A New Chapter: Establishing the Dobson Culture Center
This post is a personal one: after three fruitful years at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, I am leaving to take a new role as the Senior Director of the Dobson Culture Center. This is a brand-new ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. JDFI has created an announcement page that has core information here; more details to follow.
As I close my chapter in Conway, Arkansas, I give thanks to God for my time here. It has been richly enjoyable to work together with the leadership team of GBTS—with Jeff Johnson at the helm—to establish this seminary upon the bedrock principle of sola scriptura. How essential this is, and how rare.
I have also loved teaching the many terrific students who make up the student body of GBTS. What a blessing to see many young men eager to learn the Word of God in order to minister the grace of God. Further, the faculty of GBTS is a great group, made up of men of conviction and zeal for God. I am thankful for these brothers, and pray God’s richest blessing on all I have just mentioned.
Beyond the seminary, my family has made many great connections through our church, and we cherish those friendships. We’ve experienced a great deal of Christian hospitality, kindness, and giving. That has been instructive to us, and a rich blessing to my wife, me, and our three precious kids. It is truly a bittersweet reality to leave a church and a school, but we do so giving thanks to God for much that he has done in this last three-year span.
Now, however, we end this season and turn to what’s ahead. I am overjoyed to lead the brand-new Dobson Culture Center. Dr. Dobson is, quite frankly, an evangelical icon. He has been a faithful voice engaging culture and strengthening families for decades. At this new center, I will prayerfully seek—in a very small way—to extend that legacy to the glory of God. JDFI has a strong focus on marriage, families, the dignity of every person, manhood and womanhood, and related matters. This body of interest fits me with providential precision.
In every respect, I feel like God has prepared me for this role. My work at the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, my fifteen years teaching theology, my role as a Senior Fellow with the Center for Biblical Worldview of Family Research Council, my current podcast hosting, and the writing and speaking and media I’ve gotten to do the last fifteen years all fit me for the Dobson Culture Center.
How grateful I am to the Lord for this providence. The days feel evil, but God has not abandoned our world. God is saving, transforming, overcoming darkness, and exalting his Son through the power of the Spirit. These truths drive the work of the center. We will seek to equip God’s people to destroy strongholds and to love God’s truth (2 Cor. 10; Eph. 4:15). We’ll produce videos, articles, resource packages, podcasts, and more to fulfill this mission.
On a weekly basis, I’ll be releasing a new report, entitled “Lighting Up Culture.” Sign up for this weekly email here—it’s free, and it will encourage you to trust God in hard days, and stand on divine truth when the ground shakes beneath you. I do encourage you to sign up today—we’ll be releasing our first report very soon!
There’s much more to come from the Dobson Culture Center, God willing. I am so thankful to the president of JDFI, Joe Waresak, for entrusting this exciting role to me. Joe is a godly and gifted man, and I am eager to work with him and the JDFI team to strengthen the faith and conviction of God’s people in these testing times.
The good folks at JDFI first reached out to me about doing podcasts on my book, Christianity and Wokeness, in the summer of 2021. I had absolutely zero idea what those two podcasts would lead to (you can find them here if you like), but I am grateful that I got to discuss wokeness on air with Dr. Dobson—it was a bucket-list moment! Over the last three years, I’ve done project work for JDFI and had a terrific experience, and that has led over time—and in surprising fashion—to a wholly new vocational role leading a brand-new center.
In days ahead, my family and I will be relocating to the Louisville, Kentucky area. With my wife, I am looking forward to living near part of our family. My residence in Kentucky does not relate to any denominational entity, though I will surely have the joy of reconnecting with many friends from my days at Boyce College and Southern Seminary, each of them an important and valued institution.
In beginning this new role, I ask for the prayers of God’s people. I am nothing; Christ is everything. My goal at the DCC is to honor and exalt the Savior who did not stay away from all the peril and panic of sinful humanity, but took on flesh for us and our salvation. The effect of the incarnation is unique, but the trajectory of the incarnation is a summons. We are not called to retreat from darkness. We are not called to despair. We are not called to extremism as believers. We are called to be “salt and light” in what is rotting and shrouded in darkness (Matthew 5:13-16).
This is what we will seek to be at the center—and this is what I pray we can equip God’s people to be. By the grace of God, let us be like the father in Cormac McCarthy’s novel who rode with great urgency at midnight, carrying fire in a horn. Let us do likewise. Let us carry the fire. Let us press into the darkness, not run from it. Let us not hide our light under a bushel; let us be a city on a hill, the radiance of Christ in a world that needs him above all else.