A Retrospective on 2005, A Vision for 2006
A Letter from Doug Phillips
by Douglas W. Phillips, Esq., December 22, 2005
To Our Dear Friends in the Work of the Lord:
Greetings in the name of the Savior! I thank God for each of you, for your love for us, and for the way so many of you have expressed that love through prayers, support, and notes of encouragement. We appreciate every single testimony of the faithfulness of God you send our way. We are so grateful for you.
The purpose of this letter is to offer a few personal thoughts on the significance of 2005 in light of the many special providences of God throughout this year in the life of Vision Forum Ministries.
2005: A Retrospective
Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. (Psalm 145:3)
This year, the Vision Forum team collectively traveled more than a quarter of a million miles across the nation and around the world. We traveled, preached, taught, filmed, and wrote in pursuit of a solitary mission: the glorification of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in the defining crisis of our generation — the battle to defend, restore, and advance the biblical family.
Having first sought the Lord for His blessing, we began our year by drawing “a line in the sand,” purposing to stand fast without compromise. Quoting Nehemiah, and remembering a generation which once gathered to fight as families, we resolved to do our part as families in the great wall-building task of our generation:
Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses. (Nehemiah 4:14)
The Great Commission declares that we are to “go” and “make disciples of nations” and “teach all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” In 2005, this going, discipling, and teaching took form in hundreds of hours of preaching, publishing books, CDs, and pages upon pages of content for articles, producing a professional documentary film, teaching at several dozen conferences, launching new training academies, and creating a new bi-annual newsletter called The Family Vision.
How do you summarize such a year? One way is to see 2005 in terms of God’s providentially decreed antithesis, warfare, friendships, and victories.
Providential Antithesis
If Christianity is the thesis, then everything else is the antithesis. As believers who reject the myth of neutrality, we “force the antithesis” when our thinking and our lifestyle stand in stark opposition to vain thoughts and deeds of fallen man.
The year 2005 was a year of antithesis. It was a year in which the Lord set before the American people the way of life and the way of death. The horrors of a culture immersed in immorality and teeming with fatherless families was evidenced on the streets of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But in contradistinction to the horrors of New Orleans, 2005 was also a year where hope was reborn as many men placed God’s Word at the center of their homes and renewed their efforts to lead their families faithfully before the Lord.
Providential Warfare
Obedience to the Great Commission necessitated that Vision Forum Ministries engage in formal, public, apologetic defense of the “hope that is [within us]” in opposition to what the Bible describes as “vain deceipt, after the traditions of men.” This meant addressing a number of highly controversial issues directly related to the Lordship of Christ in the culture of the Christian family. The positions we took drew significant fire and criticism, not merely from secular humanists, but from liberal elements within the broader Christian community. They also generated piles of thank-you notes from thirsty Christian families relieved to receive a drink of spiritual encouragement.
The apologetic ministry meant “reproving” works of darkness and promoting good. If you have been following the work of this ministry, you have seen that we vigorously challenged the Christian community to rethink Harry Potter, to break with Hollywood, and to resist the dark trend toward eugenics and euthanasia by fighting for the precious life of Terri Schiavo.
Simultaneously, we aspired to cast a vision for hope by inspiring our daughters to achieve “so much more” as feminine, Titus 2 women of God; to encourage fathers to reclaim their role as sacrificial patriarchs; and to build Christ-exalting local churches which take seriously their commitment to encourage, not tear down, the biblical family.
Providential Friendships
More than any other year of the new millennium, 2005 was a year in which the Lord kindly sent us new friends and yoke-fellows in the battle. We thank the Lord for a fleet of new Christian filmmakers, for promising young men we have had the privilege of training, and for key speakers, businessmen, pastors, and families who have risen up to co-labor with us. It seems that God is preparing an army for an important work.
Providential Victories
It is great to cast vision, but it is even greater to see God bless a vision and providentially bring it to pass. The year 2005 was a year of warfare, but it was also a year of many providential victories. Two special victories were the following:
Victory #1: God Brings a Four-Year Vision to Completion — The year 2005 saw the completion of a vision cast in 2001. Our prayer was that God would allow us to produce a compelling and professional film that would explain the providence of God in the lives of our World War II fathers, in the context of the message of Psalm 78 and the Fifth Commandment. After four years of planning, The League of Grateful Sons was shot, produced, and released. The testimonies of adult sons and daughters who have been inspired through its message have been numerous. Thanks to the generosity of one of our supporters, this film will be screened on the U.S.S. Missouri in Oahu (the boat on which the Japanese surrender was concluded) and will be advertised to nearly a million people on a major television network in January. Our hope is that 2006 will be a year of harvest in which great spiritual rewards are reaped from this four-year vision to train a generation of Americans to honor their fathers and record the providences of God in their lives. Our motto is: “Son’s must ask; fathers must tell.” (See more on this below.)
Victory #2: God Answers a Four-Year Prayer — After nearly four years of petitioning our local county government, Vision Forum Ministries was finally granted tax-exempt status for our properties. This is a wonderful blessing of the Lord. It means that we will be able to save tens of thousands of precious dollars of the Lord’s money each year.
Moreover, the Lord was kind to bring victory to each of the following projects which we set before Him this past year:
Uniting Church and Family Around the World
In 2005, with director Scott Brown at the helm, the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches had the honor of sharing the vision for the sufficiency of Scripture and its implications for integrating church and home around the globe. With mini-conferences held in the Pacific islands of Guam, Oahu, and Kauai, to regional conferences held on the continent in the states of Washington, Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama, we saw the Lord turning the hearts of fathers and pastors back to God’s Word as it relates to family and church life.
The Faith of Our Fathers Project
On March 12, 2005, the Vision Forum Faith of Our Fathers film team hit the beaches of Iwo Jima with more than eighty aged veterans who battled on those same black sands in 1945. Our day on Iwo was part of a journey of honor — a three-week tour of the Pacific in which we sought to record on film the wisdom of those surviving men whose lives were forever marked by thirty-six days of hellish warfare. On this day, men did their duty — fathers told their sons and grandsons how God had preserved their lives during the bloody battle for Iwo Jima. These grey-headed grandfathers poured forth lessons on godly manhood so that their sons might be strong and overcome as they had done, by God’s grace, sixty years ago.
The testimonies of these faithful fathers, along with those of the sons who journeyed to Iwo to honor them, are chronicled in The League of Grateful Sons, which premiered October 28 at the second annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.
Father and Daughter Retreat
On April 8-10, more than 450 fathers and daughters gathered at Georgia’s beautiful Callaway Gardens for a blessed weekend of fellowship as part of the 2005 Father and Daughter Retreat. There we saw fathers turn their hearts toward their daughters and commit to lovingly lead them to walk in the joy of the Lord.
Father and Son Retreat
On August 11-13, nearly four hundred fathers and sons met in Colorado at the Crooked Creek Ranch for the 2005 Father and Son Discipleship Retreat. The message of honor, multi-generational faithfulness, sacrificial manhood, and family vision was clearly articulated. Arnold Pent, who authored the book Ten P’s in a Pod more than forty years ago, presented a compelling message on the importance of Scripture reading to family life. (His talk was entitled: “Seven Things My Father Taught Me.”) The testimonies of restored father and son relationships were numerous and beautiful.
Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy
On July 26-30, more that one hundred students gathered at the historic Mimslyn Inn in Luray, Virginia for the 2005 Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy. Students were taught the scriptural foundations for property, tort, and contract law; the influence of Christianity on the Constitution; the relationship between the case laws of Exodus and the Common Law; and the writings of Sir William Blackstone, among other topics. Featured speakers included Alabama Justice Tom Parker, former Chief Justice Roy Moore, Dr. Paul Jehle, the Honorable Howard Phillips, Dr. Edwin Vieira, William Einwechter, and Dr. John Eidsmoe.
Mission Katrina
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Vision Forum Ministries made several quick strikes into the heart of the devastation to offer both physical and spiritual aid to the men and their families who were among the faithful remnant there. The Lord gave us the opportunity to extract some individuals from the troubled areas, to distribute food and supplies, and to put teams together to help a local church repair its facilities.
Faith and Freedom Tour
On October 3-10, Vision Forum Ministries led our first Faith and Freedom Tour through the Middle Colonies — Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There we visited the great landmarks of Philadelphia, such as Carpenter’s Hall and Old Swede’s Church; stood on the shore where Washington crossed the Delaware; and offered prayers to God at the sacred graveyard at Princeton where the great John Witherspoon, Jonathan Edwards, and Samuel Davies lie buried, with many other stops along the way.
Christian Filmmaker’s Academy and San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival
On October 24-26, Vision Forum Ministries hosted the first-ever Christian Filmmaker’s Academy. Students who attended received more than sixteen hours of formal classroom instruction from seasoned industry professionals and had the opportunity to network and build professional personal relations with like-minded individuals interested in independent Christian filmmaking. A number of fathers and sons took part in this inaugural event.
More than a thousand participants representing states from New York to Washington and foreign countries from New Zealand to Romania attended the second annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival held October 27-29 at the Lila Cockrell Theatre in downtown San Antonio. More than 130 films were submitted to this year’s festival.
The “Best of Festival” Jubilee Award — a $10,000 grand prize — went to No Greater Love, a sixteen-minute film produced and directed by Arthur and Hanna Rasco of Ideal Images. Set in Hungary during the refugee flight of 1956, this short film, which is based on a true story, contrasts two fathers: one who is willing to sacrifice for his family and one who is not.
A Vision for 2006
Our staff will be meeting in January and February for intensive, two-year planning. We view the blessings and victories of 2005 as prelude to greater responsibilities and opportunities for serving the Lord. In addition to all of our regular events, here are some of the special ministries before us in 2006 for which we solicit your prayers.
History of the World Mega-Conference: Our most ambitious conference to date, featuring a large and distinguished faculty, the History of the World Mega-Conference will provide students of all ages with a panoramic perspective on the providential history of God over six-thousand years of earth history tracing every major civilization. This event will be held near beautiful Williamsburg, Virginia (after the Faith and Freedom Tour) in July. To our knowledge, this is the first time a conference has ever attempted to cover the history of the world in this manner.
Entrepreneurial Boot Camp: For half a decade we have dreamed of creating an innovative training academy to build and equip families of entrepreneurial vision. Thanks be to God, the Lord has now provided us with the team and the resources to do just this. We are grateful that He has blessed this vision as we prepare to launch our first national Entrepreneurial Boot Camp for Christian families in August 2006.
Christian Boys’ and Men’s Titanic Society Tenth Anniversary Celebration: For ten years, the CBMTS has been training young men to put women and children first. This year, on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we will gather in Washington, D.C. for a gala celebration featuring great food, the manly music of Charlie Zahm, and inspirational messages.
Faith of Our Fathers Project and the Quadricentennial: The Faith of Our Fathers Project is our ongoing work to tell the stories of the providence of God through the families that make up American history. In 2007, America celebrates the four hundreth birthday of the founding of Jamestown. The humanists are already at work, hoping to spin this event in a manner that robs God of the glory. Our top-secret mission (stay tuned in 2006 for details) is to counter such influences by launching a major effort to proclaim the providences of God and to creatively and professionally explain (potentially to millions) the true message of the founding of America. Toward this end, Vision Forum Ministries is spearheading an effort that includes collaborative work with some of the more important ministries in America dedicated to the same common cause.
A World of Gratitude
I love my work. It is not merely a calling, but it is a passion. My wife and children love their role as my co-laborers and yoke-fellows in this ministry. The men and women who make up the families of Vision Forum feel the same way. The privilege of preaching, teaching, and casting Gospel vision with my family by my side, yoked with likeminded families, is an unspeakable joy. It is a gift of God.
Speaking for the men and women who make up the families of Vision Forum, I want to thank God for this gift. We never want to take it for granted. We know that there is nothing special, righteous, brilliant, or lovely in us, but only to the extent that the incomparable glories of Jesus Christ shine through the humble and broken pottery of humanity that makes up our staff. We remind ourselves often that our work is not a right but a gift of God which could be taken away tomorrow. Also, we know that the work of Vision Forum Ministries is, and only will be, useful as long as the Lord sees fit to make it so. We tremble when we stop and consider the sinful state of our own hearts and how close each of us would be to the precipice of destruction apart from the mercies of our God.
I also would like to extend my personal thanks to all of you who have joined us in the work of the Lord through your prayers and generous financial gifts. You are the conduit through which this ministry advances the work of the kingdom set before us. Please also remember that our staff is praying for you. It is our joy to lift before the Lord the needs of those saints who bless us with specific prayer requests.
As we enter a new year, our prayer is this: “...O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath, remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2).
May the Lord continue to turn the hearts of fathers to their families — to bring hope and revival to our land, and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
Persevero,
Douglas W. Phillips, Esq.