Jon Estes

[Chris]

Jon Estes is a former (possibly banned) member of this board. I happened to be speaking with his mother, yesterday. She is a resident of the Virginia Baptist Home in Newport News. She said Jon has just accepted a call to pastor a church in Dubai.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...

Chris, do you know which church in Dubai?

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...

Jon Estes is going to Emirates Baptist Church, International. It started as a Bible study by an IMB missionary in Dubai in 1996. There was a felt need among the many Americans working for oil companies to have a Baptistic church. There was quite a bit of opposition from other English speaking congregations in Dubai. Compounding this the IMB was then saying NO to giving any support to English speaking congregations (although the missionaries associated with this effort had been assured that the IMB was in support of this church plant)...Unfortunately, this was at the same time of the BIG PURGE (also referred to as the "reorganization") and several IMB administrators were either reassigned or fired and ultra conservatives replaced them. And of the assurances given... the new administrators "knew not Abraham."

A year of growth led to Emirates Baptist Church, International being constituted and recognized by the group who approved churches to meet. Since that time EBC,I has been self supporting and an active member of the European Baptist Convention. I think that Jon will be the 4th or 5th full-time pastor in that period.

A sad note is the fact that when Jerry Rankin and any other IMB administrators visited Dubai they would never go to EBC,I but to another English language church Dubai Evangelical Church, rather a slap in the face of a church who supported Lottie Moon and the Cooperative program. Politics does make strange bedfellows.

[Haruo]

Very interesting. Be interesting to see how he gets along with the locals. I'm interesting in hearing whether local (or guest-worker) Muslims show up for services, and whether this puts them at risk if they do. And do they have an Arabic service (or incorporate Arabic material into their English/general worship)?

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick...

Haruo, in an effort to answer your questions...Dubai is anywhere from 75 to 95% guest workers (depending on who is giving the information). Pastors of "recognized" churches may get a renewable visa which indicates that said person holding it is a priest, This visa provided by and is is controlled by an association of evangelical church pastors in the UAE.

In 12 years in the UAE I can only remember one local man and two guest worker Moslems going to any church in all of the UAE. No matter how evangelical a church is, they rarely attempt public evangelism.

Several years ago a Phillipino pastor was distributing tracts in a mall. He was arrested, jailed, tried and deported after 6 months in jail. Then a tour group stopped in Dubai for the Dubai shopping festival. They were instructed to not give out Bibles but to obtain an address and get a "gift" from the USA. Two of the ladies on this tour did try to give away Bibles and were arrested. Fortunately, they were allowed to stay in the home of the pastor of EBC,I under house arrest for a week before being allowed to leave.

For the most part, friendship evangelism is the method which is encouraged in some of the churches, but not by all. Too much fear of loosing a good thing.

[Chris]

It seems that this church exists to bring a "touch of home" to the oil company employees in Dubai. I helped start a similar church in Tripoli, Libya in 1962. We started as "non-denominational". then because 75% of members were Southern Baptists, we decided to change name to First Baptist Church of Tripoli. We wrote the SBC Foreign Mission Board, hoping to get its blessing and validation. NOPE. They didnt want to recognize us because we were not "planted" by an official SBC missionary, and because we existed primarily for the fellowship of like-minded Christians, rather than to evangelize the local population. As a matter of fact, I think we were told by the Libyan government (pre- Ghadaffi) that we could NOT proselytize the Libyans, but we could proselytize other Americans.

[Haruo]

Thanks, Joseph Patrick. Interesting info. A member of the Seattle Esperanto Society who had been teaching (with his wife) at an International School in Karachi (and prior to that in Saudi Arabia) has had some interesting things to say about church under Muslim rule, and I am always eager to compare the various countries (and individual perceptions) on this.

Thank you, too, Chris, for your recollections concerning Libya. Do you know anything about the later history of First Baptist Church of Tripoli?

[Chris]

Actually Haruo, I know little about what became of the church. We were renting a failed-restaurant building. I was an enlisted USAF man, and "rotated" back to USA in Dec. 1962. The Previously-ordained Sergeant, Vonley Day, we chose to be our pastor, rotated back to USA about 6 months later. Soon after returning to States, Sgt. Day learned that he had cancer. I think he died within a year. When I returned to my home church, FBC Tulsa, in January 1963, I was asked to address the men's prayer breakfast and tell about the church in Libya. After my speech I was asked "Is there anything we can do to help?" The church was using 3 different hymnals because it had no more than 12 of each. I told them they would love to have about 50 copies of the latest Baptist Hymnal. DONE! I heard that the hymnals arrived, but didnt have contact with any of the folks after that. I have a vague recollection that we had one baptism, while I was there. We did that in the Mediterranean Sea.

[Jon Estes]