Baptists Fired Up About Baghdad

Editors: This article was typed in, as it was printed, because there is no Web site with a link for it. Dori can provide a hard-copy clip of this story.

This article ran in the Yakima Bible Baptist Church's 2007 Missions Conference booklet - sorry, there is no Web site to link

Baptists Fired Up About Baghdad

by Dori Harrell

Baptist preacher Robert Lewis can hardly wait to return to Iraq and to Bible Baptist Church in Baghdad. He helped form the church in February 2004 with the help of six other American colleagues, one of whom was shot and killed in a terrorist ambush while in Iraq.

Lewis, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, still doesn't know if the attack, which also injured three other preachers, was random violence, or if Muslim clerics had targeted his church-building efforts.

He understands his life could end if he again steps foot on Iraqi soil.

But Lewis says the Iraqi people and the growing Baghdad church have renewed him, and he will not deny his desire to serve the beleaguered population. He's in constant e-mail contact with the Iraqi man ordained as the church's minister and travels worldwide generating support for the small congregation.

He plans to fly to Baghdad a third time this year.

"I left my heart in Iraq," Lewis says.

His wife, Judy, adds, “I’ve never seen my husband happier. For the first time he feels like he’s really being used by God. The people in Baghdad say, ‘Tell me more, tell me more.’ It makes it all seem worthwhile.”

The Baghdad church boasts about 35 members and plans to host around 50 for its 2007 Resurrection Sunday services. The church holds regular services, Sunday school classes and Bible studies. It has leapfrogged to a place of huge importance in Lewis’ life and mission projects in part because it almost never came into existence.

Lewis first landed in Baghdad by accident, and he never intended to found a church there.

THE FIRST TRIP

It all started in spring 2003, when U.S. missionary organization Mission to Iraq asked Lewis to teach Bible doctrine to ex-Muslims in Jordan.

Lewis, a balding, stocky, 60-year-old who says he’s “no orator,” journeys worldwide starting and aiding mission churches with Global Resource Group, an organization he founded seven years ago. He also serves as pastor emeritus of Blackstone Valley Baptist Church in Cumberland, Rhode Island. He pastored the church for 27 years.

Before agreeing to the Jordan project, Lewis checked with his wife.

“I told him, ‘What an opportunity,’” Judy Lewis says.

In July, Lewis packed training materials and departed for the country, which shelters about 300,000 Iraqi ex-Muslim refugees. For six hours daily, he taught doctrine to 15 students, three of them women.

“I didn’t think about it as teaching ex-Muslims,” Lewis says. “I thought about it as teaching baby Christians.”

In Jordan, Lewis found what he calls a “macho, manly environment, and a kind of anger just below the surface.” It’s not directed at the United States or even Christians, he says.

“They just are an angry people in conflict all the time.”

Lewis relates how he and another American man stopped at a retail store to buy a computer table. A young male clerk eagerly negotiated with them and dropped the price by $10.

“I was about to say, ‘I’d take it,’ when another big man walked into the room, swore, and backhanded the guy so hard he went clear out of the front door into the street,” Lewis says. “I told him, ‘Thank you, I’ll keep looking.’”

Fights frequently broke out on the streets. And while Lewis wished he could have intervened, he knew he needed to maintain a low profile and keep silent.

“You want to get involved, but you can’t do anything,” he says.

After six weeks in Jordan, Mission to Iraq asked Lewis to teach Bible doctrine to Christians living in Baghdad. Iraqi citizens not born into Muslim families are considered Christians and do not come under the magnifying glass of Muslims, nor do they have to obey Islamic laws.

Lewis viewed the request as an opportunity to further shine the gospel light in a country filled with spiritual darkness. With the eagerness of a college-age missions graduate, he called his wife via his satellite phone, knowing she’d support him.

“I told him, “What a great opportunity,’” Judy Lewis says. “If I don’t see you when you get home, I’ll see you in heaven.”

“I really didn’t think about the concept of death,” Lewis says.

He left Jordan within the week. The 500-mile journey to Baghdad meant he and his driver departed at 2 a.m. in order to travel through Iraq during daylight. Much to Lewis’ delight, it also meant racing in a Suburban for more than three hours across the flat desert to escape bandits, called Ali Babas.

“Suburbans gather at the border, and when there are five or six of them, they’ll drive about 100 miles per hour bumper to bumper. I’m not a timid soul. I enjoyed it,” Lewis says.

“You’d be surprised,” he adds, “When men hear that story, how many approach me privately and say, ‘Next time, can I go with you?’”

BAGHDAD

In Baghdad, where he would stay 49 days, Lewis quickly rented a duplex. But because Iraqi insurgents tore down power grids faster than the power authority could set them up, electricity ran two hours on, two hours off. The 110-degree Fahrenheit weather led to misery that first night.

Typically, Iraqi communities share generators stolen during the war. But the man in charge of the equipment in Lewis’ neighborhood wouldn’t permit Lewis to hook up, possibly because he’s American. Lewis finally bought a portable generator, which sat on the roof of the duplex.

In the city rocked by war, violence, and death, Lewis found a near anarchy-like environment. All monetary transactions required cash. Many cars had no license plates, and drivers ignored lane markers, steering whichever direction grabbed their fancy. Amongst the modern high rises, street vendors peddled fruits, vegetables, and baskets, some from a cart pulled by a donkey. Many also sold gasoline on the black market for 18 cents a gallon to earn a few extra bucks. Sometimes, rapid-fire shots zinged in the night.

Of the Iraqi people, Lewis wrote in his August 21 journal entry: “I have not met anyone here who liked Saddam Hussein. … But I have met many who are not happy with the current state of affairs with the USA. For this reason (I) attempt to be very cautions, never going out alone, never after dark, never without someone who speaks Iraqi.”

Lewis trained 15 English-speaking students, six of them females, daily at a 12-foot table that came with his rented facility. The woman who organized the lessons provided a Muslim girl to cook, and Lewis hired a student to guard his door and maintain the generator at night.

When the students discovered Lewis’ satellite phone, they frequently asked to call relatives who had fled the country. Iraq had no phone service at the time.

“Whenever I got ready to call on a prepaid card, I found I was down to my last minute,” Lewis says.

Some days, as many as 22 Iraqis showed up for classes and fellowship, and Lewis realized they represented a “remnant of believers” that could possibly develop into a formal congregation. The idea took hold one day during class when a 41-year-old male student looked up at his American teacher with an eyes-wide-open gaze.

“I said, ‘What happened?’” Lewis says. “And he said, ‘New light.’”

“I met my ‘Timothy,”’ Lewis says. “He had a servant’s heart and a teachable spirit.”

To this day, the Iraqi man is referred to as Timothy by Lewis and his colleagues.

Timothy, a craggy-faced, heavy-set man, graduated from Baghdad University. He desired to serve as a minister and hoped to travel to America to attend Bible college. Lewis tried to convince him formal theology training wasn’t necessary to pastor a church.

“He and I really bonded,” Lewis says, “and I started paying a lot of attention to him. He wound up being the key to the whole thing.”

Timothy invited Lewis to his house to meet his family. But when they pulled through the gated driveway in the midst of a 150,000-strong Muslim neighborhood, a nervous Timothy said, “I hope my neighbors don’t see you.”

Most Muslims, he explained, think Americans are against God, and are, therefore, heathens. It’s possible word of an American visitor could target his house and family for violence, he added. Nonetheless, the Iraqi man decided to weather the risk and Lewis visited twice without incident.

But the would-be preacher resisted the notion of pastoring a church without formal theology training.

“He said he wanted confidence in himself. Nobody had ever made him feel confident,” Lewis said. “And I saw he was capable of being a great leader.”

The man already served in a hospital ministry, and he also wanted to help care for the elderly and to feed the poor.

“I finally got to him and he took off in this idea of forming a church,” Lewis said. “By the end of my visit, he was determined.”

Lewis talked with Mission to Iraq and several preacher friends. While some thought he moved too fast, most wholeheartedly supported the proposal of a Baghdad church.

“It could have gone either way,” Lewis said. “Under the circumstances, I think we made the right choice. I don’t know how many other seeds we’ll get to plant.”

Lewis spent all his off hours training Timothy in Baptist doctrine. The Iraqi started translating the Baptist articles of faith into Arabic. But Timothy had not yet been baptized or ordained, steps Lewis felt needed to be taken before opening a church. The two decided to hold off on these two actions until Lewis’ next visit.

In September 2003, Lewis sped back to Jordan in a Suburban and flew home, all in all a safe and fruitful mission journey. He planned to gather two or three preachers to travel with him back to Baghdad to witness Timothy’s baptism and ordination.

But while his next trip would be as fruitful, it proved far less safe.

BACK IN THE STATES

Upon returning to his homeland, Lewis presented the project to churches, hoping to drum up monetary support for the Baghdad church.

He invited a close friend, Garland Carey, pastor of Valley Bible Baptist Church in Newburgh, New York, to serve as a witness to Timothy’s baptism and ordination.

As word of the project spread, others volunteered to sign on, including John Kelley, pastor of Curtis Corner Baptist Church in Wakefield, Rhode Island; David Davis, pastor of Grace Bible Baptist Church in Vernon, Connecticut; Kirk DiVietro, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Franklin, Massachusetts; Tom Furse, director of Liberty Baptist Tabernacle's International Literature Ministry, in Rapid City, South Dakota; and Jimmy Mauller, the song leader at Liberty Baptist Tabernacle.

“I asked, before my husband left, what was his purpose in going,” says Jane Kelley, John Kelley’s widow. “He said he wanted to do whatever he could to help the church get started and to see people saved, and give them a place to worship.”

The intrigue of Iraq captured Davis’ heart.

“Obviously, there’s a great history in Baghdad, the cradle of civilization, the beginning,” Davis says. “You have a country in the Middle East where there’s opportunity for the gospel that hasn’t been there before.”

Davis says he had reservations about being in the country with an obvious group of
Americans.

“Certainly, there was some danger and risk outside the norm of visiting a foreign country,” he says. “But I had peace about going.”

Lewis describes the group as a little like a youth camp.

“You know preachers–they’re all independent thinkers,” he says.

He laid down two rules: Be happy. And if you can’t be happy, be quiet.

“Under these circumstances, there couldn’t be any in-fighting or trouble,” Lewis says. “We couldn’t do that because we were in a very delicate situation.”

SEVEN BAPTISTS IN BAGHDAD

On February 6, the men flew to Jordan and the following day they zipped to Baghdad in Suburbans. In Baghdad, they stayed at the Hamurabi Hotel. Lewis had planned to remain three weeks, and the others two weeks.

The pastors spent much of their time in prayer, Bible studies and devotions with Timothy. They answered the Iraqi’s questions, asked him some, and assured themselves of his sincerity.

One evening, the seven ventured to a restaurant outside their hotel. Most Iraqi business people were friendly, Lewis says, so they had no safety fears.

“I got the sense the business owner liked having us there,” he says, “but that he was a little afraid that maybe someone would drop a bomb on us while we were there.”

A bomb didn’t drop on them that night, but it wasn’t long before an explosion rocked their lives.

THE SHOOTING

One week after their arrival, Valentine’s Day dawned as normal as any day. Lewis and Timothy went hunting for a church building. Furse and Mauller traveled to a military post to witness to soldiers.

Kelley, DiVietro, Carey and Davis thought they’d make a trip to Babylon, about 30 miles south of Baghdad. Their van driver, Basil, had made three such excursions with Americans with no incidents.

“We wanted to make the trip to Babylon primarily because of its biblical history, with Nebuchadnezzar and the tower of Babel,” Davis recounts.

At the gate to the ancient city, flanked by stone walls featuring Saddam Hussein and heavily guarded by the Polish military, the commander asked them for identification and said it would take two days for security clearances. The four didn’t know if they’d make it back, but just in case, they turned in their passports. Before departing, they paused to snap pictures of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and the Euphrates River.

On their trip back to the hotel, they stopped at a roadside vendor and bought straw baskets, hot pads, and fruit. They believe this was possibly where the terrorists targeted them.

When the four climbed again into the Hyundai minivan, Kelley slid into the front passenger seat and the others filed into the back. Once on the four-lane rural highway, their driver followed behind a convoy of petroleum trucks escorted by the U.S. military for about 10 miles. The slow-moving vehicles bottled up traffic until the convoy turned off, when vehicles began to flow again.

At that point, a car pulled up on the van’s right. None suspected any danger–until a gunman with an automatic weapon pumped bullets into their van.

The driver screamed, “Oh, my god,” as a second spray of bullets blasted the van. Carey ordered everyone to hit the floor. A bullet ripped through Davis’ shoulder and shrapnel sliced into the others. The terrorists had killed Kelley, but the three survivors wouldn’t receive confirmation of his death for hours.

The driver steered into oncoming traffic and evaded the attackers. He stopped and asked directions to a hospital while the preachers huddled on the van’s floor. They credit their survival to the Muslim’s quick actions.

At the Iraqi hospital, personnel took each of them to different rooms. The facility lacked equipment of any kind and doctors there could only clean the wounds. But within minutes, the U.S. 82^nd Airborne Division showed up and transported the wounded to a combat hospital.

“I’ll tell you, that was a happy sight,” recalls a choked-up Davis, “seeing the American flag sewn on the uniforms.”

Before they left, hospital staff informed them Kelley was dead.

At the military facility, surgeons examined the shaken men and patched their cuts and abrasions. Soon after, an American Consulate official helped them contact their families. But Lewis did not learn of the ambush until late that evening.

THE NEWS

When Lewis had arrived at the hotel that afternoon, he didn’t know where the four had gone. Not hearing from them made him anxious but not overly concerned.

That day, he and Timothy had leased a three-bedroom apartment for church services and a one-bedroom missionary condominium. At 10:30 that night, a still-worried Lewis had just sat down to eat dinner at the hotel with Furse and Mauller when he received a call from an American Consulate official.

“She told me John had been killed,” Lewis says.

Though stunned, he didn’t tell Furse and Mauller what happened before leaving for the combat hospital.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I had the facts because those guys are on e-mail two times daily, and I didn’t want to give them anything inaccurate,” Lewis says. “They asked, ‘Is it bad?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s bad.’”

At the hospital, he met men rattled and “shocked into reality.” Consulate officials said they wanted to fly them all home immediately, for their own safety. But a high-ranking woman told them her father served as a missionary, and she understood if they wanted to stay.

Lewis ushered the survivors back to the hotel.

“That’s when we began to reconcile about it all,” he says.

The three told him they wanted to finish what they started.

“We felt like … it would be a dishonor to John if we just closed up and went home,” Davis says. “We came to see our brother baptized, and his wife and two others, and we came for the ordination. None of that had happened yet.”

Lewis had the devastating task of calling Jane Kelley. He first phoned his wife to ask her to stay with Jane and then made the life-changing call.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Lewis says.

When she heard the news, Jane Kelley asked if he was kidding.

“I know they’re such good friends, and they joked around. I knew this wasn’t a joke, but I had to make sure,” Jane Kelley says.

Lewis confirmed her husband had been shot and killed.

“I didn’t want to act like a heathen and not believe God was in control,” Jane Kelley says. “My reaction was: God is working. He sees the big picture, and it’s no accident. God knows what happened; He’s in control.”

Davis felt the same.

“I learned, God’s in charge,” he says, “and that the things in life that are important are those things that are most important to God.”

Lewis and the other men pulled themselves together and baptized Timothy, his wife, and two others the following Monday. On Tuesday, they ordained the Iraqi.

They held the service at the Anglican Church. Its officials knew Timothy and happily loaned their building. More than 300 showed up, many friends of the Iraqi man, but also some curious Muslims.

The pastors read a statement of Baptist faith in Arabic. Lewis preached a brief message, and they all sang Arabic songs.

“Arabic music is great, kind of like the circus. It’s lively,” Lewis says.

At the end of the service, Lewis introduced Timothy: “We give you a new pastor.”

The women yodeled with their tongues, a cultural sound of approval that surprised and pleased the preachers.

The next day, the six men flew from back to the United States to attend the funeral of their beloved brother in Christ. But they left Baghdad knowing they had formed a church that would have met with Kelley’s approval.

“I know John’s gone, but I know God was in that, and God makes choices we don’t,” Davis says. “The very fact God uses us to do anything is a tremendous privilege. I know John felt the same way.”

THE FUTURE

Lewis’ work in Baghdad isn’t done. And even though he now faces, and struggles with, the real possibility of his own death should he return to city, he believes the mission far outweighs the risk. On his third trip, he plans to stay for two months and formalize the church, considered a project of Blackstone Valley Baptist Church.

“When I go back, I hope to help the people understand better what the church is and how it functions,” Lewis says.

And despite being attacked by terrorists, Davis says he’d also like to see Baghdad again.

“I would go back today, even at great danger to me,” Davis says. “I fell in love with the preacher there, and the other family that was baptized. I’m excited to see what God can do through them.”

At this time, the Baghdad church evangelizes only to Iraqi Christians. Islamic clerics can still order a hit on anyone who tries to convert Muslims, Lewis says. But someday, he hopes to reach Baghdad’s Muslim population.

Lewis remains in contact with Timothy. In an e-mail to Lewis, the man wrote about an Iraqi woman doctor and her daughter who received Christ and plan to join the church.

“I don’t want to go out and evangelize quickly,” Lewis says of Baghdad. “I want it to be slow, to have Bible studies and fruitful Bible experiences. You can’t just go out and hand out Bibles and have the same experience.

Because of threats to him and his family, Timothy has considered leaving the country, as some of his church members have done the last couple years. “At least they are saved when they leave,” Timothy says. But he believes if he departs, church members and others will see him as a coward. He has a vision to minister to the needy (the sick, elderly, widows, orphans) in every way he can with the resources the Lord provides.

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