Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world.
So that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina.
Well, let's walk you through 30 years with no further ado. And we judge the ministry oftentimes and compare ministries one to another. And I just want you to know you can't do that. It's not a good idea. I'm often asked, why did you?
and then fill in the blank. Why did you do this crazy thing that other missionaries, it's not in the book. It doesn't follow the pattern of how you're supposed to church plant. My answer is simply: I didn't plan to do anything. Other than go there, preach the gospel, see people saved, and those that are saved, baptize them and disciple them.
That's all I had in my mind. And then God gave us a lot of other stuff. And similar to Jericho seemed foolish, and marching people to the Red Sea where they couldn't escape seemed foolish, so did. pretty much everything that God laid upon us since going to Iceland as missionaries. Matthew 13, 5 says, Some fell on stony places, and when you're planting seeds, that does happen, and you have rocks surrounding you, and it's really hard to grow.
Some fell amongst thorns, and And of course, when you fall among thorns, there's no fruit brought to perfection. And that's the field in which we're serving. We have seen God do great things, but at the same time, we're ministering in a unique field. We have no tools for ministry. Bible translation is lacking.
Songbook, and I'm not talking about a songbook. I like to hold a songbook too, but I'm talking about songs. Christians write songs. Christians write spiritual songs, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and we don't have that either. Um we don't have Bible dictionary teachings, commentaries, anything that you have in English, we do not have in Icelandic.
and we're lacking tools to disciple. And we're working on those. When we came to Iceland, and I want to start with this because the building dwarfs the ministry. That is to say that the giant building that God gave us to build Howard. the responsibility to finish.
dwarfs the work that we've been doing For the Lord in actually ministering to souls, starting knocking on doors, learning the language, making fools of ourselves, inviting people to church, soul winning, doing all that we can to see people come in. And that's what we've been doing. We did that from the beginning, and I'll show you some photos of some people here. This is 2010. We had over 2,000 come.
We have our children's ministry, bus ministry.
Now, the adults don't attend services. We try to get them to come back, but they would come and watch their kids sing for Christmas time and whatnot. And so it's always been about souls. We had seven services a week since we've had the building. Half in English, half in Icelandic, ministering, reaching out, knocking on doors, visiting, praying, sick people, all the things that you do when you're a minister in Iceland or a minister anywhere.
We've had summer camps, we've had over 700 attend our summer camps, and over 400 decisions made to trust Christ as their Savior. We've had over 6,000 children attend our services. That means we've visited every one of their homes. That means every mom and dad has heard the gospel in their house. We've also had those parents come.
come in for special occasions.
So this is the ministry. This young man, Peter, is our neighbor. He passed away. He's the guy reaching for the flag on the photo there. And he got saved in our summer camp in 2005.
And Pietr Snyder died two years later. And this is one young man that I know was very happy that we went to Iceland and preached the gospel. And he's buried right a short distance away from our daughter Sarah. right in our hometown. And that's her picture right there in the photo.
I always like to include her. The building project does dwarf, as I said earlier, the work in Iceland. It's an amazing story, though. And I want to tell you that story. And without seeing it, I'm so glad that Kerwin has come there three times, I believe, but Pastor got to come here this time.
And I'm so thankful that y'all came up, because seeing it is hard to explain if you don't see it. But I'll do my best in this very time that we have this evening. First Baptist Church was established in 1983. It was a military ministry. That's where I was saved in 1991.
It's the first, according to the government of Iceland, it's the first Baptist church in the history of the country in the 1300 years' history. That's not us. It was in a newspaper article, and that's their representation. It's the only Baptist church ever to build a building in the history of Iceland.
So we are still currently the only Baptist church building and entity. Pastor John Offerman, a military man serving in the Air Force, he and his family came and he did it as a secondary thing. He's, by the way, worked all day and then he started a church in the evenings and planted this church from 1981 to 1985. It was called United Baptist Church in the beginning, and Rodney Colston would replace him.
Now he's a full-time missionary, not military and secondary church planter, but he came up as a fully supported church planting missionary and he served up there for those years. In 1985, that's me on the whatever you, whatever the swap is there. You can see the little kid there, the 15-year-old boy, and then the 28-year-old man, he went to Iceland. That's Johnny Wright. And he comes to Iceland in 1985.
And he's serving in the Air Force. And God put Iceland in Johnny Wright's heart while he was there. I am in another place in my life. I'm 15 years old, and I was farm-raised out of church, away from anything, Catholic background, but we didn't really go, didn't really know anything. And that's me holding Tom, our turkey.
Love that. And in 1985, my brother graduated, he joined the Army. And during that year, as well, this will be the last photo in May that I would have of my dad and I in that picture. I begged him to go swimming to an island. You can see me in the photo below.
Of that place, it's about three football fields away from the shore, and cold water, hypothermia. My dad lost consciousness, and I was not able to pull him back to the shore. And so, my dad passed away in my hands, and then my life kind of went tumbling down, spiraling.
Now, don't forget, John went to Iceland and got Iceland in his heart in 1985. And in 1985, I can't do justice to all the things that God did in my life during that year. I was not a Christian, but I got on my knees in a barn and screamed to heaven in anger. And there's a lot more that went on in that story, but I asked God, I said, I just want help. I need help.
And Johnny surrendered to go to Iceland. And he went um away in 1985 to 1989, went to Bible College at Tabernacle Baptist Bible College and met his wi uh he and his wife came back as missionaries to to Iceland. And he served from 1989 to 2006. And in 1989, I enlisted in the Air Force. And God brought me through all my schooling.
I was saved, got me to Iceland. And I met Johnny Wright. He led me to Christ in July of 91. And then I left and went to Babo College. And I was in Babo College from 93 to 97.
In 94, while I was in Babo College, they broke ground for the building. June 26, 1994, First Baptist church in the history of Iceland. And groundbreaking, he decided to do, it wasn't enough, you know, building the gigantic building, but he adopted two children that very same year. And Johnny Wright went through a lot of struggles, a lot of heartache, and a lot of sacrifice to have that place there. And they gathered hand in hand and begged God to let us build a place.
In this land, where his name would be glorified. And they committed that property. Uh to the Lord. And I know all the people that were there, or at least most of them. And they began that process, an impossible process.
A journey that seemed way beyond them, and everybody told him, You'll never finish, you'll never finish.
Well, less than a year after they started, they only had the framing up, they had the the metal on the walls and almost on the ceiling, and the drawdown came and he lost 160 of his 250 members in 45 days. And he shut the building project down. They slapped the tin on, the trim on the edges, and all you had was a gigantic barn. And it was a very difficult time. It stayed in a very not finished way until the base closed in 2006.
They 12 years had this situation built a little bit inside. About 30% was finished. By the time the base closed, and when I say the base closes, I mean the church left. There were no members left behind. And so that church that was planted dissolved and disappeared.
Now we had a ministry, and I'll explain that in a few. The area that you see there, they had on your screen, 30% of the building in that red box there on whichever side it is, we had left side, less than 30% finished, and on the outside you'll see that it was boarded up. It was really difficult. We had a decision to make. And deputation, of course I was on deputation during this time.
98 to 99. I came to Iceland in 1999 and served till 2006. And what we were doing was we were establishing a church to the Icelandic-speaking nationals. We did not do anything with the English-speaking church except visit once in a while. Our theme was no English.
How can we feast at the Father's table when they are starving? And so we did not get involved with that military work, though it was a lovely work, thriving work. Our purpose was to reach Iceland. And that's what we established the Baptist Church on the Southern Peninsula, Icelandic-speaking church, ministering only in Icelandic. We had a building we rented.
We applied for a building permit. We're going to build an 800-square-foot little tiny little church building out in the field somewhere. And that was our directions that we were going. Johnny Wright calls me up and he asks me, he understood that they were closing the base. He got the call in 06 February and he said, Pat, do you want the responsibility of this building?
I told him no. No members? Uh all those bills. No, absolutely not. And I don't want it.
And they had a small English remnant. My theme was: I will not do anything in English. I came to reach Iceland. And he began, you know, he asked me again, he said, Are you sure? Because they've spent three-quarters of a million dollars.
Already sacrificed that much. It's the first Baptist church in the history of the island. He tried to get other missionaries to take it, and nobody would take it. He tried to get organizations to help. Nobody would help.
And he said, Are you sure you won't do it? I said, No, the second time. And I kept telling him we're just a little flock. We just have bus kids. Our ministry, the church we established, was 95% bus kids, about 3% teens, and we had 14 adults that weren't faithful, not saved, and it was just a, it was not, well, not a church by any stretch of the imagination, not able to take a mega church, 13,000 square foot building built for their church.
And I kept saying it's a little flock. After he asked me those two times, I said no. I was in my devotions reading, as I do scientifically from beginning to end. It's really complicated. If you need a pencil, write it down.
Read the Bible from beginning to end. And I read this portion, Luke 12, 32, in my quiet time. It wasn't open the Bible in point. It was in my quiet time. And I kept saying we couldn't do it because we're a little flock.
And God put this in my face, before my face. Luke 12:32. Fear not, little what? It's the Father's good pleasure to give to you the And I saw right there.
Now, this doesn't say the responsibility of this building project, but it does to me. And that, the Holy Ghost of God gave me that, and I immediately called Pastor Johnny Wright, and I said. I said, God wants me to do this. And I'm so glad I didn't know what I was getting into. He left within a 45-day window.
You probably can't see it, but the total bills of the month. $7,500 per month. Just the building loan alone was $3,500 per month. They had a $158,000 mortgage. And they have no members.
We're left with Very little. And the $1,730 per month is then going to be all the other bills.
So our total per month that we had out of pocket, because oh, I forgot to say that all of these things here were the pastor's salary, all that went away. I didn't get anything.
So all this disappeared, so we just had all the bills. And God did something pretty cool. We needed $5,320 per month to live.
Now don't ask me how it all happened. We have six members left, 20 visitors coming to the church, our gigantic bus ministry that costs over $20,000 a year just for the fuel. Just for the fuel to pick these kids up. We're already overburdened. And God did some pretty crazy amazing things for us.
158 days after Johnny Wright left, I walked into the bank. I was able to pay three times these three amounts, and it totaled the entire amount was $158,000. God brought in. over a thousand dollars a day. Word got out, God actually moved in hearts.
I don't want to give glory to any man on earth, but God touched hearts, heard of our situation, knew the missionaries could not continue. knew that it was the first Baptist church in the history of the island, could not, and how could we fail? we would never be able to outlive Not being able to complete this task. And God did it. And then it showed me: yes, God wants me to do this.
People ask me, what are you doing as a missionary building a building? You know, you were sent there to preach the gospel. I know. I don't need to hear it. I got the own voices in my head talking like that.
I know. God did this for us, and this was one of those things that God said, Yep, see, son, I did this. This is what I wanted you to do. And it was full of garbage, a lot more garbage than you see here. The inside, as I said, was unfinished, almost unable to navigate.
And so we had a big job. God did the first thing, finished it. We were able to seal the front of the building. The city was complaining how ugly it looked. And so we were able to finish the front of the building.
And a lot of them skimming over here that would be wonderful to spend an hour on each one of these topics. But let me show you some photos and show you some amazing things. In 2005, there we go. We're starting to finish. And there I am, a young man.
We got that wood on the front. And I am so excited. We got this job done. And the community's like driving by seeing this building.
Now it's not boarded up with plywood. It's actually starting to look good. Just hope they don't come in and say it's a barn. But at any rate, it was beautiful. And then the richest man in the island The largest corporation of the country.
The local government and a law enforcement agency all waged war to obtain our property. We ended up in a three-year nasty legal battle. And it was a nightmare. Right after we finished, I actually did a crazy thing and Okay. I really wanted it pretty.
The mayor was complaining, and so I stepped out and did some crazy stuff and spent some money I shouldn't have spent, but we landscaped just to make it pretty. And they drove, we finished, the front was done, and they pulled in the month after and they started tearing up the entire property. Less than uh Two months later, we have this in our front yard and they've destroyed everything. $35,000 of repairs that we did to the property is now destroyed. And they're just trying to get rid of us.
And they knew that we were just a little flock. They want the property. It's a big, huge building, sales comp sales area. This is 20 feet outside the front door of the church right here. They start putting these pillars in.
They started piling their, this is a lumber yard they built. And so, this was the concept drawing. They're going to cover us up, bury us, and it was a discouraging time. Nonetheless, They would put trash in front of the building and block our way so we couldn't come in. It was a really rough journey.
And then in 2007, in the middle of all this, we were pregnant and then we lost our baby. And as you think that song this morning, I tell you, I want to hear it again tonight. It would be a blessing if we can close it with that because, you know, you keep sailing through the storm. And you're a whole lot happier at the end of the journey instead of giving up along the journey. And God helping me through these journeys.
It was, I can't breathe, I can't take another step. And don't forget, as all of this is going on, we're still holding seven services a week, we're still visiting every week, we are still preparing sermons, we are still going and doing all that we can. The work of the ministry is still upon us. And these things, God helped us. And as you, those of you that prayed for us, we are so thankful.
We came back after our daughter passed away. We took two weeks to hide ourselves in a summer home and cry and mourn. We came back and the local law enforcement, this is a car that was given to us to sell and raise some money for the church. And uh they actually took it. And uh And they allowed somebody to impound it.
They said, well, there was no plate on it, but it was on our property. And they said, but the police and the whole system was just a mafia. And it broke our hearts. I had to pay money to get that thing back.
So welcome home, Patrick. You know, we really are helping you. But you know what? God did some amazing things. Through all of that, we kept walking along, one step at a time, getting up out of bed, breathe, breathe.
Breathing? leaving Trying to just say, God, I want to. I didn't come here to build this crazy building. I don't even, I didn't ask for this. And I just want to see people saved and just do the work that God called me there to do, and then these things come upon us.
And in these years, I actually began the translation process. And sitting down saying, we have a Bible that's faulty and it can't be these people need the Word of God. And necessity was laid upon me. I was like, I have to start doing this journey. I have to do it.
People ask me, why is it taking so long? I'll just go to the next slide. The city and criminal, the civil and criminal charges were being filed against the city because my lawyer, after 18 months of painful trying to do it myself, God miraculously brought me in to a law office. I got the number one law land dispute lawyer in the country. And I was told that if anybody goes to court, sees him, they settle, which was a blessing.
I didn't know that. But God did. And the files were waged against City Hall. Who wins against City Hall? Nobody.
But God gave us a victory. And they settled, apologized. and um admitted guilt. And I was so thankful. But they did bring out, they sent every arm, they weaponized every arm of the government.
Their IRS came against me, the health inspector, the electrical inspector, they did everything they could to find something wrong, because if they can find something wrong, we only rent the land, they can kick us off. Mortgage, they can auction off what we have on there and kick us off. We don't own the property. We only own the building.
So they found something wrong. According to the fine print of our land contract, if it's not completed, we cannot hold services.
So they shut us down. And so I shut the church service, I shut the building down. And at the end of the dispute, they allowed us a grace period. But what came out of it was sell or finish. There is no third option.
And so, when people ask me, why didn't you just use what you had and then build? That your church, when it becomes a full-grown church, when it can do this, you know, it can support self-sufficient as we're going for, then you can build. And there was not an option to do that, it was sell. or finish. And so we decided that God wanted us to do it.
And then I'm going to walk you through some things here that'll help you to see the journey, though I will not do any justice to this whole story. A friend of mine named Tony Foster, he came up every year for over 15, 17 years and gave a lot of his life to help me in Iceland. Just a deacon of a church, but a dear friend of mine. He said, Why don't you start putting the money that you're spending on renting a facility for summer camp? Why don't you just use that money and start putting it into the building and start one step at a time building?
Told him it was crazy. Three months later, I thought it was a good idea. And I started, I was like, let's do it. And so we had our camp, our first summer camp in there, and we invested. It was like our summer camp rental cost was about $3,000, $4,000 just for the facility.
So I took that money and we started building in the building. And of course they took part in building. Phase one was this section here that we had to finish. Phase two is another area. Phase three is another area.
I'm just showing you the building. And then phase four, this was to be the last final main auditorium area. And we did those. The year time frame, I guess, was important for you to see. 2007 to 11 was phase one, 2012 to 14, 2.
16 to 18, 3. And 17 to 24. These are some verses God gave to me. When um I know pastor's thinking, Patrick, slow down. I want to hear this.
I'm driving myself along. You know, as you're stepping up to do some stuff, and you're actually asking yourself the same questions that other pastors are asking me: why are you doing this? And I'm asking myself the same question: why am I doing this? And I'm reading in my quiet time. and we're having some fiscal issues.
And I read Hagy one nine He looked for much, and lo, it came to little When he brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why, saith the Lord of hosts, Because mine house that is wa that is waste and ye run every man unto his own house. And that got into my heart. And I thought, you know, you saved, maybe the Bible doesn't work for you like that. It really worked that way for me as I was reading.
I was thinking, you know what? Maybe this issue is: God does want this to be done, this is His will. Doesn't seem to make sense, but I'm going to take some steps forward. And then God showed me Zechariah 6:15, And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord. And ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you, and this shall come to pass if.
Ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. And so we committed ourselves to just keep listening to the Lord, keep doing the work of the Lord. And then, see, it says that they that are far off shall come. Churches started contacting me. But first family jumped in.
My family, of course, you see Will there, everybody knows him. That's the guy smiling on that lift. We're 30 feet up in the air, he's faking it, he was scared to death. And what a joy it is! My kids built with me, everything we're doing, everything you see.
The health inspectors came in and said the carpet must go. And so our first project, as a family, we bought the flooring. And me and Vicki and our three kids, we put the flooring in. It's a wonderful thing to have your family serving with you. And then, of course, family came as well.
We have family here with us that came. Tom Brown and I were talking on the phone, and his recollection is way better than mine because I've gone through so much trauma, I've forgotten everything. But basically, his message was: I just need help. I don't know how to build. I've never built anything.
I was raised on a farm, did a lot of farm work, but fences and chicken coops isn't going to get me building this building. And he came up and he taught me how to do drywall. He came up and taught me some principles about how to do the building project. And I put myself to school online and trained myself how to build, and it was a fun journey. And they came up many years in a row.
Of course, Katie is his wife, and there she is right here. I love this picture, and so does Tom. The oompa loompa outfits, he calls them. I don't know, they're not blue. And we had another call this team Abishai, Michelle Harrison, a fellow missionary, and her father right here.
I'm an electrician on aircraft, but he was an electrician on buildings, and he walked there and he taught me how to do the laying of the conduit and an electrician, all that fun stuff, and brought me through school. People coming up from afar to help us to build. Tom and I prayed right here where this foyer is. We prayed that God would save somebody in every area. This was our first big project we did.
We opened up where you walk in the building and made it nice. And we prayed that God would save somebody that summer camp after we worked together. We had a young lady named Sandra in summer camp. She sat right here and we got to see her trust Christ as her Savior right there. And you know, that's what it's all about.
It's not just a building, it's a place where God's word is proclaimed. And God sent us another man, Musick. This is Ralph Musick, and he built gigantic, he worked on the last test facility for our nuclear power plant, our nuclear test facility, where we used to blow up bombs for some reason. And anyway, he's a builder, he's a miner. He was building the aluminum smelting plants in Iceland.
And he, so, by God's mercy upon me, was sent to us, and he helped me. He came in there and we emptied the building. Moved a lot of stuff around and he drew the blueprints. for the building on the floor. Spray painted it so we wouldn't have to reference them because I was saying, How do I do this?
Where does this stuff go? Not just the blueprints. If you're a builder, he painted on there the electrical, the everything, the actual blueprints on the floor. Pretty awesome stuff that God did for me while we were there. We had our first team come up, our first church team come up.
Team Gideon. And it was supposed to be a team of almost 30, then it dropped to 20, then it dropped to 10. By the time they arrived, we had this man here, he's 76 years old, a lifetime contractor, built all his life. We have this guy here, he worked on the Columbia Space Shuttle. He he retired from NASA.
And then we have these two men, David and Stephen. And they came up and we were, I was overwhelmed because I was thinking, we're going to get all these frames, all the framing up, all the studs up for this entire building. And I was thinking 30 will do it, 20 will do it, 10, mmm. And then by the time they arrived, four? But in nine days In nine days, the entire section on this side of the building, this is a 13,000 square foot building.
So every single upright stud was done in six workdays. You can't really calculate that. I don't know how to describe it, how that they work, but they worked well. And you don't have the church built, we don't have the church for the building, is what I hear all the time, whether it's in my head or people. judging what I'm doing.
So why not sell the building and get a smaller one? It'd be so much easier. This is the article that was in the newspaper, and it simply says: the Baptists are building a church. uh in the southern peninsula the first baptist church This is the, it was in the newspaper all the time when we were building. And I know if we quit, the heading is going to be: The First Baptist Church Fails to Finish.
And so I even told Johnny when I first came, I said, why don't you sell this place? It's just too much for you. And he began sharing with me the stories of sacrifice. Which is why history is so important to know. What's been given to you?
He told me the stories of sacrifice: they were in the cold and the dark for one year in Iceland with no heat. with no bathrooms. And that church met. In that auditorium, it looked like a barn. And they had lights hanging down as from wires, and we call them Russian lights because they're.
The greatest news that anyone can receive is the news of the free gift of salvation found in Jesus Christ. It is our desire for you to know him personally, Would you take a moment to hear this today? Every man is born with a sin nature. Romans three twenty three says For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. No matter how hard we try, we're not good enough to obtain God's glory.
or to get to heaven. Because of that, sin carries the penalty of death. Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The wages of our sin, or the payment of our sin, only equals death and separation from God. But it's only through God's gift salvation through Jesus Christ that we can accept Him as our Savior. Jesus Christ paid for your sin debt. The Bible says in Romans 5:8, But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. All you have to do is receive Christ.
by faith as your Saviour. Romans 10.9 says That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse thirteen continues For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's as simple as admitting that you're a sinner believing that Jesus is the only way. and calling upon his name.
Bible says whosoever that's anyone can call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior? There is no greater day than today to take care of this. Would you accept Christ as your Savior? If you have any questions, please give us a call at 336-993-5192 or visit our website at CurwinBaptastChurch.com.
or visits that person at one of our three service times. We hope you have a great rest of your day. God bless you. Mm-hmm.
