Culture is constantly changing. We all have questions about how to apply TRUTH to our DAILY LIVES. Many of our Oakwood Staff find great help in the daily articles and seasonal devotions the Denison Forum provides.

Personally, my first encounter with the man, Dr. Jim Denison, was at Dallas Baptist University where he literally answered ANY and EVERY QUESTION that a whole bunch off College Baptist Theology Students were throwing his way. He not only answered them, but kept the room pretty quiet after one or two questions. He is a knowledgeable man and is dedicating his live to aid people like you and me on the journey of faith.

Dr. Denison writes a cultural commentary available at www.denisonforum.org/subscribe. His free daily commentary is distributed around the world to 87,035 subscribers in over 200 countries. He writes for The Dallas Morning News, contributing weekly to the “Texas Faith Forum” and is a guest columnist for the The Christian Post.

He has also taught world religions for 25 years with four seminaries. He has spoken in China, Cuba, Brazil, Australia, Europe, Israel, Greece, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Turkey and served as a short-term missionary to East Malaysia, in Southeast Asia. He also leads frequent study tours in Israel, Greece, and Europe.

Here are some more facts about Dr. Denison:
Dr. Denison currently serves on the board of the Baylor Health Care System and as Chair of the Advisory Board for Dallas Baptist University. He teaches Ph.D. seminars and graduate-level classes for Dallas Baptist University and serves as a teaching fellow for the B. H. Carroll Theological Institute. He has taught on the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and at McAfee School of Theology, and has served on the boards of Dallas Baptist University, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University.

Prior to founding the DFTC, Dr. Denison was pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church, a 10,000-member congregation in Dallas, Texas. He also pastored churches in Midland and Mansfield, Texas, and in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion and Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Dallas Baptist University.

The Denison Forum on Truth and Culture (DFTC) (www.denisonforum.org) exists to engage contemporary culture with biblical truth. As a catalyst for moral and spiritual renewal, DFTC is joining God in building a global movement of culture-changing Christians.

April 16, 2014 Pastor B My Life, Oakwood, Students

Easter – Journey to the Cross

Easter Services 5 & 6:30pm Saturday, 8, 9:15, & 10:45am Sunday. No Fusion 9:15am Bible Study.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.. Isaiah 53:6

This verse was read to me as a VERY YOUNG CHILD by my mother. She had an ABC’s Children’s book that took each letter of the alphabet and tied in a scripture. “A” began with “ALL WE..” and the rest of the scripture followed. As we journey to the Cross again this Easter Season, I have come back to remember the beginning of my personal relationship with Jesus. Simply asking the question, “What is sin?” and talking about what Jesus did for us on the Cross led my mother and I to a little brown, mushroom stool where I knelt down and asked Jesus into my heart. Now, 30 years later, I come back to the beginning again, and remember the powerful journey to the cross that Jesus took in order to take a sheep, like me and like you, that has gone astray. He not only found me, but he saved me from the one who would like to steal, kill, and destroy my life. He promised me abundant life when he took my iniquity, my sins, and fully paid for the world. He is the GOOD SHEPHERD that laid down His life for us. He KNOWS His sheep and His sheep KNOW Him. On top of all that, that powerful sacrifice of the GOOD SHEPHERD is trumped by the powerful authority that He has to take His life up again. The only one that has the authority to lay down a life and take it up again is Jesus Christ. He is all about raising dead things to life. I am thankful this season for what Jesus did for me. I am also reminded about the powerful NEW LIFE we have in Christ.

Do you feel like you have gone astray? Do you feel like your life is moving toward dead things? Is there something that you need to give to Jesus, so that, in His authority, He can bring NEW LIFE? As we Journey to the Cross this week, remember the powerful work Jesus has done in your life. Remember that He is GOOD. He wants us to have ABUNDANT LIFE, and where there is evidence of sickness, pain, a broken relationship, or destructive behavior, there is a GOOD SHEPHERD ready to move us from our OWN WAY and lead us to THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE.

April 11, 2014April 10, 2014 Pastor B Culture, Students

Andy Mineo About the Artist

Andy Mineo – About the Artist

Interlinc Article

Whether he’s on stage bringing an audience to its feet with his riveting performance or off stage fielding interview questions with a potent combination of intellect and wit, it’s obvious Andy Mineo is a born communicator and hip hop music is his instrument for reaching the masses. “It is absolutely undeniable that hip hop is becoming the universal language,” Mineo says expressing an unbridled enthusiasm for his artistic vehicle. “It’s so influential because you are able to say so much in a short period of time. The essence of hip hop is the boldness of it so you’re able to be exactly who you are. You are able to say exactly what you want. You represent exactly what is deepest and dearest to you and people respond to that. They respond to that realness.”

Listen To Andy Mineo- Never Land feat Marz

That musical authenticity, heart for people and keen insight into the human condition coalesce on Mineo’s Reach Records debut Heroes for Sale. “We make heroes out of a lot of things,” he says. “We make heroes out of people. We believe ourselves to be greater than we really are. We make ourselves look like heroes to other people. What I really wanted to do is show the brokenness of the heroes that we create and the heroes that we try to be in order to show that there is ultimately only one great hero.”

To underscore that message, Mineo was willing to strip back the layers of his own life and be honest with his audience. “I get really transparent on these songs,” he confesses. “I want to let people see into my brokenness in hopes that other people would identify with that and ultimately know that they don’t have to be great. Their God is. Also I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to show off my love for hip hop. I wanted to try some things. You’ll see a bunch of my big personality come out. I let people see who I am.”

Andy Mineo – Saturday Morning Car-Tunez

A native of Syracuse, New York, Mineo grew up in a single parent home and was a troubled kid who was kicked out of public school because of his anger issues and aggressive tendencies. Sports and music became positive outlets for Andy’s excessive energy. “I was more involved in basketball and football until one of my friends and I just started rapping as a joke,” he remembers. “We used to buy singles because we couldn’t afford anything else. When you’re 10 years old and you’ve got two or three dollars, you buy the CD single instead of the whole album. The CD single would have instrumentals, so we would just write our own raps to the instrumental on the CD. That’s kind of where my love for it began. My buddy got a program for the computer and we were recording in my living room. I put together my first rap and I fell in love with it the moment I heard myself on the beat. I said, ‘Man, I want to do this forever!”

Mineo became a hard-working young entrepreneur and not only recorded his own raps, but started a studio in his house where he recorded other young hopefuls. He became a local hero and at 17 had money, success and everything most young guys are looking to achieve. “When I got to about 15 or 16, I got all the equipment I needed to not only record myself, but have my friends come over and I’d record them,” he says. “Other people got wind of that and said, ‘Hey I’ll come over and I’ll pay to let me record,’ so I started doing that. The business kept on evolving. I started making more money and bought more stuff, moved it into my basement and built a full studio with one of my friends, who was a carpenter. We created a little ghetto basement studio. That’s how I made my money all throughout high school.”

Yet even with Mineo’s worldly success, there was still an emptiness and restlessness in his heart. He found what he had been looking for when his sister Mary went to work at a church camp one summer and took Andy with her. “I was surrounded by loving people,” he recalls. “There were a couple of guys that invested in me that summer, shared the gospel with me, showed me what it is to follow Jesus, and that’s when I had my first real encounter with Jesus.” When he returned home, it was hard to grow in his faith. “All throughout high school it was really difficult to follow Jesus without having any community,” Mineo says. “I didn’t have any home church. I didn’t have any men to disciple me. Nothing. When I went to college is when I started to get that. In college, I got away from the situation I was in. God put me there and he put me around a bunch of people that loved God, people that looked like me and talked like me. They were into hip hop like I was and it was really a blessing to meet some of these guys.”

Mineo met producer Alex Medina (Lecrae, Trip Lee) who encouraged the young artist to check out T.R.U.C.E. “It was a group of young people that would gather on Saturdays to work on performing arts for the purpose of evangelism,” he says. “I got invited to come check them out at a rehearsal and there was a whole bunch of men there, people my age, and they all loved God. They were an encouragement for me to start walking with God again. They showed me that I could use my gifts for him. I didn’t have to live the way I was living. I didn’t have to make the music the way I was making it. I could actually use everything that I have for Jesus. I got connected with people that showed me that I could do more with my life and my music.” Mineo traveled with T.R.U.C.E. and began making a name for himself with such projects as Sin is Wack Vol. 1. Soon others were enlisting Mineo to add his considerable skills to their projects. He’s been featured on Tedashii’s Blacklight, Ambassador’s Stop the Funeral, Flame’s Captured and Lecrae’s “Background.” “That was the first song we collaborated on and since then we started to build a relationship,” Mineo says of working with Lecrae. “He came to New York and we shot a music video for it. We started to realize that we both had a similar vision, a similar mission in what we wanted to do with our music. They were looking to sign a new artist and I just seemed to be the right fit so I signed with Reach and it’s been a heck of a journey ever since.”