Beeson podcast, Episode 461
David Parks and Samantha Parsons
September 10, 2019

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson Podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla.

Doug Sweeney:       Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I'm Doug Sweeney, the Dean of Beeson Divinity School and I'm here today with my cohost, Kristen Padilla, to interview two of our colleagues about the ways in which the Lord used them in the mission field this summer. Some of you may recall that on our last Beeson Podcast, we interviewed two of our MDiv students here at Beeson named Kyle Young and Russell Mann about the missions work they did over the summer in Bolivia and Ecuador. Well, today we are interviewing the director of our Global Center here at Beeson Divinity school, Dr. David Parks, and another one of our students, Samantha Parsons, about more of the ways in which God used Beeson people both at home and overseas to spread the gospel and serve others over the course of the summer. Kristen, would you mind telling our listeners just a little bit more about today's guests?

Kristen Padilla:    Yes. I'm very happy to introduce you all to Dr. David Parks who directs our Global Center here at Beeson Divinity School and he also teaches our introduction to Christian Missions Class, as well as oversees our cross-cultural ministry practicums. And David and his wife and family served in Southeast Asia for six years with the International Mission Board. So he has a lot of experience on the mission field and he's married to Jenn and they have a number of children, which David, we would love for you to introduce them in just a bit.

Kristen Padilla:    And then sitting to my left is Samantha Parsons, she's one of our outstanding MDiv students. And she serves as the children's director at her church, Hopewell Baptist Church in Pinson, Alabama. She is married to John and they have two children. So, welcome David and Samantha to the Beeson Podcast.

David Parks:        Thanks. Good to be here.

Kristen Padilla:    Let us begin with you introduce, I gave a basic bio introduction to our listeners, but we really want to know just a more personal aspect of who you are, your spiritual journey, how you came to know the Lord and how you came to Beeson Divinity School.

David Parks:        Well, I grew up in a southern baptist home. I was always involved in church, Southern Baptist before I was Christian, of course, And it was a really 19 years old when I got my life right with Christ, when I really believe that he saved me. Before then, I feel like I was trying to earn it on my own, trying to be good enough without having to actually surrender my life. And so, it was the end of that first year of college, I was playing college tennis and internationals are everywhere. And just being able to see the Bible, the gospel through their eyes challenged me to really ask the question, do I really believe that there was this man who said he was God and that I should follow him? It all of a sudden struck me as, oh, I guess this is weird for people who have not really been around Christians or who just don't believe in Christianity at all.

David Parks:        So it's interesting that one of the things that led me to Christ was also something that made me interested in other people from other countries and other religious and worldviews.

David Parks:        So, anyway, it was about a year after that that I felt called to ministry. And for the longest time, that was a youth ministry, and I really didn't have any other plan. I just felt like this was a huge need and I wanted to give my life to this. Pretty soon after that, actually, I said it was the only thing for a long time, but actually before too long, I had this idea that at some point I'm probably going to go into missions, but I didn't know when or where. I just knew for now and definitely youth ministry. Went to Beeson Divinity School and I started single, I finished single. Watched my friends get married the whole time.

David Parks:        And it was after that time I met Jenn. She is from West Virginia, kind of all over, she's a Wheaton graduate. She was here in Birmingham to go to UAB for physical therapy school. And so, she was going to Oak Mountain Presbyterian and I was, even though I was a Baptist youth minister in Hueytown, I would occasionally go to their singles events, have lots of friends in their singles ministry, and of course, I was going there for fellowship, right? That's how I met my wife. And she's amazing, super kind, funny, beautiful. And we just hit it off quickly. We met and married in just under a year.

David Parks:        So, it wasn't long after that that we felt like God was calling us to do something else and we were pretty sure it was missions. I came back here and talked to the first director of the Global Center, Dr. Bill O'Brien. I told him what I felt like I wanted to do, which included both student ministry overseas and training leaders potentially in a seminary. I said, "What do you think?" He said, "I think you should get a PhD in missions." I'm like, "Well, what else do you think?" Because I was not interested in a PhD. And lo and behold, I now have his job. He said that, he thought it would equip me well to do this.

David Parks:        So, we went to Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, had our first daughter while I was studying there, and I had a really good time at Southern in the Billy Graham school and got my PhD in missions. So first daughter was born there. And then we did not have another child til we got overseas in Malaysia. That's when Anna was born, the end of 2005. She was the only red head born in the hospital that year, I'm confident. Not whole had red head children over there. Actually, so here's how it progressed. We got to Southeast Asia with a blonde hair blue-eyed little girl. Then we had a red head blue-eyed little girl. And so, the crowd at the malls peaked a little bit more. Then we had twins, boy and girl, twins. And so, we were kind of like a zoo occasionally walking around with, other people just interested in us.

Kristen Padilla:    And what are all their names.

David Parks:        So my oldest girl was Corey. She's now 17 just starting her senior year. She just started driving. I only finished that, passed that driver's test, fifth time's a charm. She's brilliant. Great, great writer. She's just a very gifted. She's finished a novel and actually she finished it and now she's about finished rewriting it and that's where her interest lie.

Doug Sweeney:       My goodness.

David Parks:        Yeah. So Anna and my redhead, she is just a really, really gifted artist. She's also very good at math. She's been on the math team at Barry. This year she's doing homeschool Excelsior. My twins are boy and girl, Austin and Julie. And Austin is also, you know, both he and Julie are very good students and he likes tennis, which is great because that's my sport and he's having fun with that. And Julie is, she likes baking. She likes hanging around the house. She's real funny and she's just real laid back.

Doug Sweeney:       Great. Samantha?

Samantha Parson:    Yeah. I was raised in a small town just north of here and went to a small church in that same town. I was one of like five or six generations from my family that attended and was raised in that church. Had a very strong spiritual leader in my grandmother and she influenced me a lot. So I don't remember ever doubting the truth of the Bible. I just didn't necessarily apply it to my life.

Samantha Parsons:    I was married shortly after graduating high school and we had our son Jared, who is eight. And 17 months later, my daughter Sarah, who is seven. And it was actually through them that God showed me his love for me and helped me actually start applying that relationship to my life instead of the very legalistic idea I had had before that. So when they were a couple of years old, God actually saved me and began to work in my life. Shortly after, that I felt called to study the Bible more in depth. This led me to Southeastern Bible college. I literally found the school by just googling Bible programs in Alabama. And within two months, had been accepted and enrolled in the program. We moved very quickly after that.

Samantha Parsons:    I really enjoyed my time there. Graduated in 2016 with a degree in Bible, and knew that I wasn't done, I wanted to keep pursuing this. I really enjoy academic studies and had a good experience with the small school and interdenominational and just a really great community. So it felt very natural to look at Beeson next, as still being very small and interdenominational and strongly a community. So, I immediately applied and came straight into Beeson after that. By then, I had changed churches. Wanted to kind of look around for my own tradition and environment to grow in. We moved to a Baptist church in Pinson where I still serve. And I've done a few different jobs there, volunteer work and then came on staff about two years ago working with our young adults. And then this past summer, started working with our children's ministry.

Doug Sweeney:       David, we want to get around to asking Samantha about the ways in which the Lord used her this summer in the state of Washington and what she learned and what our listeners can benefit from based on her experience. But we thought we might begin by asking you as the director of our cross-cultural ministry program at Global Center to let our listeners know a little bit about the center and its work and a little bit about what our MDiv students are required to do with respect to cross-cultural ministry.

David Parks:        The mission of the Global Center is to help people know their role, to serve God in the world and help the world know God through Jesus Christ. And so we do that through a few things. For one, sometimes people come and do a tour and we're able to teach them a little bit about missions. Of course the introduction of Christian missions is part of our curriculum. We have an event that we just had today, you got to come to our first one called Global Voices. It's almost every week during the semester and we're able to invite some compelling speakers, and sometimes it's Beeson students, to share about what God's doing in another part of the world. Or maybe what God's doing locally, cross-culturally. We want students to be able to, to be exposed to worldviews, ideas, experiences that are outside the norm during this time. And we hope to do it in a way that is going to challenge them academically, but in a way that is compelling through the stories and narratives themselves.

David Parks:        Sometimes we'll have other organizations who are with us as we have these events. And I think there have been times we've been able to connect people in the community or the Samford community because of the event. So I just, I've been just really over the years I'm blown away with how God has blessed Global Voices. If you're listening there, you've never been to a Global Voices, please look it up, it's on the website. I'd love to have you there. For five straight years, they've been well attended and also the content has been good. I've been very pleased with it.

David Parks:        We also have something called Lunch Club where we invite international students to come into the Global Center. We give them free lunch, and we are asking Beeson students to come and be able to get to know some of these students. Now it's not bait and switch. We don't sit them down and say, hey, now we're going to share the gospel with you. But we do encourage everyone to develop relationships with them. And over the years, quite a few Beeson students have had opportunities to share the gospel with people who are from radically different backgrounds.

David Parks:        One of my favorite experiences that someone shared was [Myles Hickson 00:13:23] because he got to know this guy from China, his English name was Jack. Myles, was very bright student and he's funny, the way he was telling this story cracked me up. He was just talking about his own helplessness in trying to share the gospel with someone who had zero background in Christianity. And he said he used the word saved and the guy said, well, what's that, what does that mean? And he said, you know, he talked about being born again. And the guy said, well, you mean, reincarnation? And at every level, Myles was having to back up and go, no wait, no, I didn't mean that. And I loved the fact that he had that experience.

David Parks:        So, those are some of the things we do. Also, obviously the cross-cultural ministry practicum, which is why we're here. This was started well before I got here and a lot of the background behind it, the reason they started is just the reality even of local ministers having to deal with a newly multicultural world and wanting people to understand what ministry looks like in different cultural context. So, as I choose ministry partners, basically the way it works now is I will partner with ministries around the world. Some in the states, most of them are outside the states and I give students options to choose from and I'm looking at opportunities in particular for evangelist church planting, unreached people groups and these types of things.

David Parks:        But also on the other end, there are so many places in the world where the church has grown and they really need some leadership training. The growth has outstripped the leadership. And so, I definitely want students to have the opportunity to go and either observe biblical training that's also cross-cultural and maybe participate in it at other times. So those are the main, within each of those social needs and issues come up.

Doug Sweeney:       That's great. And all of our master of divinity students get to participate in a cross-cultural ministry experience.

David Parks:        Yes.

Doug Sweeney:       Including Samantha

Kristen Padilla:    And Samantha, I find it interesting, many of our students went overseas to have this cross-cultural experience, but you actually stayed here in the United States. And so, could you tell us and our listeners about working with Sacred Road Ministries and what that ministry is and does?

Samantha Parsons:    So I chose Sacred Road because the only other mission experience I had was with another native American population in New Mexico. When I was 10, my grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and kind of one of the last things he wanted to experience was a mission trip to the Navajo natives. So, we went on that mission trip. My entire family are truck drivers. So we loaded up a big grig and drove all the way across the US.

Doug Sweeney:       Ooh, that's great.

Samantha Parsons:    To take stuff out there. So, it was a lot of fun at a young age. So, that was really the only experience I had with any form of missions. So it seemed like a good fit for me to travel to Yakama Native American Reservation to spend time with them. It was also the first time I had ever traveled anywhere by myself, and the longest I've ever been away from home, especially away from my children. So, it was definitely one of the more anxious requirements I knew Beeson had, but turned out to be one of the best experiences I've had at Beeson.

Samantha Parsons:    So I went to Yakama. I flew 2000 miles across the country by myself and spent two weeks there. The first week I helped with what they call teams. So, during the summer, Sacred Road will have teams of youth groups and different groups from churches all over the country come out every other week to help in the community and do different mission projects.

Samantha Parsons:    So the first week I did the same things those groups were doing. And from the group I was with, we went each day to a home of a person in the community and helped with yard work. So we would clear the yards, pulling weeds and getting up garbage because there's a big issue with wildfires out there, because even though it's Washington state, it is a desert on the reservation. So, we cleared two different yards while I was there. I worked with the youth from the church, so that was a lot of fun. Really had a good time bonding with them and learning a lot about their culture because I was with natives each day. It was also work that, coming from Alabama, it was pretty easy cause I knew what to do when it comes to yard work, so I appreciated that.

Samantha Parsons:    The second week, I spent my time with the interns preparing for the team that would be coming the next week. So, it was nice getting to experience both. I got to do what the teams were doing, but then the next week, I also got to help with the actual ministry preparations for these teams coming out and work with the church and the people at Sacred Road to prepare for our next team coming in.

Doug Sweeney:       Are you able to tell us a little bit about the kinds of fruit that were born by the kind of work that you did there?

Samantha Parsons:    Yeah, I enjoyed the work at people's houses because you build really strong relationships with the people that you were helping. So, the woman that we helped for the first few days I was there was always quick to keep her door unlocked and tell us we were welcome to come in if we needed the restroom or water or anything like that. So, we built strong relationships with them. And then each afternoon, we would have what's called kids club, where we would go to a local neighborhood in the community and take buses of children out there and lots of games for them to play with. And we would spend a couple of hours each afternoon just playing with all of these children and then telling them a Bible story and feeding them a snack. And it was just a good experience, especially being away from my children for two weeks to get to play with these other kids and bond with them.

David Parks:       Samantha, can you explain some of the issues that they experience there on the reservation and kind of what drew Chris and Mary [Granbury] to go and serve among them?

Samantha Parsons:    Yeah. So a lot of the problems we talked about while we were out there, we actually did a tour of the local museum that talks a lot about the history of the Yakama people. And we talked a lot about how two things we usually all agree on as Christians is that we're called to love our neighbors and that the first neighbors we had as colonials coming to this country were the natives and that we didn't do a good job of loving them when we came here. So it was very important to them to teach these natives what Christianity and especially Christian love looks like in response to the love they've not felt from us in the past.

Samantha Parsons:    We talked a lot about identity issues with the natives because primarily colonials forced our identity on them. So as opposed to showing them Christian love, we wanted them to look more like the colonial culture we brought with us from different places in Europe. And this led to an identity crisis for them because we've forced them into boarding schools and these type things where they're punished for speaking their language or showing any sort of culture.

Samantha Parsons:    So now, they've been forced to be more primarily white and embrace our culture to where they're not really feeling their native identity anymore, but also, they're still more native to where they're not accepted with the white culture either. So they're in this in between stage where their land has been taken away and for cultures where they move around with the wildlife and different things like that, and now they have to stay in place and they're not hunting and gathering as much and having to rely on white economic systems. And they've had their language stripped away and their religion and even like clothing styles and that kind of thing. It just led to a big identity crisis for the natives to where they don't really know where they fit in all of this. And that gives them a bad taste of Christianity if that's what Christianity is to them.

Doug Sweeney:       So are many of them Christian now or very few are Christian?

Samantha Parsons:    The very first day I arrived in Yakama, they were having a prayer meeting for the recent events. The week before I flew out, there was a homicide in the area. So they had a prayer meeting for it. And it was really interesting because they called all of these different denominations, what we would call different religions to come together at this prayer meeting. And at the prayer meeting they had Catholics represented, Methodists, Sacred Road was there, shakers and the native religions were also represented. So, there are Christian churches on the reservation, and in some of the religions, at least from what I understood like shakers, it was kind of a mix between Christian influence along with the native religions. So there are some Christians but there's also a strong hold to these native religions as the last remaining parts of their culture.

Kristen Padilla:    You talked about the identity crisis. What did you learn about in particular cross-cultural ministry within this context that may look different than the ministry you do at your church?

Samantha Parsons:    Yeah. So, that was actually one of the questions I asked Chris when we were there was how in the context of a people that are struggling with an identity crisis and that blames that rightfully so on their experience with Christianity, how do you share Christianity with them without stealing what little bit of identity they have left? And I thought it was really insightful that he talked about not making that decision for them, what parts of their culture they have to give up. But instead, learning from them as he teaches them about our faith, and as more people convert to Christianity, asking them because you know more about your culture, what aspects of it can you hold onto and still follow our faith and what parts do you need to give up in order to follow a Christian faith?

Samantha Parsons:    So I thought it was very good that he was still open to hearing from them and learning from them and trying to figure it out together as opposed to coming in and telling them this is what you need to do to be a Christian as opposed to what you've done in your culture.

Doug Sweeney:       It sounds like you had such a powerful experience this summer working there. We're running out of time and there's lots of people who will listen to this, who like you and like me, like all of us at this table are very active in their congregations and care deeply about evangelism and missions. If you could sum up a takeaway for them, for our listeners based on the kind of experience that you had this summer, as we all think better, we hope and pray about evangelism and missions moving forward, what would you want to recommend to us?

Samantha Parsons:    I would want people to realize that they may be called more to missions than they initially think. I didn't necessarily have a heart for missions when coming to Beeson. I very much agreed with it as far as head knowledge but I didn't feel it as a calling. But my experience at Yakama definitely put in my heart a call to it. I told someone earlier today, I cried when I left Birmingham because I was leaving my children and it was hard and scary, but it was just as hard to fly back to Birmingham and leave the people of Yakama.

Doug Sweeney:       Well, you have been listening to Dr. David Parks who directs the Global Center here at Beeson divinity school and oversees the students who go on these experiences. And you have been listening as well to Samantha Parsons, who did ministry in the state of Washington among the Yakama people.

Doug Sweeney:       Thank you Lord for the ways in which you've helped us through the in this interview. We pray, Lord, that you would inspire all of us to more faithfulness in gospel witness and love of our neighbors as we move forward.

Doug Sweeney:       You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Thank you very much for tuning in. Goodbye for now.

Kristen Padilla:    You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello, our cohosts are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.