that has misinformed the church’s perception of gamers. Whenever I talk to other Christians about gamers, their responses involve some version of an unkempt young man, unemployed, living in his parents’ basement. While I know a few single guys who fit this image, the majority of gamers I know will surprise you.

Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry reports the average gamer is a thirty-five-year-old and that almost half are female. In fact, more adult women play games than teenage boys. Google Play and Newzoo presented evidence that women play games five times per week or more for other reasons beyond entertainment. Most surveyed women said they play games as stress reducers that offer needed moments of rest. Sixty percent said it makes them feel good.

This should not surprise the church. After all, games have evolved into a bigger part of the American home with nearly two-thirds of every household owning some form of gaming system. These systems on average receive over three hours of play time each week. The majority of them include computers or smartphones, but half of American households own a dedicated gaming system of some sort. Gaming has thus grown into another American pastime, and many families include gaming as part of their entertainment.

mmo—massive multiplayer online Many Christians I know see gamers as inherently antisocial. I remember working with a Christian organization and spending my downtime playing a game online. My coworkers called me antisocial for most of the time I worked there.

I tried to explain to them how the game worked. That at any given time, I would interact with several of the gamers who also played the game online. At its peak, Blizzard—the publisher of the game—reported 12 million active subscribers. In an article written for Polygon.com, Philip Kollar reported that their most recent numbers hovered somewhere around 10.1 million.

Still, in this massive multiplayer online (MMO) game, players can cooperate with forty other players at a time, working together to complete certain objectives within the game. Players can also interact with over forty other players in other areas of the game, because of the in-game chat features. This doesn’t account for the dedicated communities of players (called guilds) who play together frequently. Over the years, I’ve returned to play that game online because I get to interact with other people, and I know many other gamers feel the same way as I do.

have realized over the years “Imost gamers misunderstand the church and the church misunderstands them. What should the church know about gamers?

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Statistically, over half of all gamers spend an average of six hours each week playing multiplayer games. Over half of those gamers play with family members, bringing them closer to their families.

On occasion, I like to play Overcooked with my niece and wife. The game presents a variety of challenges players must work together to overcome in order to progress to the next level. In fact, in his review, “Overcooked Family Values,” Drew Dixon highlighted the team-building nature of the game and how his family learned to work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses to succeed. His experience describes my own.

I appreciate the conversations I’ve had with my family about conflict resolution and playing as a team as a result of this game. Games allow families to have these dialogues in safe, fun situations. Overcooked creates this safety with its cartoony graphics and increasingly ridiculous restaurants. The stakes are low, but the lessons matter.

the video game culture Other lessons learned through gaming involve playing online with people very different from me. I didn’t realize or understand the diversity within the gaming community until my first trip to a convention.

I attend gaming conventions with Gamechurch, an organization whose ministry bridges the gap between the gospel and the gamer.

I stood at a convention table, handing out Bibles and other free swag. The sheer ethnic diversity of the people walking by my table struck me. For a long time, I only thought of gamers as people like me—around my age with similar life experiences. I stereotyped gamers as nerds whether they visibly fit the profile or not. Yet the people I saw that day broke down my preconceptions. People from all ages, all ethnicities, and all forms of life experience walked by our booth.

Part of my responsibility with Gamechurch also included spending time with people from all over the world who traveled to the convention. I knew people played games, but I simply never realized the vastness of the gamer population. In this gaming community, we have a common language. What an amazing opportunity to interact with people and share the love of Christ!

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Gamers come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. People might wonder if they can self-identify as a gamer because they play Angry Birds on their phone or enjoy a round of Solitaire on their computer. My understanding is that those who play any game during downtime are considered a gamer, and people don’t necessarily have to play video games either.

for the love of a game

One aspect of gaming that has drawn more attention lately ditches the graphics and instead involves a table, some cardboard, and meeples (modern board gaming pieces that represent the player).

The gaming community not only includes people who play video games but it also includes those who play board games too. Like video gamers, they consist mostly of adults.

In an article for the Atlantic, Jonathan Kay explained the growing trend of board games. Newer board games now include sophisticated rules and engaging challenges, or they allow adults to revisit the silly-fun of their childhood. Sales in this industry have increased by over 400 percent from 2013 to 2016, and GenCon—one of the biggest board-game trade shows in the US— had over 200,000 people attend last year. Like their video cousins, board games bring people together and allow for meaningful connections in a safe, fun environment, but board games do so in a physical space.

I intern for InnRoads Ministries, a board-gaming ministry. One of their forms of outreach involves setting up board games in churches to foster community for churchgoers. As a result of these interactions, meaningful conversations about God and the Christian life happen. This reflects something I’ve noticed while ministering to gamers. People desire meaningful conversations and a loving community.

jesus loves Gamers Have Christians created spaces for gamers to have meaningful conversations or to find a loving community? Gamers thirst for something more than what they currently have. They search online for a group who will love them and accept them. I know plenty of people who found a loving, accepting community in their WoW guild, their Xbox Live Club, or their favorite Discord server, yet they would never look for that love and acceptance in a church building.

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Have concerns over gaming addiction and the influence of violent games on people led the church to detach from gaming as a whole, showing an attitude of fear rather than a determination to love? This spirit of fear misses the mark concerning God’s love for all people because Jesus loves and calls us to love gamers too. Somehow, the command to love one’s neighbor has lost any relevance when talking about gamers, even though a solid majority of American families contain one to two gamers in their households. So what can we do to love the gamers in our churches? How should the church reach them?

I remember a conversation in my second year of seminary.

Sitting in a class on evangelism, my passion for sharing the gospel grew to an all-time high. Several long-term friendships with nonbelievers lay heavily on my heart. In one of these in particular, I felt the Holy Spirit move me to share, so I did. We talked for an hour or so about life and faith, about a relationship with God, and what that would look like for my friend. It felt amazing to see God moving. What surprised me the most is that this entire conversation happened while I played a video game with my friend.

Jesus summarized the entirety of the Law and the Prophets in two commands: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself ” (Mark 12:30–31).

Statistically, gamers permeate our neighborhoods. Gamers want meaningful relationships. Why not introduce them to the one who loves and cares for them better than anyone else?

In every aspect of real life, playing a game cultivates relationships.

Gamers foster long-distance, digital relationships that allow for evangelism and discipleship. The church only needs to meet them in their spaces. I wish I could have articulated this to my peers back in my second year of seminary. Instead, I hid the evangelistic conversation I had with my friend because I thought my peers would judge me. Still, my ministry journey continues, and I pray that as a church we can take steps forward in loving gamers with the love of Jesus because they so desperately need it.

JON CAMPOVERDE (ThM, 2018) loves people, theology, and stories. Jon teaches various science subjects to middle school and high school students but desires to teach literature because of his love for narratives. He and his wife, Stephanie, live in Irving, Texas, and attend Irving Bible Church.

Dallas Theological Seminary believes its four-year integrated ThM program is the best way to prepare the next generation of pastor-scholars for the changing needs of today’s church. DTS is so committed to this model that it’s making the final twenty-four credit hours free for all ThM students who start by summer 2019.

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Maximizing Impact Glorifying God through Empowerment

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s a chi l d, eve r y ti me Nat io n al Geographic hit the mailbox, I’d flip through the pages, imagining the places I would one day travel. One theme remained constant–Africa.

I visited Uganda for the first time in 2008. Everything I had imagined—like the romanticized commercials of starving children I watched growing up—came to life. Seeing the 2002 Miami Hurricanes BCS National Champions t-shirts for sale in the market (they actually lost that game) caught me by surprise.

Two realizations hit me. First, our clothes do not go to starving children. They only generate piles of waste. Second, How are we still having this “poverty in Africa” problem?

Many factors contribute, such as corrupt governments and lack of education. But that day in Kampala, I saw firsthand the American contribution to the problem. Those shirts probably came from a well-meaning organization doing what they had always done. Because that’s what we do, right? We send our old clothes to people who need them more than we do. Therein lies the problem.

Outside of an acute crisis situation, a sympathy donation given in the name of compassion may not actually meet the real need.

It only provides a temporary solution for a hemorrhaging wound and dismisses the root problem. It only treats the presenting symptom. An unintentional power structure forms between donor and beneficiary in that the benefactor feels good about helping someone “less than” and the recipient grows dependent on the donor. This enables the cycle of generational poverty, never giving the recipients of charity tools to rise above their current circumstance.

CALL FOR CHANGE We as believers can do better than this. Am I suggesting we discontinue sponsoring children, cancel donations to charities that dig wells, and end aid to hurricane victims? Not at all. These help and provide necessary forms of charity for specific times and people groups when managed properly. They also fulfill a clear scriptural mandate to help the hurting and broken. However, I believe we can approach charitable ministry more intentionally once an acute crisis ends and ongoing care begins.

A disruption must exist in the power structure created by most charitable endeavors. Our goal should include lifting people up because of their inherent value as image-bearers instead of holding them down with the heavy hand of enablement. We see Christ repeatedly affirm the inherent, image-bearing value of the “underdog” in Scripture while he met their basic needs. He consistently left people in better condition than when he found them—empowering them to do more (Matt 9).

Innovatively and intentionally incorporating empowerment into our ministry models not only meets immediate needs, but it also

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created people to learn skills with which they can generate income for themselves. Ministry leaders honor that creative design by helping others learn to help themselves.

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allows the beneficiary to provide for themselves. This requires more planning, time, and work for donors, volunteers, and ministry leaders.

Over the course of time, however, it allows ministries to help people and steward resources more effectively. Let’s walk through the process of what it might look like to create a ministry philosophy for charitable endeavors that includes empowerment.

This philosophy not only applies to ministry leaders who develop programs but also to donors desiring to responsibly steward their resources. Because so many charitable ministries serve those suffering from the effects of poverty, assume the beneficiaries in this instance have extremely limited financial resources.

If the problem manifests ongoing poverty, then donated goods will not provide a sustainable solution and will not change a person’s financial status long-term. Reliance upon contributions places the burden on the donor to supply a virtually unending supply of goods. This proves unrealistic, especially in the wake of increasing wealth inequality, hunger, poverty, and displaced peoples. This model fails to recognize that a lack of income, not a lack of goods, exists at the root of the problem. We must treat the source of the problem, and this requires a different approach than most traditional charitable ministry models.

HONOR THE CREATIVE DESIGN Empowering the poor must provide the beneficiary with a means by which they can earn income. The ability to earn monetary means and provide for their own basic needs supports their upward climb out of poverty. God created people to learn skills with which they can generate income for themselves. Ministry leaders honor that creative design by helping others learn to help themselves.

This sounds relatively simple in developed countries such as the United States where opportunity abounds, but developing countries can realize this concept too. This kind of program requires focused time and resources regardless of location.

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The key lies in working within the educational constraints of those served and ensuring they learn a skill or trade that can prove profitable in that respective location. For example, training men in the latest tech skills may not be as valuable in rural Africa where accessing electricity has its limits, but training them in innovative farming techniques can revolutionize their village— economically and in their food supply.

See how the disruption of the donor/beneficiary power structure occurred? No longer does the beneficiary solely rely upon the donor for charity. They rise as a peer laborer…or at the very least a respected employee. In time, the newly minted laborer will have enough skill to teach others, furthering the process. Just as poverty has a devastating ripple effect on its victims, empowerment has an even more powerful dignifying effect on its beneficiaries.

Once the charitable power structure gets disrupted, the restoration of dignity appears. Poverty, crisis, and trauma leave people in incredibly undignified positions. So often, ministries fail to restore dignity to the beneficiary by doing nothing to help lift people out of their crippling situation. We help them, yes. But we don’t help them out. Whether born into a helpless situation or thrown into it by circumstance, image-bearers need to know they have value. They need respect and the opportunity to earn the respect of others. This cannot happen if they constantly hold a position of “less-than” by a donor/beneficiary charity model.

playing field when they walk into a store as an equal with other consumers. They’re no longer less-than. That’s dignity!

Participation creates a byproduct—relationships and community. Training that truly empowers others cannot happen without a significant time investment. That time, if used intentionally, provides space for relationships to grow—vital to truly meeting needs and serving others in a life-changing way. Only in the context of community can anyone discover a person’s needs, struggles, and desires. As trust forms, a two-way bond connects people and changes occur.

First, a friendship forms and equality grows. When a person recognizes another as a co-image-bearer rather than a need or social class, it restores dignity. Second, blessings develop as the friendship grows. This blessing includes the satisfaction felt after compassion-driven resource distribution, although nothing proves wrong with this kind of giving or the satisfaction felt afterward. This relational blessing—a blessing that remembers your birthday and checks when you’re sick—innovates. When life change transforms into bidirectional, it has the opportunity to positively affect everyone involved. Trust forms within the relationship and, as a result, people have the opportunity to address more complex issues such as spiritual, mental, and emotional needs. Ministry grows deeper rather than wide.

MAKING THE SWITCH VICTORIES IN MINISTERING I see this firsthand in my own ministry, Vickery Trading. The refugee women I serve learn to sew and earn income using that skill. One of the first “victories” each of them have in our program includes the ability to go to the store and buy new clothes for their children. Not pick up clothes from a clothes closet at the nearest charity (a vital and helpful ministry when they first arrive) but purchase something that they choose and want with money that they earned with their hard work. Suddenly, they level the

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These changes do not have ample opportunity to develop in a traditional charity model based on donated goods because the majority of human and financial resources focus on gathering and dispersing the goods. As I mentioned above, a time and place exist for aid such as this. The refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe provide a current example. The initial focus of survival and safety must take place. However, once addressed, what can we do to help people move forward? How quickly can we step into it?

We can shift our attention and resources to empower much earlier than most ministries currently do. So why aren’t we doing this?

At the most basic level, change proves hard and this drastically shifts the approach for most ministries involving resource distribution. Honestly, the numbers aren’t as impactful in the beginning. My ministry currently empowers nine women. In 2017, we invested over $60,000 in associate salaries. A traditional resource-distribution ministry mindset probably cringes at this number. That money could pay for a multitude of resources passed out to hundreds of people!

But they act as resources on which (beyond initial aid during crisis) the beneficiary would continue to depend. At Vickery Trading, we’ve chosen instead to invest in educating women and paying them salaries that they earn through learned skills. This not only provides for their needs and supports their families, but it moves them out of dependency and into independence.

They no longer rely on donations, and the trajectory of their families changes for generations. The exponential impact at that point becomes limitless and the return on investment on donor dollars spent dramatically improves over the lifetime of the program. When considering the long-term financial, relational, and spiritual impact of a program, an empowerment model has greater potential to steward resources more effectively.

After a couple of interactions, they have a history with one another, start to swap numbers, and invite one another to their homes. Relationship formed.

As for job skill training, that can admittedly require more involvement, start small. What needs does the local church or neighborhood have that the person in training can do? What skills do congregational members have that they can teach someone?

Skills often taught and monetized include sewing, carpentry, auto repair, lawn care, and art.

I challenge ministry leaders and donors to think outside the box for the benefit of others. Identify places that can unintentionally create a donor/beneficiary power structure. Evaluate programs and find opportunities for empowerment. Reconsider giving to include empowerment as a criterion for gifts. Together, as the church, we can innovate and have a more lasting impact on the hurting as we glorify our Creator through the empowerment of his creation.

GETTING STARTED This begs the question: How do we get started? What’s the first step? How do we implement a program that grows income-earning potential while restoring dignity and building relationships?

Unless you start from scratch with an entirely new ministry, simply begin small. Provide opportunities for relationships to form between donors or volunteers and program beneficiaries.

Give people a chance to get to know one another instead of only distributing goods.

This step takes a little more time and almost no financial resources but has tremendous impact. At Vickery Trading, this means that if a volunteer ties tags onto a headband, they do it sitting by an associate as she’s sewing and they get to know her. It’s that simple.

STEPHANIE GIDDENS (ThM, 2009) is president and founder of Vickery Trading Company, which empowers underprivileged women in Dallas, Texas.

She and her husband, Brad, have three children. You can read more about her ministry at vickerytrading. org.

Photography by Alexis Marie Photography.

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CAMPUS NEWS Strategic Leadership Changes to the DTS Staff In April, Dr. Mark Bailey, president of DTS, announced strategic changes to the staff. He wrote, “God is doing amazing things at DTS and continues to bless the seminary with skilled workers committed to godly service. I wanted to take this opportunity to announce several strategic changes to our staff in the coming months.”

DTS’s increased enrollment is a testimony of God’s grace working through Dr. Greg Hatteberg, the current dean of Enrollment and Alumni Services. Greg returns to his greatest passion—serving and caring for the thousands of alum-

ni as director of Alumni Services.

Dr. Bailey wrote, “DTS owes Greg much gratitude for his faithful leadership over our stellar enrollment team. His pastoral care and a heart for students set a trajectory for others to follow.”

John Dyer, who faithfully served as executive director of Communications and Educational Technology, will step into the role of dean of Enrollment Services and Educational Technology. “John has a range of talents from which DTS has benefited for many years.

His heart to reach prospective and current students, along with his experience, positions the sem-

inary well to face the ever-changing dynamics facing the enrollment services,” Dr. Bailey wrote.

Dr. Bailey is pleased to announce a new director of Marketing and Communications for DTS. Dr. Edward J. Herrelko III has accepted the position effective June 4, 2018.

Edward has spent over fifteen years working in higher education roles, in academic affairs, as well as in student services. “We are excited to be able to extend an invitation to Edward. He emerged as the candidate who is the best fit for DTS,” Dr. Bailey explained.

Please be in prayer as these tran-

Dr. Edward J. Herrelko III

sitions take place and as God leads DTS in the reorganization and the implementation of the next phases of a new strategic leadership plan.

Ron Blue Retires after Years of Faithful Service to DTS was asked to plant a church in Spain with a team of experienced missionaries with Central American Mission (CAM International, now Camino Global).

After forty-three years of faithful service to DTS, Dr. Ron Blue (ThM, 1965) retired at the end of May as the coordinator of the Spanish DMin program.

Following his graduation from DTS, Ron and his wife, Libby, departed for language school in Costa Rica where they started youth caravans, driving all over the country and region as they inaugurated Christian education programs from Mexico to Panama.

After only six years on the field, during which they adopted a baby girl from the US, Ron

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Ron’s years on the mission field yielded firsthand experience and wisdom for the future missionaries he would later teach. During those three years, he had declined several offers to join the faculty at DTS, but in 1974, he encountered Dr. John Walvoord (then DTS president) who issued an invitation to teach at DTS. Ron moved his family, now complete with three children—Elisa, Laurie, and David—to the States and joined the DTS faculty in 1975 where he taught and was the chair in the DTS World Missions department.

In 1992, Ron returned to CAM International to serve as president. By then he had learned to listen when God invited him to serve in strategic areas. CAM had continued to minis-

ter in Central America, and Ron’s experience and evangelistic fervor made him a natural fit to lead them.

After serving at CAM International he returned to DTS in 2000 to inaugurate and coordinate the new Spanish DMin program.

Since then, the Spanish program has offered the exact courses and work as the English program, but all in Spanish and contextualized for Hispanic ministry.

Reflecting on his retirement, Ron wrote, “I thank the Lord that he graciously gives us a flashlight rather than a life map. Step by step we walk in his way. The little praise song is right, ‘My Lord knows the way through the wilderness—all I have to do is follow.’”

Ron and Libby continue to live in Arlington, Texas, and are active members at Pantego Bible Church in Fort Worth. For more on Dr. Blue’s life and ministry go to voice.dts.edu/ article/profile-dr-ron-blue.

Meet the New Adjuncts DR. MIRIAM ADENEY Adjunct Professor for Doctor of Ministry Dr. Adeney serves as an international speaker, teacher, and writer with a widespread and varied ministry. She has written multiple articles and books, including Wealth, Women and God: How to Flourish Spiritually and Economically in Tough Places, with Sadiri Joy Tira. Dr. Adeney serves as a mentor to Christian writers in Asia and Latin America. She is married to Michael, and is mother to Daniel, Joel, and Michael.

DR. SETH POSTELL Adjunct Professsor for Doctor of Ministry Dr. Postell is a Jewish follower of Yeshua. He is the academic dean of Israel College of the Bible in Netanya, Israel. Dr. Postell has a PhD in Hebrew Bible with an emphasis on the Pentateuch. He has authored a number of publications, including Adam as Israel and Reading Moses, Seeing Jesus, and translated the book of Genesis for the TLV Bible. He is married to Ling, and has three children (Yael, Nadav, and Yoav).

DR. BRENT BOUNDS Adjunct Professsor in Biblical Counseling Dr. Bounds is a licensed clinical psychologist and serves as the director of Family Ministries for Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, New York. He earned his master’s in Biblical Studies and Counseling from DTS and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fordham University in New York City, New York.

Dr. Bounds is married to Jenni and they have three sons: Griffin, Wyatt, and Sawyer.

DR. CRAIG SCHILL Adjunct Professor in Pastoral Ministries and for Doctor of Ministry Dr. Schill is the pastor of Lake Cities Community Church in Rowlett, Texas. He has a passion for all aspects of church ministry, especially preaching and the theology of church unity.

He also enjoys working in the areas of church leadership and spiritual life. He is married to Tammy, and they have four children and a miniature schnauzer named George Harrison. They enjoy traveling, watching movies, and spending time together.

DR. JASON WIESEPAPE Adjunct Professor in Educational Ministries and Leadership and for Doctor of Ministry Dr. Wiesepape has served in pastoral ministries for over seventeen years as both a church pastor and a chaplain for the US Navy. He has also served at DTS as the research assistant to the president and a GTA (online courses) for the past fifteen years.

Dr. Wiesepape earned both his ThM and DMin from DTS. He and his wife, Jamie, live in College Station, Texas, and have three future Texas Aggies.

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DTS AT HOME AND ABROAD 1 1

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Nik Ripken, leading expert on the persecuted church and founder of Nik Ripken Ministries, was this year’s World Evangelization Conference speaker.

During chapel, he spoke about the reality of persecution and what it means to live out the Resurrection. He also discussed the three nonnegotiable ideas inherent in carrying out the vision statement of Jesus. He concluded the week by challenging believers to be aware of the miracle of public worship without threat of persecution.

Go to voice.dts.edu/chapel to view all his messages.

1 Wayside Chapel in San Antonio, Texas, hosted a gathering of DTS alumni and their spouses. The one thing they all had in common was a deep appreciation for the foundation DTS laid under them for life, ministry, and leadership.

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2 Two thumbs up! Current students Aeriel Eichenberger and Esther Medina take a ride on the wild side at this year’s DTS Masters Open golf tournament.

3 An impromptu DTS reunion happened at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem with (from left to right) Charlie Dyer (ThM, 1979; PhD, 1986), Dwain Camp (ThM, 1977), and Chad Rosell (ThM, 2018).

4 ¡Bienvenidos! Director of DTS en Español, Dr. Michael Ortiz (ThM, 2008), welcomes graduating students, their families, and friends to the annual Texas-style BBQ. 5 Congratulations to the more than 400 members of the 2018 DTS Graduating Class. May the Lord bless you and keep you!

6 Current students in DTS Nashville stepped it up this past semester studying ST102 (Trinitarianism) with Dr. Glenn Kreider (ThM, 1990; PhD, 2001). For more information about what classes are offered at DTS extension sites go to dts.edu/ locations.

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7 William “Duce” Branch (ThM, 2004), aka The Ambassador, performed at this year’s Spring Homecoming Concert.

8 Future students (from left to right) Annie Dawn and Clara Noel climbed onto their dad, Jonathan Huizingh (ThM, 2015), to check out the latest issue of DTS Magazine!

9 Current ThM student George Verghese participates in World Focus Chapel where the students worshiped and spent time in prayer as they heard from the Asian international community at DTS. Students made presentations on their respective countries and shared how to pray for these nations on the other side of the globe.

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A VISUAL AND MARTIAL ARTS SENSEI: PROFILE OF KEITH D. YATES (MABS, 1983)

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ometimes when I meet a person whose face may not be famous but whose reputation is well known, I play a little game. I count the minutes it takes for them to make sure strangers know about who they are. The prize for the shortest time goes to a pastor who took no more than thirty seconds to assert his importance. Conversely, the winner of the all-time humility award in my little game is DTS adjunct professor, and my former coworker, Keith Yates.

It so happened that I had partnered with him on DTS’s flagship magazine Kindred Spirit for no fewer than three years before I found out about him. The big reveal happened like this. DTS had sent some of us who produced the school’s magazine—the director of marketing; Keith, our artist; and me, the editor in chief—to the Evangelical Press Association national meeting. As I recall, the city was Boston.

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David & Luke Edmonson / Edmonson Weddings / edmonsonweddings.com

As we walked down the sidewalk to dinner, Keith—a gentleman— maneuvered himself to take the spot closest to the curb. I acknowledged his doing so by saying something like, “You want nearest the street so you can be the one to fight off bad guys, right?”

He nodded and shrugged modestly. So I asked, half-kidding, “You think you could take on some robbers?” Dead serious, he nodded again before conceding, “Unless they have guns.” “What are you, some kind of martial arts expert?” I asked, again, still half-joking.

He nodded quietly. I stopped and stared. “No way.” I tried to imagine quiet, reserved Keith doing Jackie Chan moves. I didn’t see it. “Seriously? ” The rest of the evening, I kept scrunching up my face and asking, “Really? ” And, as it turned out, even in his big disclosure, Keith held back. Way back.

As the founder and president of the American Karate and Tae Kwon Do Organization, at the time Keith had written more than three hundred magazine articles and authored or coauthored numerous books. (Today the number stands at more than five hundred articles and twelve books.) For a while, he wrote a monthly column for Martial Arts Professional. And for years, he wrote the “Inside Tae Kwon Do” column for Inside Karate magazine—which described him once as one of America’s “pioneers” of karate.

Additionally, Keith authored the children’s story, Young Samurai.

More than twenty years earlier, he had received the title of state champion in Texas.

All this explains why Keith’s car license plate read (and still reads), “Sensei,” which in Japanese means “teacher”—and more specific to his context, also means “instructor in the martial arts.”

It was all true. Outside of the halls of DTS, the guy I referred to as “our designer” was known to many as “Grandmaster.”

shaving cream and shoes. DTS hired him four decades ago, in 1978—the year Grease and Saturday Night Fever dominated the box office. His title? Assistant art director in what was then the Public Relations department.

After hours, Keith took seminary classes. And he graduated five years later as summa cum laude with his master of arts in Biblical Studies. His thesis topic: “The Demystification of Ki: The Spiritual Aspects of the Martial Arts.” Many people associate martial arts with Eastern Mysticism. But Keith asserts that the two are not essentially connected. In fact, he has made teaching Christian character a key element in his work as a martial arts instructor.

MASTER “TO THE QUIET LIFE” MASTER OF THE ARTS At the camp Sky Ranch, where his parents sent Keith Yates, then ten years old, he received Christ as his Savior. In junior high, he took up martial arts training. In that same year, his local newspaper carried an article about how Keith had drawn cartoons on T-shirts and had sold them to classmates. His art skills led him to work as the cartoonist for his high school newspaper. And during those years, in 1968, Keith also earned his first black belt—at age seventeen—one of the youngest people in the country to do so. Since he was a brown belt, he’s taught martial arts continuously over the years—longer than practically anyone else in Texas.

When I arrived as a freelance editor of Kindred Spirit magazine, Keith had served at DTS for twenty years. Design awards the magazine had received from the International Association of Business Communicators, the Evangelical Press Association, and the Religion Communicators Council lined the halls. At national communications meetings, Keith shared his expertise in the arts with others eager to learn. And it happened at such a meeting where I received a more complete picture of him.

The apostle Paul instructs the Thessalonians to aspire to the quiet life (1 Thess 4:11). And Keith seems to have internalized that advice for himself. People reading of his accomplishments might have expected to meet a driven, take-charge sort of guy.

But he slipped into meetings quietly, sketched as he listened,

Keith chose to pursue a fine arts degree at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, working for a print shop to help finance his education. And while at SMU, Keith decided to build a career in commercial art and design.

Both kinds of arts—martial and visual—drove him. The fact that Keith developed a reputation as a top practitioner of kata—the artistic side of martial arts—should come, then, as no surprise. “I gravitated toward the beauty of martial arts. Maybe that was my artistic side coming out,” Keith said. But his gift for teaching also continued to reveal itself. As the winner of several martial arts championships, Keith created a “karate for credit” program— the first person in the Southwestern US to do so. He did it at his first alma mater, serving for seven years as an adjunct professor at SMU in the Physical Education and Communications Departments.

After stints as an art director for an advertising agency and newspaper office, Keith wanted to design and create more than just ads for

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“It is one of the greatest lessons I have learned— and that I try to teach— from white belt to black belt and beyond. Persevere.” asked penetrating questions, supported his coworkers, and rarely talked about himself. Meanwhile, in another part of his life, Keith remained famous.

Once I clued in about his extracurricular activities, I made sure that when I entered his office to look at page layouts, I never walked up behind him unannounced. And I also noticed stuff like the sudden appearance of a photo of Keith with Chuck Norris. The explanation? In the late 1990s, he was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Texas Martial Arts Hall of Fame in Waco, Texas—along with other notables such as his friend “Chuck.”

MASTER OF HIS CALLING Not too many years passed before Keith received the honor as one of a few non-Asians in the world to hold a tenth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. What’s a tenth degree? It’s like a lifetime achievement award—a title granted only to martial artists who have given a lifetime to the furtherance of the martial arts. Only a handful of such black belts in the US exist.

But wait. There’s more.

After Keith mastered the art of Tae Kwon Do and had a successful tournament career, he earned black belts in Japanese Ju-Jitsu and Okinawan Kobudo, the art of ancient Asian weapons.

Yet to many of us who worked with him in the past, we have seen that he has not allowed his many honors to dictate his identity.

His identity as a Christ-follower has driven him.

During some of the darkest days of Keith’s life, the intense discipline required in the martial arts helped him stay focused on Christ. And he turned around and used his skills as a door through which to enter the lives of others in need. “Grandmaster Yates” serves as chairman of the board of the Gospel Martial Arts Union and has often teamed up with Norris to use his martial-arts credibility as a platform for the gospel.

As his daughter, Regan, lay in a hospital room fighting for her life with a rare form of bone marrow failure (Severe Aplastic Anemia),

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we his coworkers watched helplessly. Daily this father of four somehow managed to show up on time for work, keep a pleasant demeanor, meet deadlines, weep, ask about our lives, and express his abiding faith in Christ and the Spirit’s sustaining power.

Years later Keith looked back on those days and said, “It was an overwhelming experience during which I had to rely totally on the Lord. One of the things martial arts teach beyond just ‘training hard’ is the attitude of never giving up no matter how difficult the task might be,” Keith continued. “We call that an ‘indomitable spirit.’ I would say that it is one of the greatest lessons I have learned—and that I try to teach—from white belt to black belt and beyond. Persevere.”

MASTER OF EXCELLENCE Keith’s accomplishments, both at DTS and in the martial arts field, have stemmed from a core commitment to excellence. For some years now, Keith has served as director of creative services and publications. As an adjunct professor, he also teaches the next generation of seminary students about Christianity and the arts.

“Since God is the author of creativity,” Keith said, “God’s people should be the most creative—whether they are preaching, singing, or designing a brochure or newsletter.”

Throughout his years at DTS, Keith’s design eye has continued to bring awards. And indeed the long lists of honors stemming from Keith’s work as a visual artist are too numerous to list here. Most recently, the redesign of Kindred Spirit morphing it into DTS Magazine in 2015 brought more honors from EPA. All these years, Keith has served with humility. The pro who makes time for beginning students—ranging in ages from seven to seventy—in the gym (a task most would cast off to junior instructors) also makes time to personalize instruction for his DTS students.

Parents of some of Keith’s martial arts students describe him as a person full of “goodness, knowledge, humility, and patience.” And that indomitable spirit has seen Keith through myriad transitions at DTS in the past forty years. His bosses have changed. Administrative structures have shifted. Procedures have developed. Design requirements, processes, and software have advanced. Job requirements have modified. His coworkers have transitioned, but Keith has flexed with humility. And whereas institutional settings are often creativitysquelching places for artists, Keith found ways to sharpen his creative edge throughout the decades he has served.

MASTER OF SERVING DTS has helped train some famous people within Christendom and beyond. And Keith has helped tell their stories. His accomplishments, too, have brought him before people the world has deemed important. (There’s a saying circulating that while some people wear Superman pajamas, Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.) Yet the only person whose name I have ever heard Keith Yates drop is the name of Jesus.

This June Keith plans to retire from DTS. He still has plenty to fill his days. He continues to have a thriving freelance practice and will work on putting the finishing touches on a 2018 edition of the Complete Book of Tae Kwon Do Forms that includes video examples Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Dr. Glahn, Kathy Rhine, Amelia Palmer, and a smartphone app. He and his wife, Linda, also plan to travel Lolana Thompson, and Don Regier for their contribution in putting this profile together. And thank you, Keith, for teaching your students color, typography, to places they’ve talked about visiting. visual communication, and design. All of us in Communications will miss you.

The grandmaster’s four grown children—including the daughter who survived—gave him ten grandchildren with whom he looks forward to having more time to serve as a different kind of sensei.

A grandfather.

SANDRA GLAHN (ThM, 2001) serves as associate professor in Media Arts and Worship and is a multipublished author of both fiction and nonfiction.

She is a journalist and a speaker who advocates for thinking that transforms. Dr. Glahn’s books relate to bioethics, sexuality, and, misunderstood women of the Bible. Follow her on Twitter at @SandraGlahn.

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ALUMNI CONNECTION In Memory Theodore H. Marsh (ThM, 1952) passed away on March 23, 2018. Ted ministered in camp and youth ministries for over eighteen years with CAM International (now Camino Global) in El Salvador. Ted also served at CAM and then as a Bible teacher at institutions in Guatemala and Mexico.

In 1970, Ted returned to the US and served at Detroit Bible College (now William Tyndale College) in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He also served on staff with Cornerstone Baptist Church, enjoying many years of fruitful ministry.

Jerry Batts (ThM, 1955) died on December 30, 2017. Jerry served as a pastor for sixty years, finishing his service for the Lord as the senior adult pastor at Shades Mountain Community Church in Hoover, Alabama.

Laurence Harper (ThM, 1955) passed away December 12, 2017. Laurence served as a Bible school teacher, pastor, mission director and radio manager at Western Indian Ministries in Tse Bonito, New Mexico. He also founded three Christian radio stations: KHAC in New Mexico, and KWIM and KTBA in Arizona. Laurence also assisted in the launch of KIAM in Nenana, Alaska.

Edward L. Hayes (ThM, 1957) died on November 20, 2017. Ed served as professor at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He also worked as the executive director of Mount Hermon Association and as professor, academic dean, and president at Denver Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He authored several books, chapters, articles, and traveled extensively. Ed had a long and fruitful ministry for the Lord.

Stanton P. Durham (1961) passed away on March 21, 2018. Stan worked as a language instructor in France and Switzerland and an assistant professor in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He taught at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming, for twenty-three years. He also served as pastor, ministering to various congregations including those in Casper and Lander, Wyoming, and Fort Collins, Colorado.

Michael Petschel (1962) died on December 17, 2017. Mike worked for

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Dow Chemical Company and National Steel’s R&D Center before transitioning to the technical manager at Parker Amchem Henkel Surface Technologies in Madison Heights, Michigan. He coauthored many papers and received patents on surface treatments and coatings in the automotive industry.

Michael was a longtime member of Woodside Bible Church in Troy, Michigan. “Mr. Mike” enjoyed working in the nursery with young children and teaching the Bible.

William E. Bell (ThM, 1963) passed away on November 23, 2017. For nearly forty years, Bill served as professor of Biblical Studies at Dallas Baptist University in Dallas, Texas. Upon retirement, he was honored with the title of professor emeritus. Bill also held the position of theologian in residence at First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, for over thirty years. He produced weekly training tapes for Southern Baptist Sunday School. An avid golfer and fan of the game, Bill played with the same group of friends for many years.

Kenneth Hyatt (1964) died on January 30, 2018. Ken served as chaplain in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and went on to pastor churches in Iowa and Wisconsin. Ken founded Life Management Inc., a Christian employee counseling agency where he ministered to and assisted countless employees as one of the first independent EAP (employee assistance program) providers in the country. He spent ten years as Senior Staff Chaplain at St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center and taught crisis counseling for Bethel Seminary.

Jerry B. Baines (ThM, 1969) passed away on March 28, 2018. Jerry served for Campus Crusade for Christ with World Wide Pictures. After graduation from DTS, he worked for the Dallas County Boys Home as a juvenile officer and as a probation officer. Jerry mentored many people throughout his life and continued his calling after retirement by filling in as pastor for churches.

Joseph Rheney (1967–70) passed away on December 29, 2017. After serving on active duty in the US Army, Joe helped pastor a new church in West Virginia. There he taught the Bible,

and mentored many young men, showing them how to follow the Lord and love his Word. After retiring from State Farm in 2008, he continued to serve as an elder and Bible teacher at Chestnut Ridge Community Church in Cheat Lake, West Virginia. Joe found a passion for kayaking and served as a whitewater guide for college and church ministry groups.

Timothy D. Crater (ThM, 1971) passed away on January 12, 2018. Tim founded three churches in Georgia before becoming chief of staff for a member of the US Congress in Virginia. After service on Capitol Hill, he became the special representative for the Government Affairs Office of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). He developed and directed NAE’s Christian Citizenship program to increase evangelical voting. During his thirty years in the Washington area, Tim continued his pulpit and Christian teaching ministry, pastoring Woodbridge Bible Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, for fourteen years.

Lawrence DeBruyn (ThM, 1974) passed away on December 28, 2017.

Larry pastored churches in Michigan, Missouri, and Indiana and traveled to Europe, Africa, and Australia doing mission work and teaching the Word of God. He wrote on many biblical topics and current issues at guardinghisflock.com. Larry devoted his time to missions work and had a strong commitment to the work of Baptist International Evangelical Ministries throughout eastern Europe. He devoted a lot of time to training young men in Ukraine to be teachers of the gospel.

Robert C. Swift (ThM, 1976) passed away on March 18, 2018. Bob pastored in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, before returning to Texas to raise his children. He spent most of his career as a programmer in the IT field at American Airlines and Sabre where he ministered to many. Upon retiring, Bob enjoyed many hobbies, including owning a small photography business, studying Greek, and mountain climbing.

Alfred Moran (ThM, 1979) passed away on February 28, 2018. Ed served as a teacher and president of Maranatha Bible College (as a full-time mis-

sionary) with Serving in Mission (SIM) in Ghana, West Africa. After turning MBC over to Ghanaian leadership, Ed was appointed as the SIM Rocky Mountain regional director and moved to Colorado where he served for twenty-three years. Ed also ministered as an elder and Bible class teacher on Sunday mornings at his church.

Gary Yackey (ThM, 1982) died on January 7, 2018. Gary pastored Lakeview Baptist Church and Countryside Chapel in Ohio. He loved his Lord and Savior and the Bible and enjoyed playing golf, reading, and spending time with his family and church family.

Ronald G. Barnes (ThM, 1985) died on December 31, 2017. Ron pastored churches in Canada and California and taught at Christian Heritage College, San Diego Christian College, and finally Southern California Seminary in El Cajon, California.

Allen Watkins (STM, 1985) passed away on March 13, 2018. Allen served as a naval lieutenant officer before becoming a Baptist minister with the American Baptist Churches. He worked as a nurse until he found his love for teaching nursing at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas. He traveled the world, and he loved his family, friends, and all his students and patients.

D. Keith Forster (MABL, 1998) died on January 31, 2018. Keith worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the village of Paya, Tioman Island, Malaysia, to publish the Border Kuna New Testament and the San Blas Kuna Bible.

He also produced the audio in Border Kuna and San Blas Kuna, the Jesus Film, a hymnal for the Kuna church, and a Kuna children’s Bible storybook.

God gifted Keith with innovative ideas such as publishing Scripture on waterproof paper, allowing people living in areas of high humidity to have Scripture printed on virtually indestructible material.

Howard Hutton (CGS, 2009) passed away on January 1, 2018. Howard was a senior enterprise resource planning analyst with Security Finance and a member of Trinity Bible Church in Greer, South Carolina.

Bruce Joseph Sims (MACE, 2015) passed away November 26, 2017. Bruce was an elementary school educator specializing in English as a Second Language (ESL). His passion was to teach, encourage, and mentor his students as they pursued their educational goals. In his spare time, he created educational YouTube videos as resources for parents to help their children learn. Bruce volunteered in youth programs and traveled nationally and internationally on mission trips through Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall, Texas.

Updates: 1950s David (ThM, 1956) and Allene Giles celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary this year. Dave served at churches in Minnesota and Wisconsin before working as a chaplain with the US Army and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. After retirement he served as interim pastor in Denver, Colorado. He also led a men’s Bible class and taught Sunday school. He served as a choir member in Columbia, South Carolina, and is now teaching an adult class in Columbus, Georgia.

Over his sixty years of ministry, Jim Rendle (ThM, 1958) has planted three churches in the greater Toronto area including Westney Heights Baptist Church in Ajax, Ontario, where he continues to serve.

1960s After ministering for twenty-seven wonderful years, Rennie Showers (ThM, 1962) retired from Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. Rennie has authored twelve books and written many articles for the magazine, Israel My Glory. His most recent book is The Sign of His Coming (Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry) concerning the Olivet Discourse.

Clifford Branson (ThM, 1963) retired after fifty-four years of ministry.

Based on his experience as a bereavement counselor, Ken Rice (1964) recently published Grief Guide: When a Loved One Dies . . . .(Christian Faith Publishing). Ken serves with emergency services and a hospital to provide

support for family and friends who have lost a loved one.

Rick Yohn (ThM, 1964) is an online instructor for Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, Colorado.

Pictured above, Bill Boyd (ThM, 1965) poses with the staff at Carolina College of Biblical Studies (formerly Carolina Bible College) in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he serves as the vice president for strategic development.

Over the past seven years, the school has seen a new administration and classroom building, an online degree, and full accreditation.

Following retirement, Jim Rupp (ThM, 1966) has been operating a small plant nursery as a volunteer at a foster home for boys run by Vision Quest.

Paul Young (ThM, 1968) wrote over thirty books in the last few years, some of which were written and are being used to fuel the Impact Man and Impact Woman ministries with Emmaus Journey, a Catholic discipleship ministry.

After serving on the pastoral staff of Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church in Middleton, Wisconsin, for thirteen years, Glynn (ThM, 1969) and Lorraine Laing moved to Oro Valley, Arizona, and are currently members of Catalina Foothills Church (PCA) in Tucson.

1970s Grace Presbyterian Church in Niceville, Florida, honored Harold Thomas (ThM, 1970) as pastor emeritus after a long fruitful ministry. Harold was also one of the original founders of Rocky Bayou Christian School, which grew from twenty-two students to over 800 with two satellite schools. RBCS was among the top fifty Christian schools in the nation. Harold is still trying to adjust to retirement after a long ministry.

Ted VanderEnde (ThM, 1970) retired from teaching at Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven, Belgium, and east European Bible schools and seminaries with Advancing Native Mission. He currently teaches Bible at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is an ordained deacon with the Anglican Church in America.

Winston Cook (1971–72) is a retired pastor, chaplain, and social worker currently working as a certified professional guardian for court-appointed incapacitated persons. He and his wife, Kirsten, welcomed their second grandchild this year.

Benjii Meyer (STM, 1971) serves the Lord at the Samaritan Village Retirement Community in California. The Village Chapel is a self-supporting, independent entity of numerous denominations started by several resident couples.

Now retired, Bill Connell (ThM, 1973) delights in having more time for his wife, family, and church.

Gregg Hagg (ThM, 1973) celebrates ten years of ministry at the Feinberg Center, a partnership between Talbot School of Theology and Chosen People Ministries. They provide an MDiv in Messianic Jewish Studies through Talbot and have nearly twenty graduates working full-time in Jewish ministry.

Since 2014, Jim Bartsch (ThM, 1974) has served as an interim pastor with Interim Pastor Ministries (IPM) at Turtle Lake Baptist Church in North Dakota, Oakdale Evangelical Free Church in Iowa, and Northside Calvary Church in Wisconsin. His longest service was with Bethel Baptist Church in Iowa where he had previously pastored for eleven years.

While teaching counseling courses at Strandehem School of Bible and Discipleship in southern Sweden, John Breneman (ThM, 1975; DMin, 1995) also teaches seminars, provides marriage counseling, and writes books and articles for magazines and journals.

Robert Hicks (ThM, 1976; DMin, 1988) with CRU Military Ministry, trained military chaplains in the Ukraine. After arriving in Kiev, Bob

spent two weeks speaking in five cities and attending the memorial of a fallen soldier in Bucha (pictured below). He spoke to chaplains, various other military personnel, psychologists, and groups of war widows and parents of Ukrainian fallen heroes. He also attended information meetings at a university training hospital.

In his retirement, Rick Rodriguez (MABS, 1976) continues training pastors and leaders around the world with Global Training Network.

Arden (ThM, 1976) and Helen Steele have served as missionaries in Bolivia since 1977. They continue living in Bolivia as retired Serving In Missions (SIM) missionaries. They live on the Coachaca Missions Training center, teaching one class each week at the Quechua Bible Institute near the city of Cochabamba. They have four married children and twelve grandchildren who all serve the Lord.

Steve (ThM, 1977) Rodemann and his wife, Nancy, have served since 1981 in Madrid, Spain, focusing on evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Nancy directs a choir that uses gospel music to share the message of Christ with secular Spaniards. In addition to local church ministry, Steve teaches at two different seminaries, has a Bible conference ministry around Spain, and contributes to two different Christian magazines in Spain. They have four daughters.

Eddie Brown (ThM, 1979) retired after pastoring for thirty-nine years.

Pictured above, several DTS alumni gathered with Dale (ThM, 1979) and

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ALUMNI CONNECTION Becky Burke who hosted a great evening of fellowship and BBQ at their home in San Diego, California, this year. The evening included special moments of remembering days in chapel and singing “All Hail the Power.” A young couple new to the area shared some difficult challenges they were facing and the group stopped everything and simply prayed for them and their needs. Alumni became more than graduates with degrees; they became family.

Allan Harmer (ThM, 1979) earned his DMin at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with an emphasis on leadership and organizational change.

1980s Tom (ThM, 1980) and Joyce Baurain celebrated fifty-four years of marriage.

Their five children are all married and serving the Lord, and their fifteenth grandchild and first great-grandchild are due this year. God is good in allowing Tom to continue teaching in class and online at Calvary University in Kansas City, Missouri.

Mark Cain (ThM, 1980) retired after thirty-eight years of pastoral ministry at Village Bible EFCA in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

Ric Joline (MABS, 1980) is in his thirty-ninth year of ministry and enjoying his role as a pastor, mentor, and teacher.

After over thirty years in Haiti, Bruce (ThM, 1980) and Cynthia McMartin moved to Senegal to work alongside Haitian missionaries sent through Vision d’Antioche, which they helped begin. Bruce and Cynthia have the privilege of living with their son and his family.

Mike Mitchum (ThM, 1980) served as senior pastor for twenty-seven years at Cordova Neighborhood Church in Rancho Cordova, California, and is now full-time with the Central Pacific District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance as their director of leadership development.

Phil Rawley (ThM, 1980) continues serving in his full-time writing ministry, which includes over twenty-two

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years of writing for a rabbi in Israel who founded the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. His daughter Bethany (MACM, 2008) is a librarian and his son Philip (MACE, 2008) is a pastor in Josephine, Texas.

Dan Bolin (ThM, 1981) announced his retirement as the international director of Christian Camping International (CCI) this year. CCI is a global alliance of twenty-four associations supporting Christian camps, retreats, and conferences who serve thirteen million guests in over sixty countries.

Dan intends to write, teach, fish, and spend time with his grandson.

Released in March 2018, I Can Only Imagine tells the story behind MercyMe’s chart-topping hit. The film is directed by Andrew and Jonathan Erwin, sons of alumnus Hank Erwin (MABS, 1981), and stars Priscilla Shirer (MABS, 1998).

Marvin (ThM, 1981) and Jan Smith retired from Africa Inland Missions and now serve as volunteers with AIM while God opens doors. Marvin also served as interim pastor for Stake Bay Baptist Church in the Cayman Islands for three months.

Sid Webb (ThM, 1981; DMin, 2007) recently published Nomad's Fire: Life at the Intersection of Loss and Significance (Build What Counts LLC).

While teaching at Stanford University, Patrick Hunt (MABS, 1982) joined the National Geographic Society in expeditions, documentary films, and keynote lectures as an expert. He has twenty published books including, Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History (Penguin) and a new biography, Hannibal (Simon and Schuster, 2017).

The closing of Moody Bible Institute’s Spokane branch in Washington marks areas of new ministry for four DTS alumni. Campus dean for twenty-five years, Jack Lewis (ThM, 1982) is exploring his next steps. John McMath (STM, 1978) will retire and continue serving as an adjunct faculty member at Moody Aviation in Spokane.

Josh Malone (ThM, 2006) accepted a position at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Mike Kibbe (2003–05) will serve as

part of a team forming a new university in Spokane—Great Northern University.

Bill Seaver (MABS, 1982) has authored over forty statistical articles and five books: A Mosaic of Faith (Wingspread), Fiery Faith (Wingspread), Prayer: Communing with God in Everything with Tozer (Moody Publishers), and Purring in God’s Ears 1 and 2 (self-published).

Neil Damgaard (ThM, 1983; DMin, 2008) organized and cosponsored a conference on spiritual abuse at The University of MassachusettsDartmouth in collaboration with the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life and the International Cultic Studies Association.

Adam Samdahl (ThM, 1983) recently published God’s Programs: An Introduction to Understanding the Bible.

Doug Ferry (MABS, 1984) recently published Insights from Inside: Chaplaincy & Corrections, a college textbook for forty students enrolled in Mt. Olive Bible College inside a max prison in West Virginia. MOBC is academically sponsored by Appalachian Bible College, and Doug will be teaching the course.

Kem Oberholtzer (PhD, 1984) completed seven years with Grace Rock Ministries in The Woodlands, Texas. He served in the ministry of discipleship, teaching, and leading community classes (outreach) in the NW Houston area and via podcast internationally.

Joel Pinter (ThM, 1984) celebrated twenty-five years of teaching at Appalachian Bible College in Mt. Hope, West Virginia, following his father, Dr. Joseph Pinter (ThM, 1955; ThD, 1964), who taught theology at ABC for forty years before retiring. Joseph recently gave a chapel message during ABC’s Heritage Week.

Marty Baker (ThM, 1985) earned his DMin in apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary this year. His doctoral dissertation is titled, “The Logical, Philosophical, and Biblical Response to Transgenderism.”

David Fletcher (ThM, 1985; DMin, 2004) is the director of XPastor, an organization on mission to “equip, coach, and lead” those who manage the church including executive pastors, senior pastors, finance personnel, and board members.

At East Dover Baptist Church in East Dover, Vermont, Barb McIntyre (MABS, 1985) serves beside her husband and pastor Robert A. McIntyre Jr. (ThM, 1985). She is involved with the worship team and teaches the ladies Bible study. They love living in beautiful Vermont.

David (ThM, 1986) and Cindy Cox have been missionaries with Word of Life Brazil (Palavra da Vida) since 1990. They have four adult children, three daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren.

Joan Dingwerth (MABS, 1986) serves as executive director of The Shepherd’s Staff, Inc. They just celebrated thirtyfive years of ministering in Northwest Kansas.

Upon completion of his board certification as a chaplain, Don Ryan (MACE, 1986) was appointed as staff chaplain at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Sunnyvale, Texas.

Paul Perkins (MACE, 1987) obtained an EdD from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and wrote his dissertation, “The Manifestation of Biblical Community on Facebook among Christian College Students.”

He has also published The Prayer of a Transformed Life (Amazon); Discipleship: Developing a Heart for God (Amazon); Centurion: From Glory to Glory (Crave Publishing); The Viking Chronicles: Call of the Wolf, The Wild Hunt, The Priest’s Son (Amazon); and Valerius: A Roman Soldier’s Quest for Glory (Crave Publishing).

After thirty-five years serving the local church in pastoral roles, Colin Green (MABS, MACE, 1988; DMCE, 2008) is embracing the final chapters of his ministry career. He is the founder of Grace for Life Ministries, giving him the platform as a biblical counselor, teacher, speaker, and writer. Colin seeks to offer pastoral care to those not connected to Christ or the church.

He guides them to faith in Christ and connects people with church communities, working from the outside and sending seekers and new believers in rather than working from the inside and sending believers out.

After twenty years as senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Normal, Illinois, Edward Scearce (ThM, 1988) retired to spend more time in his international ministry. Ed joined PanAfrican Academy of Christian Surgeons as the spiritual dean. PAACS has ministry locations in eight African countries.

Pictured above, Brian Edwards (ThM, 1989) received his PhD from Oxford this year. His thesis through the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies was titled “Self-deception at the Intersection of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Apostle Paul.” Brian and his wife, Kathy, plan to move overseas and are exploring possible new directions with SEND International.

When students in grade 6th–12th are removed from regular classes, the DAEP (Disciplinary Alternative Education Program) helps students stay on track to graduate. As principal of GAP (Georgetown Alternative Program), Mike Miller (ThM, 1989) seeks to send students from the Georgetown Independent School District back to the regular campus in better shape both grade-wise and character-wise.

1990s After twenty-five years of pastoring Parkway Baptist Church in McKinney, Texas, Jerry Halbrook (ThM, 1990; DMin, 2007) and his wife, Linda, moved to Conroe, Texas, where they are building a house and awaiting the birth of their second grandchild.

Andrew Beaty (MACE, 1992) earned his EdD in teaching and learning at

Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. His dissertation was titled “Improving Access to Ministerial Training Through the Use of Electronic Devices: A Qualitative Study of Educators in Developing Nations.” Andrew and his wife, Karen, continue to be involved in ministry to families who have children with disabilities.

Dave Owen (ThM, 1992) has returned to the US for lymphoma treatment after thirty-five years of missionary service in Micronesia with Liebenzell Mission and twenty-five years as teacher and president of Pacific Islands University in Guam. After a stem cell transplant, the prognosis is hopeful, and he hopes to be back in ministry in the near future.

Neil Curran (MABS, 1994) published Teachings of Jesus (Biblical Communications International) in English and Chinese, and his booklet, “Biblical Christianity for Catholics,” has been translated into Spanish. Neil also hosts a monthly luncheon in Dallas with seminary professors, area pastors, and ministry leaders as guest speakers.

Brad Crawford (CGS, 1995) is serving in a new aviation ministry called Wings of Blessing in Cleburne, Texas.

He will be rebuilding Cessna 185s to be used in Central America and wherever God calls them. Brad received his private pilot license and his aircraft mechanic license at Le Tourneau in Longview, Texas.

Steve Newkirk (ThM, 1996) is focusing on planting relevant churches for the majority Muslim context alongside Senegalese nationals in the city of Dakar located on the Westernmost point in Africa.

Craig Smith (MABS, 1998; MACE, 2000) works as a volunteer with the Rogers community pastors team at Fellowship Bible Church of NWA in Rogers, Arkansas.

Bruce Walker (MACE, 1998) and Ride Extreme for Youth Extreme, an extreme motorcycle ride ministry aimed to raise funding to build youth sports complexes in Nicaragua raised $350,000 for Familia Avance Nicaragua.

After over twelve years with OMF International, James Rider (MABS, 2004) began a new phase of ministry at Denver Seminary in Denver, Colorado, working with the advancement team.

2000s

Pictured above, Semeon Mulatu (ThM, 2000), president of the Evangelical Theological College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, poses with his DTS Alumni mug.

Greg Crosthwait (ThM, 2002) was commissioned and sent to Bryan/ College Station, Texas, to serve as planting priest in Church of the Incarnation. The church is a plant from Christ Church, Waco, a parish of the Diocese of Fort Worth and the Anglican Church in North America.

The Leaders of Faith Foundation, founded by Rob Fields (MABS, 2002), teaches discipleship among local, state, federal, and international leaders. Rob and his team seek to move people toward Jesus, encourage others spiritually, and develop the next generation of leaders.

James (STM, 2002) and Mary Ndungu are returning to Africa to serve with Cru at the International Leadership University to train and disciple others in their homeland and home continent.

Carlos Zazueta (ThM, 2002; DMin, 2017) serves as pastor of Iglesia Stonebriar en Español in Frisco, Texas. Since 2007, he has served as pastor and the voice of Visión Para Vivir, the Spanish language ministry for Insight for Living. Carlos and Karla (MACL, 2014) welcomed their son, Charles Asher, earlier this year.

John (MABS, 2004) and Shannon Newton moved to a property just south of Fayetteville, Arkansas. They are turning it into a small retreat center for Restless Heart Ministries, their hospitality, reconciliation, and counseling nonprofit. When the center is finished, several cabins, walking trails, a chapel, and gardens will offer rest for burned out, broken down, and spiritually weary individuals and families.

Mark Wells (MABC, 2004) has worked in various counseling settings including in a residential treatment facility for teens, a private practice, ten years in Community Mental Health Aspen Pointe in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and counseling college students at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mark and his family attend Northshore Fellowship in Tennessee and volunteer leading a discipleship group for college students.

Jeremy Bratcher (ThM, 2005) recently earned his DMin from the Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

Dave Largent (ThM, 2005) is the pastor at Lakeview Congregation in Dallas, Texas. This church exists at a retirement center and primarily serves the residents, staff, and family members of residents.

Satrina Reid (MABS, MACE, 2005) serves as a program coordinator at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (CICW) located at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. CICW is an interdisciplinary study and ministry center that promotes the scholarly study of theology, history, and practice of Christian worship across North America and beyond.

In addition to pastoring in the Oklahoma City area, Tim Kimberley (ThM, 2007) created the free iOS app named Bible Map that connects every location in the Bible and any museum artifact from the world of the Bible with Apple Maps. The app recently celebrated 10,000 downloads.

Jason Peters (DMin, 2007) is the executive director for the Hope Haven Charitable Trust. Hope Haven Rwanda is a nonprofit organization that delivers education and life-on-life discipleship to the most vulnerable communities in Rwanda. They operate within a vibrant Christian community on a campus just outside of Kigali, Rwanda.

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ALUMNI CONNECTION After spending a decade professionally counseling and working in mental health, Justin Hughes (MABC, 2008) is focusing most of his attention on treatment and help for obsessive compulsion disorders and addictions. Justin and his wife, Emily, interact with those who are hurting.

Nothing but the Blood of Jesus (Redeeming Press) by Jeremy Myers (ThM, 2008) recently hit several Amazon best-seller lists. The book looks at how the crucifixion of Jesus saves humanity from the sin and violence that has plagued the world since its foundation. Jeremy has a follow-up book due out next year. He also teaches verse-by-verse through books of the Bible on his One Verse podcast.

Upon completion of his PhD in church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Joey Cochran (ThM, 2009) now serves as the pastor of connection and communication at Calvary Memorial Church in Illinois. Joey and his wife, Kendall, welcomed their new daughter, Clara Mae, last year.

2010s

Pictured above (from left to right), Pam Pettit, John Black (ThM, 2010) and Paul Pettit (ThM, 1996; DMin, 2007) in Israel.

Lisa Yunker (MACM, 2010) serves as a missionary technical adviser to the ABLE Program within the local Christian NGO Children in Families (CIF) in Cambodia through WorldVenture and New Braunfels Bible Church.

Lisa mentors and trains Cambodian disability workers to address the special needs of children. Her vision is to disciple the workers, demonstrate the love of Christ, and affirm their value as those created in the image of their Creator.

As chief operating officer of HomePointe, Tim Goodyear (ThM, 2011) continues to help churches restore the

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home as the primary place of spiritual formation. God has provided the way for HomePointe to partner with over 500 churches all over the world.

Brad Wasson (CBTS, 2014; MBTS, 2017) teaches Sunday school at First Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina.

Watching countless high school students encounter the Lord on backpacking trips, Todd Pinkston (ThM, 2011) felt called to take this same “trail experience” to adults living in metropolitan areas. WayForward provides the opportunity to get into a place, free of distractions, with God’s Word and community.

Cassandra Asberry (MABC, 2016) utilizes the skills and competencies learned through the counseling department at DTS at her workplace (Dallas Behavioral Healthcare Hospital) and in workshops provided to local churches and community organizations.

Kelly Rubio (ThM, 2012) is in her twenty-seventh year serving at NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. She ministers through a blog called The Word in Motion, a Christ-centered devotional ministry.

To read more go to apollolina.wordpress.com.

Steve Nguyen (2013–15) is a chaplain candidate, 2nd Lieutenant for the US Air Force Reserves and is eager to begin pastoral care and ministry to the airmen who serve this country.

Steve is also a member at The Village Church-Dallas Northway in Dallas, Texas, and serves as a leader in their recovery ministry.

Tyler Sullins (MABC, 2013) is a licensed professional counselor in Tyler, Texas. He has experience working with individuals, couples, and families. His hope is to help clients gain insight and perspective in the midst of life’s challenges.

Serving with e3 Partners, Ashleigh (MACE, 2013) and Cesar York equip church leaders to motivate local churches to preach the gospel and make disciples of Jesus Christ by establishing new churches across Colombia, South America. They also host many short-term mission trips that come to Colombia from the US. With thirteen years of military service, Joshua Brooks (STM, 2014) works in the Texas Army National Guard as a chaplain candidate and will soon transfer to the Air Force Reserves.

Jonathon Hallett (ThM, 2014) recently published Must I Be Persecuted? (Createspace), a book that highlights what God is up to in persecution.

Mikel Del Rosario (ThM, 2016) helps Christians and churches defend the faith with confidence, courage, and compassion through his apologetics ministry. For more on Mikel and his ministry, go to apologeticsguy.com.

Joseph Gonzalez (ThM, 2017) is now serving as the full-time associate pastor of Spanish and family ministries at Plano Bible Chapel in Plano, Texas.

Amy Justice (ThM, 2017) anticipates attending the Chaplain Basic Officer Leader Course (CHBOLC) this summer and deploying/mobilizing to the Middle East for one year until Fall 2019.

Garrett O’Hara (ThM, 2017) is a staff writer at Things Above Us.

Ed Quillin (ThM, 1987), senior pastor, Faith Bible Church, Libby, Montana Randy Frazee (MABS, 1988), lead teaching pastor, Westside Family Church, Lenexa, Kansas Brad Rine (MACE, 1996), caregiving and groups pastor, The Bible Chapel, McMurray, Pennsylvania James Erwin (ThM, 2003), senior pastor, Dix Hills Evangelical Free Church, Huntington Station, New York Jessica Holland (MAMC, 2010), communications director, The MET Church, Houston, Texas Patrick Fowler (ThM, 2012), associate operations pastor, Life.Church Jenks, Tulsa, Oklahoma Joe Pytleski (ThM, 2012), associate pastor of evangelism, Calvary Bible Church, Neenah, Wisconsin Stephen Patrick (ThM, 2013), east campus pastor, The Bible Chapel, McMurray, Pennsylvania Justin Branch (ThM, 2015), senior pastor, First Baptist Church, Shepherd, Texas

Jason Roszhart (ThM, 2017) is the new director of college ministries at Rolling Hills Covenant Church in Rolling Hills Estates, California. His wife, Nandi, will be their global outreach coordinater while continuing her ThM studies online.

Youngil Lee (ThM, 2015), youth pastor, Chinese Gospel Church, Livonia, Michigan

For the last sixteen years, Erin Wilson (MBTS, 2018) has worked in various industries, including medical sales, leadership development, and ministry.

She is actively involved at North Point Ministries in Georgia and works with several nonprofits to creatively and strategically build community and influence for the kingdom work of God.

Joseph Lee (ThM, 2017) youth and young adult pastor, Reunion Church, Dallas, Texas

New Ministries Phil Powers (ThM, 1981; PhD, 1995), professor of Bible, Millar College of the Bible, Saskatchewan, Canada Hwee-Chuang Heng (MACE, 1986; DMin, 2015), resident faculty, East Asia School of Theology, Singapore

Tim Hawkins (ThM, 2017), lead pastor, Northview Evangelical Free Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado

BBack row, third from left, Elisa Laird (MACL) and Darrell Bock (ThM, 1979)

Courtney Thang (MACM) and Alan V. Trippe (ThM, 2008) and Melissa (MACE, 2008)

2018 DTS LEGACY GRADUATES

Sarah Stiles (ThM) and D. Wayne Stiles II (ThM, 1997; DMin, 2004)

Front row, third from left, Lindsay Lee (ThM) and Dr. Young Lee (ThM, 2005)

David Shields (ThM) and John C. Shields (ThM, 1995)

Back row, third from left, David A. Brown (ThM) and Kevin (ThM, 1999) and (front row, first from left) Linda (MABS, 2006) Brown

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BOOKS & RESOURCES: FROM THE DTS FAMILY Best Bible Books: New Testament Resources (Kregel) John Glynn (1992–95), Michael Burer (ThM, 1998; PhD, 2004),* editor Which tools are best for sermon preparation, topical study, research, or classroom study in the field of New Testament studies? In Best Bible Books, the authors review and recommend hundreds of books, saving pastors, students, and scholars time, effort, and money. Glynn and Burer examine commentaries on every book of the New Testament, describing their approach, format, and usability; they then rank them on a scale of good, better, and best. Other chapters survey special studies for each New Testament book as well as books in related disciplines such as historical background, language resources, and hermeneutics. This is an indispensable resource for any serious student of the Bible.

New resources by members of the seminary family: Complete list at dts.edu/books Visit the DTS Bookcenter website online at bookcenter.dts.edu *Faculty member

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The Power of a Merry Heart (Lampion Press) Wayne Braudrick (MABS, 1994) Israel, the Church, and the Middle East (Kregel) Darrell Bock (ThM, 1970)* and Mitch Glaser True Discipleship: Growing in the Knowledge of Jesus (Bridge Logos Publishers) Gary Crandall (STM, 1955) Even in Our Darkness (Zondervan) Jack Deere (ThM, 1975; ThD, 1984)

Further Faster Leadership: 40 Practices to Accelerate Leaders and Build Better Teams (Zondervan) Andy Stanley (ThM, 1985) Further Faster Leadership distills the most important lessons Andy Stanley has learned about leadership into forty “bottom lines,” ranging from creating a culture of continual improvement to building a compelling vision, from leading a team meeting to challenging the status quo. For a way to quickly level-up your leadership capacity, these principles will do just that.

Discussion questions, notes on application, and exercises are included for both personal and group use.

Some of the principles covered in this book include: complexity of purpose, the power of team, and much more.

Preparing for a Kingdom Marriage (Focus on the Family) Tony Evans (ThM, 1976; ThD, 1982)

Choosing the Extraordinary Life: God’s 7 Secrets for Success and Significance (Baker Books) Robert Jeffress (ThM, 1981)

Joyfully Spreading the Word: Sharing the Good News of Jesus (Crossway) Gloria Furman (MACE, 2007), editor and Kathleen Nielson, editor

Ever Faithful (Thomas Nelson) David Jeremiah (ThM, 1967)

Drawing Strength from the Right Sources (WestBow Press) Chris Goppert (MABS, 1980)

31 Days to Happiness: How to Find What Really Matters in Life (Thomas Nelson) David Jeremiah (ThM, 1967) God of Tomorrow (WaterBrook) Caleb Kaltenbach (DMin, 2017)

Pride and Humility at War: A Biblical Perspective (P&R Publishing) J. Lanier Burns (ThM, 1972; PhD, 1979)* We live in a culture that values achievement and self-esteem. Even those trying to follow Christ struggle with pride. Lanier Burns shows that the Bible consistently presents humility as the supreme virtue. In contrast, pride is the underlying depravity behind specific sins. Humility’s surprising essence is God-centeredness—living for the glory of God rather than self. On the basis of the biblical principle, Christ’s example, and the contemporary need, Pride and Humility at War argues for the unfamiliar connection between true significance and a humble dependence on the Lord. Dr. Burns reminds us that, in the Bible, humility is the key to a life of blessing. It is not just one of many virtues, but the heart of all virtue.

Heaven and Hell (Dispensational Publishing House) Robert P. Lightner (ThM, 1959; ThD, 1964)*

Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church (Crossway) John Onwuchekwa (MACE, 2009)

Now That’s Funny: Humorous Illustrations to Soup Up Your Talks, Sermons, or Speeches (Resource Publications) Jack Lord (ThM, 1954)

Irresistible (Zondervan) Andy Stanley (ThM, 1985)

Studying Paul’s Letters with the Mind and Heart (Kregel Academic) Gregory MaGee (ThM, 2005) Nothing But the Blood of Jesus (Redeeming Press) J. D. Myers (ThM, 2008)

Developing Emotionally Mature Leaders: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help Transform Your Ministry (Baker Books) Aubrey Malphurs (ThM, 1978; PhD, 1981)*

Too many times leaders ignore the emotional side of ministry. They value a stoic belief that ignores relational skills, believing that emotions are a distraction. In his new book, on emotional intelligence, Dr. Malphurs challenges that belief and equates emotionally mature leaders with spiritually mature leaders. He shows the importance of including relational skill training in the church and leads readers in a biblical study of emotions. This book is a training manual. Half of the book includes quizzes, discussion questions, and incredibly practical advice designed to help leaders listen better, motivate, build trust, and help other leaders grow.

God’s Word for You (Tyndale Publishing) Charles Swindoll, chancellor* Good Morning, Lord . . .Can We Talk?

(Tyndale Publishing) Charles Swindoll, chancellor* A Love Story from God (Heritage Builders) Rick Yohn (ThM, 1964)

Congratulations to Dr. Charles Swindoll. The Swindoll Study Bible NLT received the 2018 Christian Book Award®. “For 40 years ECPA has recognized excellence in Christian publishing through the Christian Book Award® program,” explained Stan Jantz, executive director of ECPA. “We are grateful to the publishers and their authors who create and produce these Award-winning books and Bibles. They are prime examples of the effective way publishing fulfills ECPA’s mission: To make the Christian message more widely known.”

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god’s heart for those in need:

Lord, What Can I Do? T he smell of exhaust dizzied my head, and the sounds of traffic flooded my ears. Our bus sat on a street in Nairobi, Kenya, waiting for the congested roads to flow again.

Young peddlers with desperate eyes offered trinkets for sale through the bus windows.

We moved a few feet ahead, and then I saw them. Around twenty young boys huddled together in the median, dejected, stonefaced, and sniffing paint. “Lord, what can I do?”

It was the middle of the week. Instead of sitting in a classroom, these school-age boys sat on display for everyone inching past in traffic to see. Yet, no one did anything.

People continued to walk and drive past them.

I imagined how I would feel if my own five children, who now sat around me securely on the bus, found themselves on that median. Would I want someone to help them? I would surely feel distraught! The intersection cleared, and our bus moved on. I promised myself not to forget. I told myself I would tell their story. I asked, “Lord, what can I do?”

EYES WIDE OPEN I grew up in a middle-class Christian family in suburban America. My paternal grandfather graduated from DTS. He also served as a pastor. My maternal grandparents worked as missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators. I grew up hearing and knowing the gospel.

My church and my family supported missionaries all around the world. I benefitted from Christian conferences, concerts, summer camp, and went to a Christian school for most of my education.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel incredibly blessed, but I also know I lived a sheltered life. The poverty I witnessed growing up

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included the occasional hitchhiker my dad would pick up, and I had experienced some exposure to inner-city ministries on the one or two of the youth group trips we took.

But when my husband and our five children went to Kenya to visit my missionary brother and his family, we entered another world altogether. With eyes wide open, we drove past the largest slum in Kenya, trash dumps where people made their homes and livelihood in. We saw people bathing in puddles, hauling water from mountain streams, and children in tattered clothing carrying young siblings. I came home burdened by what I saw and asked the Lord, “What can I do?” Because of our experience in Kenya, my Bible all of a sudden read differently to me. I started noticing a new theme: God’s heart for the poor.

GOD’S HEART Beginning with the Fall of man, all of creation groans under a cursed darkness.

Sin, sickness, and suffering came from the Fall. From the moment Adam and Eve left the Garden, the disastrous effects of the Fall led to spiritual and physical poverty.

Then, as the Lord called the nation of Israel to live as the people of God, he intended to bring an end to the curse, a restoration of creation, reconciliation to himself through the promised Messiah of his people. He gave the Israelites laws to obey. He commanded them to care for the sojourner, the poor, and the needy (Deut 15). He refused to accept their sacrifices when injustice, oppression, homelessness, and hunger occurred in their land (Isa 58). Creation continued to fall away from God.

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Finally, on the Sabbath in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, read from Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19).

Jesus came to give his life to change the effects of the Fall, to offer his body as a sacrifice, a redemption for our souls, and to restore us. He came to reverse our spiritual poverty. Once reconciled into a relationship with God through faith alone in Christ, our Father calls us to act. So that as a result of our restoration, we would continue to ask, “Lord, what can I do to build your kingdom?”

In Mark 12:30–31, Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” We continue to live in a fallen world in need of restoration. As believers, we should exist to shine like bright lights pushing back the darkness, pushing back the effects of the Fall in our communities and in the places God has placed us. We have received gifts and a calling to creatively use our talents to change the world by sharing the gospel, and by loving God and our neighbor.

When I came face to face with the people living in poverty in Kenya, I no longer could escape the truth that they are my neighbors.

WHAT CAN I DO, LORD? After our return from Kenya, our family decided to act. We would sponsor a young man to help him continue his education. We sent a message to George’s mother through my sister-in-law, Vanessa.

And I received a message back from her that said, “April, I wish you could have seen [his mother’s] reaction. She was jumping up and down and was crying for joy that God had answered their prayers. George had been asking her how they were going to pay for the school fees, and she continually encouraged him to work hard and pray for the Lord to provide.”

I couldn’t sleep that night as I thought about this mother and her son. So I got up in the middle of the night and wrote the first draft of a children’s book, The Marvelous Mud House.

In that moment, the Lord answered my prayers. I had asked him, “What can I do? Lord, please show me what my one small part in this global need can be.” As a mother of five children who loves to write and has always loved reading great literature to my children, God called me to write a children’s book that might help other families choose to reach out and make a difference in the world through child sponsorship.

THE BODY OF CHRIST IN ACTION Many parts make up the body of Christ, each with various gifts and talents, in places of ministry and callings. The Word tells us in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ

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Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” This means that every believer has a unique role in the kingdom of God! I have a talented artist friend. Seven years ago, Rich Davis and his wife, Angie, started inviting fifth and sixth grade kids into their home every Wednesday evening. Since then, they have gathered together to creatively brainstorm and follow through with ways they can reach their neighbors with the gospel. They visit sick and elderly neighbors, visit police stations and nursing homes, and draw Scripture verses in chalk on sidewalks. They also make cookies and wrap Christmas gifts for lonely widows. They not only learn about Jesus, they also learn how to live like Jesus. They keep asking the question, “Lord, with the gifts and talents you have given us, how can we creatively live like Jesus?”

My friend Kerri Brown works as a wrangler who loves horses and kids. Twenty years ago, she left her job as a teacher to start a stillthriving ministry at our camp that uses horsemanship training paired with Christian mentoring to reach out to at-risk students in our community.

My daughter takes ballet classes from a godly woman who transforms their recitals into gospel-proclaiming performances of worship. Another person prepares and serves food to the poor and homeless in our community. Today many radio programs get produced and broadcast to countries whose governments radically oppose the gospel.

These examples display to me the creativity and innovation of the mind of God. When his people continue to ask him “What can I do?” he guides their steps and directs them in unique and powerful ways to serve him. What a creative God we serve!

I often speak to students in schools and churches about The Marvelous Mud House and our experiences in Kenya, and the resulting transformation that took place in my heart. Some of these students may never travel across continents or see the extreme poverty that I witnessed, but the application for all believers still remains.

We are blessed so we can serve as a blessing. The Lord places us in our neighborhoods and communities, our schools and places of business so that our eyes and hearts would remain open to the needs around us. So that no matter where life finds us, we, his children, should never stop asking, “Lord, what can we do?”

APRIL GRANEY (MABS, 1999) and her husband, Tom, serve at New Life Ranch, a Christian summer camp and retreat center in Oklahoma. Her passion is loving Jesus and helping parents pass along God’s heart for the world to their children. She is the author of The Marvelous Mud House. You can read more at aprilgraney.com.

F R O M T H E C H A N C E L LO R

Ask Dr. Swindoll DR. CHARLES R. SWINDOLL

S

everal times a year, Dr. Swindoll preaches in chapel at DTS and engages in a question-and-answer time with prospective students. Here are some of the questions he answered recently.

How do you handle change?

I have to keep asking myself if I’m staying flexible. I also remind myself that God is a God of freshness and change. God himself never changes nor his Son. His Word is immutable. He remains the same “yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).

God’s work, however, is innovative and creative. His working changes even though he stays consistent. The Bible describes his ways as “higher” (Isa 55:8–9) and his mercies as “new” every morning (Lam 3:22–23). Now that’s creative!

God is faithful, but he’s always changing things up for us— making things new. God flexes his design processes and alters his methods so that we can experience him in new ways. It’s a course of action he implements to keep our relationship with him growing.

Scripture commands us to be “imitators” of God—to “mimic” him. So one of the ways we can do that is to keep asking ourselves the change questions on a regular basis: Am I currently open to change? Am I willing to risk? Am I flexible enough to innovate? Am I willing to endure the possibility of making a massive change in the direction God is leading? Will this change draw me closer to God?

What advice do you have for someone who is struggling from burnout?

If you’re saying, I’m burned out, it’s a good thing that you know. I’m proud of you for admitting it. Except for our time with the Lord, self-talk is one of the most important conversations anyone can have. What you tell yourself is what you believe.

First, make a change of pace. Take a break, get some rest, for an extended amount of time. Go see a good movie or spend

some time with a close friend. If you’re married, plan a little downtime with your spouse to talk. Say “no” to things that demand more of your time. Get away. Refueling is part of God’s creation design and it is good.

Second, run to a friend in your life who listens. It is a real gift from God. I have a friend on our church staff who serves as the minister of music. He’s the best listener I’ve ever known. If I want to share something with him, he does not probe. He never questions my motive. He never reminds me of something I preached that I’m not modeling right now. He only listens.

Sometimes, Cynthia or I have said to the other, “I’m weary tonight. I feel like I’m losing my momentum.” Momentum is a big part of our lives. And she’s so good to listen.

Remember everyone needs times of renewal. God does his masterful work of motivation when our morale and vision get reignited through the care of a listening friend or by taking time away. When that happens, a burst of momentum returns, and we’re back on our feet, pressing forward toward the goal.

“

God is faithful, but he’s always changing things up for us—making things new.

”

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EMMANUAL RUHEZA • • • • •

Began ministry at age 14 Church planter in 5 African countries with e3 Cofounder of African Bible in Community Graduates in 2019 with a ThM Plans to return to Rwanda to reach every church there, training pastors and encouraging Bible knowledge

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been accepted to study at DTS. The scholarship support I receive makes this incredible dream possible. I am so honored.”

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