The Dominican Republic will make you fat! It’s a culture that features warm hospitality and wonderful dishes. Add to that a couple of mothers who insist that you eat and you have a recipe for rapid weight gain! Today looks like a day for fasting–except I have a dinner engagement with a Dominican gumbo to heavy to be called a “soup”! Aye-aye-aye.
And I have a theory about Dominican drivers. Behind Jamaican drivers, they rank #2 for the most dangerous. But I noticed something about the people and about their driving. The driving at first appears really disorganized and chaotic. Where else in the world can only two cars cause a traffic jam? But then I noticed three things that actually suggest Dominican drivers are some of the best in the world. First, there was the rhythm to the traffic (that is, when it’s actually moving). Everybody seems to flow together even though to the untrained it looks like chaos. Second, it dawned on me that I have not seen a single accident since I’ve been here and that any U.S. driver would have had at least five by now. I think this is because the Dominican driver remains aware of far more potential dangers than the American would. The Dominican driver expects the guy to his right to suddenly thrust his SUV into his lane, or the motorcyclists (a.k.a, muerte-rist) to dart between the cars and to run the red light. They’re conditioned to be far more alert and flexible than the American driver, who has the audacity to expect the others to stay in their lane, wait for the traffic light to turn green before going, or to use the signal before turning. With so much order on our roads, we would be overwhelmed with the “pattern” and rhythm of Dominican driving.
But here’s my theory about Dominican drivers: Dominican people love to hug and kiss. It’s a warm, embracing culture. Somehow they’ve decided to apply that part of the culture to the driving! The traffic is one long embrace and the cars all line up to kiss one another because the drivers love to hug.
There you have it. The true explanation to Dominican driving.
But this post is about the Holy Spirit’s work in the D.R. And there is a lot of it to describe and appreciate. In the last post, I relayed the story of how a friendship and one radio ministry have lead to the spread of the word throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world. Today, I want to write about how the Lord has built part of His church here in the D.R.
The story begins in Jerusalem. Yes, with Jesus, but also much later than that. A man living in the Jerusalem wanted to learn Arabic. A Muslim friend encouraged him to learn Arabic by reading the Qur’an. And so he did. As he read the Qur’an, he learned Arabic but rejected the Qur’an’s teaching. From Islam and his Muslim friend, he imbibed an anti-Jewish attitude. He looked around Jerusalem, with its many tourist sites for the Christian faith, and concluded that Christianity was a business. So he became an agnostic and somewhat hardened against religion.
In time, he moved his family to the Dominican Republic. He passed along much of his religious sentiment to his son, Sugel. But in his teen years, Sugel’s brother was among a dozen or so young nominal Catholics who were converted by the preaching of the gospel. Sugel himself remained skeptical about evangelical faith, especially when he learned that Christianity had Jewish roots. He could not believe it since he had learned his father’s anti-Semitism. But in a short while, the Spirit of the Lord regenerated Sugel through the gospel and gave Sugel a new heart toward God and toward Jewish people.
The dozen or so young Dominicans admit that they were zealous, but not according to knowledge. Converted in a fundamentalist, Dispensational Baptist church, Sugel was Calvinistic in soteriology by experience. He knew the Lord had chosen him because he knew he had not been looking for the Lord. Soon, the group of young converts grew unhappy with their church and left to find another church home. They moved around a bit, unable to find a place they considered faithful to biblical teaching. So, in 1978, they began meeting in the living room of Sugel’s father. The home of an agnostic man, somewhat jaded by his earlier experience, became the home of a new evangelical church.
The church began to grow right away. The dozen young zealots became two dozen, then sixty, then two hundred, and more. The early years were marked not only by growth but also by conflict. The church split three times in its first ten years. Sugel says that in their ignorance they did everything possible to kill a church. By the third church split (@ 1987), they knew they needed to search themselves. The church sponsored pastors’ conferences and other events. They decided they were not qualified to lead the wider church in that way and so stopped all those activities to seek the Lord. The Spirit was working humility in the group.
But the Lord was also gracious to them during that first ten years. In 1981 the group learned of John MacArthur’s ministry. Through MacArthur’s example and influence, they committed themselves to expositional preaching. The word of God was becoming more central to the ministry. A couple years later, they realized that many of their difficulties stemmed from bad polity, or the absence of any real ecclesiology. The Lord supplied a relationship with Al Martin and Trinity Baptist Church. Through leaders at Trinity, the brothers in the D.R. began to learn Baptist polity and to really examine the qualifications and roles of elders. At the end of that process, several of the elders were ordained and three of the elders humbly decided they were not qualified or called to continue serving. The Holy Spirit was moving in all of this and a new era in the life of the church began.
In a couple years, the church resumed a very active ministry of preaching and teaching, training young men for the ministry, church planting, and supporting the wider church in the Dominican Republic. Once zealous without knowledge, the church leaders now combine a genuine fervor for the Lord with the wisdom, patience, and gentleness that comes from the Lord and His word. Once impatient with other churches, the church now maintains active partnership and fellowship with pastors from across the country and across the denominational background. Many of these sister and partner churches also provide gospel-centered and dynamic ministry in the D.R. A steady stream of major conferences and books are helping to shape the evangelical scene.
The team of elders at IBSJ enjoy the unity of Spirit expressed in love, joy, patience and humility. Many of them have served together almost since the beginning of the church. You feel the same warmth in the church family and sense an attentiveness to God’s word. It’s a sweet work of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps it’s best to end this where I began–Sugel’s family. When his brothers were converted, they decided to share the news with their very devout Catholic mother. They decided to describe the things of their former life in some detail, sins and attitudes unknown to their mother. She couldn’t believe their testimony. She was shocked to hear that her sons had lived in such a way. Soon after, she proclaimed in a service of her Catholic church that if this was the change the gospel produced in her sons, she was no longer a Catholic devoted to Mary and the saints but would put her trust in the gospel. She was born again by the Spirit of the Lord. Sugel’s father, once certain that Christianity was simply big business. also was converted under the preaching of the gospel.
What began as one man’s quest to learn Arabic while living in the Middle East has become a fruitful and dynamic church and movement in the Dominican Republic. It’s amazing to see how turns unbelief and opposition and sometimes youthful zeal into a trophy of His grace and workmanship! As we sang yesterday, “solo Su gracia”–“only Your grace,” dear Lord.
Seeing the Lord’s work here has built my faith. It’s made me more joyful, knowing that Christ is building His church as He promised. It’s also made me more grateful for the evidence of His blessing and grace at FBC, for the fruit of conversion and spiritual growth among us, for the fellowship of the elders, and for the extraordinary privilege of preaching God’s word. You know, it’s a wonderful gift of grace to be able to serve the Lord and His people as a pastor and to be able to do it in as sweet a church family as FBC or a congregation like ISBJ. I feel spiritually richer because of the privilege of ministering here. I return home refreshed and grateful–if I can survive the traffic back to the airport!
Today, brother pastor, let us rejoice and give God thanks that we are pastors.
