Here's the short version of my story. My name is Jon Rawlings and I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. My father and grandfather pastored a large church in Cincinnati: Landmark Baptist Temple. Landmark is part of the BBFI (Baptist Bible Fellowship International) which my grandfather helped to start in the 50's. It was a fundamentalist Baptist church that stressed the autonomy of the local church, evangelism, missions, and separation from the world among other things. I began teaching a seven year old class when I was fourteen and then began ministering to junior high and high school students in the inner city of Cincinnati when I was 16. I graduated from the church's school (Landmark Christian School) in 1977.
After graduation from Landmark, I went to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, the flagship school for the BBFI. My grandfather helped start the school in the 50's and my father is a graduate. While at BBC I met my future wife, Jeri Lynn, who's from Michigan. We were married after graduation in 1981. I'm jumping ahead quite a bit, but we have two daughters, Jenny and Bethany. Being parents has been one of the most joyous experiences of our lives and one of the most educational. Jenny graduated from Trinity Western University in Vancouver, British Columbia and Bethany graduated from Biola University. Both are married to great Christian guys. We're still waiting for grandkids!
In the fall of 1981, Jeri and I went to Youngstown, Ohio where we served a one year internship. In the fall of 1982, we went to Chicago where I attended Wheaton College Graduate School. I enrolled for the MA in Educational Ministries but took mostly philosophy classes. In the fall of 1984, we went to Cambridge, Massachusetts where I earned a masters in biblical studies at Harvard Divinity School. While at Harvard I served for a short time as Dean of Men at Baptist Bible College East in Boston, helped two of my friends who were planting a church in Connecticut, and served an internship at Tremont Temple Baptist Church in downtown Boston. So my education has spanned the theological spectrum, from fundamentalism to evangelicalism to liberalism. And I spent a summer studying at Xavier University, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati.
In the fall of 1987, we moved to Lynchburg, Virginia where I started working at the Christian Service Office at Liberty University. Jerry Falwell was a close family friend and I'm sure that's why I was offered the job. Along with my duties at the Christian Service Office, I also taught a few classes a semester that were required introductory courses for incoming freshmen, something like contemporary moral issues classes.
After about three years I was laid off along with several hundred other people from Old Time Gospel Hour ministries when we found out the ministry was more than 100 million in debt. For about six months I sold cars at Oakridge Toyota in Lynchburg, one of the best learning experiences of my life. But that's another story. I taught English Literature and Speech at Timberlake Christian School in Lynchburg for a year. We found out that Jeri's dad had Alzheimer's and we decided to move back to Cincinnati to be near my family and Jeri's family in Michigan.
I taught Bible for one year to high school students at Landmark Christian School. During that year I bought and fixed up an old Victorian house and thought we might settle down for awhile. Then in December of that year, 1991, I received a call from Dr. Bill Simmer, a friend who had become the president of International College and Graduate School in Honolulu, Hawaii. He asked me to come to Honolulu to become the Vice President which was a complete shock. It took us about three months to work through that decision but in March of 1992 we told Dr. Simmer that we were coming. Jeri accepted an invitation to become a fourth grade teacher at Hawaii Baptist Academy, one of the top prep schools in Hawaii, and has been teaching there ever since. Both of our daughters graduated from HBA.
ICGS was a Conservative Baptist school that had been founded in the 60's. When Dr. Simmer became president, it became non-denominational and began pursuing accreditation. The school had been in the accreditation process for several years when I arrived and I spent most of my time in the next two years helping Dr. Simmer and Dr. Lucius Butler steer ICGS to full accreditation. After the accreditation process was finished, I became Executive Vice President and oversaw the academic program of the school. I didn't have enough time to teach many classes, but I did teach first year Hebrew every year along with courses such as the Historical Books and the book of Proverbs.
For several years I worked my way through the entire Bible on my own, doing approximately one book each month quite intensely. Some of the shorter ones I grouped together and studied at the same time. I also started the Hebrew Reading Group around 1998 based on a model I'd seen at Harvard. We would meet on Tuesdays from 4:30pm to 6:00pm and met almost every week of the year. We would read through about 10 to 12 verses per week and would discuss the Hebrew text intensely. Many people came and went over the years, but a core group formed that included Melanie Grandelli, Dr. Joe Grimes, Dr. Barbara Grimes, Dr. Robert Arakaki, and Dr. Ryo Stanwood. Melanie is a graduate of Denver Seminary, Joe is a professor emeritus of linguistics at Cornell University and Barbara was the editor for many years of the Ethnologue which tracks all of the world's known languages. Both are Wycliffe missionaries who have produced Da Jesus Book, a translation of the New Testament into Hawaiian pidgin. When they joined the group, they had just begun translating the Old Testament into pidgin. Joe was also working out ideas that he presented to other Wycliffe translators who were translating creole languages in places like Iryan Jaya. Robert is a political scientist and teaches locally while Ryo was another Wycliffe translator who was helping Joe and Barbara. The group met for 15 years until 2013 when Barbara had a stroke. When Joe and Barbara moved back to the mainland, we decided to bring the group to a close, at least for now.
After being at ICGS for 13 years, I left in 2005 and became the interim pastor of Kailua Baptist Church in Kailua, Hawaii. After several months, the church asked me to become their pastor and I did beginning in August of that year. While pastoring KBC, I did a series on the Sermon on the Mount that changed my life. I'd never studied it so carefully. Hardly anyone preached on it when I was growing up; it was always brushed aside as something for the Millennial Kingdom that didn't apply to the local church. Only bleeding heart liberals preached on the Sermon on the Mount.
I rejected the notion that the Sermon was only for kingdom living sometime in the future, and became convinced it was the central passage in learning what kind of people Jesus wants us to become. The Sermon isn't a detailed study of discipleship; only a sketch. But it's enough for us to see the heart of Jesus, how he lived among us, and how we could live like him too.
I kept asking what I was doing as a pastor to help people live in the way Jesus was describing. I had to admit that I was doing almost nothing, or maybe I should say that I had a completely different agenda and was just doing different things. Mostly I noticed that I was expecting too much to happen in 90 minutes on Sunday morning. I was relying on what I call the "long arm" to change people instead of using the "short arm" that Jesus used with those disciples who lived with him. Sunday morning worship services are great for worship, but they can't do all the work of discipleship, nor can Sunday School or mid-week Bible studies. All of these things are important, but they can't do the full work of discipleship. Even Jesus couldn't teach and preach his disciples into learning how to live like him. To do that, he had to live among them. I began taking my cues from the incarnation itself. If God had to live among us so we could learn to live like him, maybe it would take something more intense, more daily, more one-on-one, for people to get the knack for embodying the life of Jesus.
I began to do some things differently such as meeting with people on a weekly basis. I challenged them to live like Jesus in their neighborhoods, to look for needs around them and try to meet those in some way. They would bring back to me what we called "reports from the field" and we would talk about them, look to the Bible for guidance on how to serve people better, and go back out for another week of serving and loving people the way Jesus would.
Jeri and I also began reading a book by Christine Pohl called Making Room. It's a study of the early church's practice of hospitality and how it might relate to the contemporary church. Pohl's focus is on how churches can use these insights, but we applied these insights to ourselves. In the fall of 2008, Jeri and I finished the book and decided to open our home to young adults. We thought that discipleship was the way to lead people into the life of Jesus but we weren't planning on discipling people by having Bible studies and prayer meetings. We wanted to live the life of Jesus together with young adults, to make the life of Jesus as winsome as possible. We wanted to embody the life of Jesus and help them to embody it as well. The life of Jesus isn't something that can be learned fully through words; it's something that must be seen.
We finished Pohl's book on a Wednesday and prayed that God would bring us young adults that could live with us. On Friday we received two phone calls, one from my daughter Jenny and the second from a friend, that they had met two young ladies, one from Colorado, the other from Oregon, and both were fleeing from abusive relationships. They had nowhere to stay and could they spend the night with us? Those were the first two to live with us. One lived with us for three months and the other lived with us for about 18 months. The one who lived with us for 18 months was coming from a very dark place. We walked her through a divorce, tutored her until she passed her exams to get into the Navy, and today she's remarried and enjoying her career as an MP. Over the years we've had a kaleidoscope of people living with us, some for a few months, one for as long as four and a half years. Some are the sons and daughters of missionaries; others are atheists. Most have been underparented, are in financial trouble, and feel alienated from the church. One was a young artist from the Ukraine. We grew to love and respect each other and one day he asked me if it would make me happy if he became a Christian. "Of course it would," I told him. "But I don't want you to become a disciple to please me. I only want you to become a disciple if you want to follow Jesus. But I want you to know that no matter what decision you make, whether you decide to follow Jesus or not, I'll love you as long as there's breath in my body." He lived with us for a year, still lives on Oahu, and is like a son to me.
I left Kailua Baptist Church at the end of December, 2008 and became the director of the Hooulu Foundation in Honolulu in January of 2009. I promoted the idea of doing farming locally on a non-profit basis since it's so hard for farmers to make it here by just selling farm produce. As a non-profit, they can apply for grants to develop educational programs on the farm which help to educate local young people and provide another revenue stream for the farm. Most of my work was with Kapalai Farm in Maunawili.
In 2012 I resigned from the foundation and am now self-employed. I started a vacation rental in Kailua. We're licensed by the State of Hawaii, listed on VRBO (www.vrbo.com; #422532) and I developed a website that introduces visitors to Kailua and highlights around the island. I also started taking classes in ceramics in January of 2012 at the urging of my daughter who had started about 18 months before me. I started Jon Rawlings Pottery about 2 years later and have an educational website that's meant to help beginning potters like me (www.jonrawlingspottery.com). I also have an online bookstore that sells used and rare books through ABE Books and Amazon (Global Village Books). I'm also very interested in photography (you can see some of them on my pottery website), and I'm writing short stories.
My main ministry is now through the intentional community we started at our house. We always have a full house and have seen the Lord use our efforts to bless the people who are living with us. I'm hoping that we'll encourage their growth and flourishing, whether or not they choose to become disciples of Jesus. It seems like every day discussions begin in the house about everything from politics to finances to relationships to the Bible and theology. I get to be a part of most of them and have grown a great deal through my discussions with the people living with us and their guests. We have an open door policy, so you never know when you'll have someone joining us for dinner or a game night or for a movie. Jeri and I plan on opening our home to others as long as we can as a place where the life of Jesus can be modeled and together we can learn how to live like Jesus.
Whatever I share on this website comes out of this journey. I hope and pray it will be helpful in yours.
After graduation from Landmark, I went to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, the flagship school for the BBFI. My grandfather helped start the school in the 50's and my father is a graduate. While at BBC I met my future wife, Jeri Lynn, who's from Michigan. We were married after graduation in 1981. I'm jumping ahead quite a bit, but we have two daughters, Jenny and Bethany. Being parents has been one of the most joyous experiences of our lives and one of the most educational. Jenny graduated from Trinity Western University in Vancouver, British Columbia and Bethany graduated from Biola University. Both are married to great Christian guys. We're still waiting for grandkids!
In the fall of 1981, Jeri and I went to Youngstown, Ohio where we served a one year internship. In the fall of 1982, we went to Chicago where I attended Wheaton College Graduate School. I enrolled for the MA in Educational Ministries but took mostly philosophy classes. In the fall of 1984, we went to Cambridge, Massachusetts where I earned a masters in biblical studies at Harvard Divinity School. While at Harvard I served for a short time as Dean of Men at Baptist Bible College East in Boston, helped two of my friends who were planting a church in Connecticut, and served an internship at Tremont Temple Baptist Church in downtown Boston. So my education has spanned the theological spectrum, from fundamentalism to evangelicalism to liberalism. And I spent a summer studying at Xavier University, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati.
In the fall of 1987, we moved to Lynchburg, Virginia where I started working at the Christian Service Office at Liberty University. Jerry Falwell was a close family friend and I'm sure that's why I was offered the job. Along with my duties at the Christian Service Office, I also taught a few classes a semester that were required introductory courses for incoming freshmen, something like contemporary moral issues classes.
After about three years I was laid off along with several hundred other people from Old Time Gospel Hour ministries when we found out the ministry was more than 100 million in debt. For about six months I sold cars at Oakridge Toyota in Lynchburg, one of the best learning experiences of my life. But that's another story. I taught English Literature and Speech at Timberlake Christian School in Lynchburg for a year. We found out that Jeri's dad had Alzheimer's and we decided to move back to Cincinnati to be near my family and Jeri's family in Michigan.
I taught Bible for one year to high school students at Landmark Christian School. During that year I bought and fixed up an old Victorian house and thought we might settle down for awhile. Then in December of that year, 1991, I received a call from Dr. Bill Simmer, a friend who had become the president of International College and Graduate School in Honolulu, Hawaii. He asked me to come to Honolulu to become the Vice President which was a complete shock. It took us about three months to work through that decision but in March of 1992 we told Dr. Simmer that we were coming. Jeri accepted an invitation to become a fourth grade teacher at Hawaii Baptist Academy, one of the top prep schools in Hawaii, and has been teaching there ever since. Both of our daughters graduated from HBA.
ICGS was a Conservative Baptist school that had been founded in the 60's. When Dr. Simmer became president, it became non-denominational and began pursuing accreditation. The school had been in the accreditation process for several years when I arrived and I spent most of my time in the next two years helping Dr. Simmer and Dr. Lucius Butler steer ICGS to full accreditation. After the accreditation process was finished, I became Executive Vice President and oversaw the academic program of the school. I didn't have enough time to teach many classes, but I did teach first year Hebrew every year along with courses such as the Historical Books and the book of Proverbs.
For several years I worked my way through the entire Bible on my own, doing approximately one book each month quite intensely. Some of the shorter ones I grouped together and studied at the same time. I also started the Hebrew Reading Group around 1998 based on a model I'd seen at Harvard. We would meet on Tuesdays from 4:30pm to 6:00pm and met almost every week of the year. We would read through about 10 to 12 verses per week and would discuss the Hebrew text intensely. Many people came and went over the years, but a core group formed that included Melanie Grandelli, Dr. Joe Grimes, Dr. Barbara Grimes, Dr. Robert Arakaki, and Dr. Ryo Stanwood. Melanie is a graduate of Denver Seminary, Joe is a professor emeritus of linguistics at Cornell University and Barbara was the editor for many years of the Ethnologue which tracks all of the world's known languages. Both are Wycliffe missionaries who have produced Da Jesus Book, a translation of the New Testament into Hawaiian pidgin. When they joined the group, they had just begun translating the Old Testament into pidgin. Joe was also working out ideas that he presented to other Wycliffe translators who were translating creole languages in places like Iryan Jaya. Robert is a political scientist and teaches locally while Ryo was another Wycliffe translator who was helping Joe and Barbara. The group met for 15 years until 2013 when Barbara had a stroke. When Joe and Barbara moved back to the mainland, we decided to bring the group to a close, at least for now.
After being at ICGS for 13 years, I left in 2005 and became the interim pastor of Kailua Baptist Church in Kailua, Hawaii. After several months, the church asked me to become their pastor and I did beginning in August of that year. While pastoring KBC, I did a series on the Sermon on the Mount that changed my life. I'd never studied it so carefully. Hardly anyone preached on it when I was growing up; it was always brushed aside as something for the Millennial Kingdom that didn't apply to the local church. Only bleeding heart liberals preached on the Sermon on the Mount.
I rejected the notion that the Sermon was only for kingdom living sometime in the future, and became convinced it was the central passage in learning what kind of people Jesus wants us to become. The Sermon isn't a detailed study of discipleship; only a sketch. But it's enough for us to see the heart of Jesus, how he lived among us, and how we could live like him too.
I kept asking what I was doing as a pastor to help people live in the way Jesus was describing. I had to admit that I was doing almost nothing, or maybe I should say that I had a completely different agenda and was just doing different things. Mostly I noticed that I was expecting too much to happen in 90 minutes on Sunday morning. I was relying on what I call the "long arm" to change people instead of using the "short arm" that Jesus used with those disciples who lived with him. Sunday morning worship services are great for worship, but they can't do all the work of discipleship, nor can Sunday School or mid-week Bible studies. All of these things are important, but they can't do the full work of discipleship. Even Jesus couldn't teach and preach his disciples into learning how to live like him. To do that, he had to live among them. I began taking my cues from the incarnation itself. If God had to live among us so we could learn to live like him, maybe it would take something more intense, more daily, more one-on-one, for people to get the knack for embodying the life of Jesus.
I began to do some things differently such as meeting with people on a weekly basis. I challenged them to live like Jesus in their neighborhoods, to look for needs around them and try to meet those in some way. They would bring back to me what we called "reports from the field" and we would talk about them, look to the Bible for guidance on how to serve people better, and go back out for another week of serving and loving people the way Jesus would.
Jeri and I also began reading a book by Christine Pohl called Making Room. It's a study of the early church's practice of hospitality and how it might relate to the contemporary church. Pohl's focus is on how churches can use these insights, but we applied these insights to ourselves. In the fall of 2008, Jeri and I finished the book and decided to open our home to young adults. We thought that discipleship was the way to lead people into the life of Jesus but we weren't planning on discipling people by having Bible studies and prayer meetings. We wanted to live the life of Jesus together with young adults, to make the life of Jesus as winsome as possible. We wanted to embody the life of Jesus and help them to embody it as well. The life of Jesus isn't something that can be learned fully through words; it's something that must be seen.
We finished Pohl's book on a Wednesday and prayed that God would bring us young adults that could live with us. On Friday we received two phone calls, one from my daughter Jenny and the second from a friend, that they had met two young ladies, one from Colorado, the other from Oregon, and both were fleeing from abusive relationships. They had nowhere to stay and could they spend the night with us? Those were the first two to live with us. One lived with us for three months and the other lived with us for about 18 months. The one who lived with us for 18 months was coming from a very dark place. We walked her through a divorce, tutored her until she passed her exams to get into the Navy, and today she's remarried and enjoying her career as an MP. Over the years we've had a kaleidoscope of people living with us, some for a few months, one for as long as four and a half years. Some are the sons and daughters of missionaries; others are atheists. Most have been underparented, are in financial trouble, and feel alienated from the church. One was a young artist from the Ukraine. We grew to love and respect each other and one day he asked me if it would make me happy if he became a Christian. "Of course it would," I told him. "But I don't want you to become a disciple to please me. I only want you to become a disciple if you want to follow Jesus. But I want you to know that no matter what decision you make, whether you decide to follow Jesus or not, I'll love you as long as there's breath in my body." He lived with us for a year, still lives on Oahu, and is like a son to me.
I left Kailua Baptist Church at the end of December, 2008 and became the director of the Hooulu Foundation in Honolulu in January of 2009. I promoted the idea of doing farming locally on a non-profit basis since it's so hard for farmers to make it here by just selling farm produce. As a non-profit, they can apply for grants to develop educational programs on the farm which help to educate local young people and provide another revenue stream for the farm. Most of my work was with Kapalai Farm in Maunawili.
In 2012 I resigned from the foundation and am now self-employed. I started a vacation rental in Kailua. We're licensed by the State of Hawaii, listed on VRBO (www.vrbo.com; #422532) and I developed a website that introduces visitors to Kailua and highlights around the island. I also started taking classes in ceramics in January of 2012 at the urging of my daughter who had started about 18 months before me. I started Jon Rawlings Pottery about 2 years later and have an educational website that's meant to help beginning potters like me (www.jonrawlingspottery.com). I also have an online bookstore that sells used and rare books through ABE Books and Amazon (Global Village Books). I'm also very interested in photography (you can see some of them on my pottery website), and I'm writing short stories.
My main ministry is now through the intentional community we started at our house. We always have a full house and have seen the Lord use our efforts to bless the people who are living with us. I'm hoping that we'll encourage their growth and flourishing, whether or not they choose to become disciples of Jesus. It seems like every day discussions begin in the house about everything from politics to finances to relationships to the Bible and theology. I get to be a part of most of them and have grown a great deal through my discussions with the people living with us and their guests. We have an open door policy, so you never know when you'll have someone joining us for dinner or a game night or for a movie. Jeri and I plan on opening our home to others as long as we can as a place where the life of Jesus can be modeled and together we can learn how to live like Jesus.
Whatever I share on this website comes out of this journey. I hope and pray it will be helpful in yours.
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