Jason was raised in a believing home, close enough to church that his family could walk to services when the weather was nice. Around age ten, Jason was in a vacation bible school when he heard the gospel preached by a teenager. Convinced that things were not right between him and God, he knew he needed the saving blood of Jesus Christ. Then and there, he believes God saved him.  

In high school, Jason fell in with a group of radical Christians who loved their Bibles and sought to be conformed to Christ and not the world. One of these Christians who discipled him turned out to be his future wife, Janet. Since being married, both have continued to have a heart to disciple others, actively serving the local church, even as God has blessed them with six children. When Jason reached his fortieth birthday, he left the electronics industry to devote his life to pastoral ministry.  

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we have many, many preachers that we have been blessed by having over the years. And one of them is Jason Dome. Hey, Jason. It's true.

It's good to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you. So, Jason is going to tell the story of his life. He's gonna give his testimony. And we have done this with many, many, almost all of our speakers that we have come and speak at our conferences.

Because we want to give the listener a background on their life to help them maybe understand their progress through life, and maybe it'll help them even access the preaching even better by getting to know the person. So today we get to know about the life history of Jason Dome, my friend, my friend for more than half of his life. A lot more than half. A lot More than half. A lot more than half.

I've been really looking forward to this in participating with other speakers that we've heard their life story over time. It's made me think, I want to turn, not so that I could be in the spotlight, but because I'm so thankful that God had mercy on me, reached into my life, and it does make me want to tell the story. God is good. He's so kind. Yeah.

So, okay, so let's start. Hey, Give sort of the story of your life, where you were born, just give us kind of a run through of the story of your life. So my parents moved to Greenville, North Carolina when I was one years old, so I don't have any memories before that. And I grew up all the way through my high school years in Greenville, North Carolina, in the sweetest home. I have just a wonderful father and mother with a wonderful, loving, patient, kind marriage, and they had us in church every Sunday.

I could actually walk to church when the weather was nice. We actually did walk a couple of blocks to the United Methodist Church that we were members of and in probably when I was 10 years old, something like that, they had me in vacation Bible school at this United Methodist Church. And our church had a particularly evangelistic family. They sort of stuck out in that way, and the mother of this family was in charge of Vacation Bible School and made sure that the gospel was preached there. And I'm pretty sure I was born again at that vacation Bible school.

The reason I say that is I don't really have hardly any memories from that time in my life, but I could go back and I'm confident I could stand within, you know, a foot of where I was standing when the gospel was shared by a teenager. And I was convinced that things were not right between me and God and that I needed the saving blood of Jesus Christ. And I believe I was saved then. Ten years old. Something like that.

Right in there. Yeah, something like that. I have just such a vivid memory to this day of that and no other memories really around that timeframe, which just tells me this was monumental in my life. Serious discipleship started for me in my early mid-teen years. There was a Christian coffee house, kind of organized around a Bible study in downtown Greenville.

Downtown Greenville is where all the drinking happens from East Carolina University. So there was this rented storefront that was a Christian coffee House where Christian teenagers went on the weekend to study the Bible and play foosball and video games and hear Christian bands. And my sister, who was born again, allowed her annoying little brother to come downtown with her on weekends. Thank you, Amy, I appreciate that. And so I was hanging out with radical Christians.

Many or most of them were charismatic, so I don't necessarily stand in the stream of theology today that influenced me then. But they were alive. I don't think they were all that theologically sound, but they were alive Christians. They really loved the Lord Jesus, And I knew I wanted to be alive. And so I was discipled by these radical Christians, meaning they were young also.

They were older than me, but they were young. They were high school, college-aged Christians, and they were rejecting the world. And they loved their Bibles. They were spending a lot of time every day reading their Bibles. They were spending a lot of time every day seeking the Lord through prayer.

And I wanted to be like them because that's where I saw the spiritual life was. Okay, I got a question for you. Yeah, please, break in. So, do you have recollection of particular passages of Scripture that hit you during that season in your life? You know, I don't know.

The one that comes to mind, I think it is Jonah 2 verse 8, and I memorized it originally in the NIV because that was sort of my first Bible, but it says, and I hope I don't butcher the quoting of it now, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. No kidding. I've heard you say that in sermons, in conversations. Beautiful. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. You don't know the grace you're missing when you cling to worthless idols. And so that was one of... Hey, these Christians I was hanging around and were discipling me were memorizing Scripture too. So I had three by five index cards with the reference on one side, the verse on the other, and I was working through those every day.

Hey, really, I would say I'm a pastor today because I got a fast start in late junior high, early high school. I was getting up at five in the morning reading my Bible and praying because these people who were discipling me were doing the same. And if you weren't serious about your Bible and prayer, they didn't know what to make of that because they loved Jesus and they wanted to pursue Him through the ordinary means of grace. So I got so much good from that. I wasn't dating in high school, not because I didn't like girls, but because I really liked girls.

And I didn't trust that I would be trustworthy and be able to walk with holiness if I was cultivating a close relationship like that in high school. I was hanging around with some of those people who had a similar conviction. None of us had ever heard the term courtship, but we had sort of decided to do that without really the parental involvement. But staying out, we saw the hazards of quote unquote Christian dating and how it wasn't really different than other dating and how that brought all sorts of perils and opportunities to dishonor the Lord, and we didn't want to do that. And so I was looking for early marriage because I did want a relationship, I did want marriage, and So I was hoping for early marriage So in my early college years, you know, I'm looking around Hoping that I would be able to identify, you know a wonderful young woman who would be suitable to be a spouse.

And I noticed myself doing something, like she's not quite as humorous as Janet. She's not quite as godly as Janet, she's not quite as cute as Janet. And so, who's Janet? Well, Janet was a Bible study leader when I was in high school. I was in her Bible study.

She was five years older than me. And it ended up occurring to me about halfway through college that no one was more like Janet than Janet. And so I talked with my pastor originally, I was trying to get him to help talk me out of this because I felt like my inclinations were veering towards idolatry, you know? Is that funny? And he said, well, maybe I should talk you out of it, or maybe we should pray about it.

Maybe God is doing something in your life, and let's just consider these things. And so I ended up deciding, hey, whether I can pull this off or not, I have to go try to see if Janet will have anything to do with me. Hey, was that the guy that you invited me to do the wedding with? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the same guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a wonderful pastor. Very thankful for his influence in my life as well. But Janet, as you know, was a young lady that you had been part of a church plant in the town of Wake Forest. Yeah, she was in Wake Forest, right, as a teacher at the high school here.

So she was in the Scott and Deborah Brown home all the time, so all of a sudden I wanted to be in the Scott and Deborah Brown home to be near her and to be doing the things that she was doing. And after a while, I mean, obviously she knew me. She had been a bridesmaid in my older sister's wedding, so she was a close friend of my older sister. And after a period of time, God brought us together in marriage. You conducted that wedding in 1991 along with my college pastor.

And in some ways, the rest is history. But I remember from being in your home, We were very normal evangelicals, Janet and I both were, meaning we figured Americans have 2.2 kids, we would have 2.2 kids, you know? And everybody sends their kids to public schools, so we just figured we would send our kids to public schools. But being in you and Debra's house a lot made us look at what the kind of the fruit of doing it a very different way was and we thought, well, hey, what is happening with Blair and Kelly and their cheerfulness and happiness, but also obedience and honor for their parents. Whatever's producing this is something that we want to definitely consider.

And it put us on a track to homeschooling. Interesting, I didn't know that. That's really amazing. Oh, that's great. Okay, so yeah, you show up in Janet's life.

We'd already been in church with Janet and really loved her. So you're vetting me. I like, I say I like this guy. I like this guy a lot. And so did she.

Yeah, I'm thankful for that. I worked a couple of summers for you at Accutronics, your electronics manufacturing company, just making rent for the following year. And then when I graduated, I graduated with a degree in physical education and I really wanted to coach and I found out in my student teaching time that I was going to have to teach for eight to ten hours for in order to have the privilege of coaching for almost no money for a couple of hours at the end of the day and that just didn't seem like the right ratio. So I went to work for you. That was amazing.

Yeah, after graduation. Yeah, you worked your way up through the whole sort of ecosystem of that company and you ended up helping me run that company. And it was really neat. I really, I was so grateful for you being there. And when it came time to sell it, you were extremely helpful and you stayed on.

Yeah. After that. The truth was you were in a small, rapidly growing company and didn't have the cash in that company to afford the talent you needed. So you... Sold it.

Well, no, but you satisfied yourself with giving opportunities to people who would at least be honest and work hard. There you go. Okay. Yeah. I was honest and worked hard even though I wasn't the talent you necessarily needed.

So when you sold the company and then exited the company a couple of years later. I continued on for another 11 years. Yeah. That company was great, great for me. You sold it to a really good, strong company that gave me opportunities that I never would have dreamed of otherwise.

And then, you know, fast forward to towards the end of that time working for that company. I was coming up on my 40th birthday. You and I were co-eldering together at that time. Yeah. Just one second.

Yeah, sure. We're gonna pick up right there in a second, but let's go back. Let's go back. So, you started going to church together. Right.

You know, the church that Janet was part of that church plan. And so we had, I was an elder there, and we had small group Bible studies. We were working together, what do we call them? We call them flocks or something like that. Yeah, flock group.

Yeah, flock groups. Yeah. So you and I would do it. We would watch R.C. Sproul's holiness series.

Oh, it was great. Did we do it? It seems like we did that more than once. Yeah, we did. Yeah, that was really something.

And anyway, those were great years in that church. I mean, we've been, I guess, ministering together for over 30 years. Yeah, at that time, you were my elder, and also my boss, I was working for you, but we were also going to church together. And then when You left that church with their blessing to start a family integrated church. Janet and I decided we wanted to participate that as well.

And over time, I became an elder also, so we were co-eldering together. Okay, so I stopped you. Where did I stop you? So I'm coming up on my 40th birthday. There you go.

Yeah. I've always thought that 30 being a big birthday or 40 or 50 being a big birthday was just a sort of a stupid concept. Just another day in the life. Little did I know when I came near my 40th birthday, I started having these serious rumblings in my heart. It was occurring to me that in an average lifetime, 40 is about halfway.

So we don't know if we're going to live until tomorrow. But if you get an average lifespan, 40 is about halfway through it. And it was causing me to reflect on the first 40 years, thankful for some things, sorry for some things in terms of not being sanctified or made into Jesus' image as fast as I should be or wanted to be, and desiring that the second half would be more fruitful, bring more honor to God in the second half than the first half. About that same time we reached our financial goals, or some of our financial goals got completely out of debt, so we didn't know any money, including on our house. That changes.

Jason was always really wise with his money. He was. Hey, not always, but often. But often. Janet was.

Janet was. Yeah, I tell the young men, marry a frugal mathematician. That's what I did. She was a math major and pinches the pennies, watches, knows where all the money's going. So when we were out of debt, our income needs dropped, and it really opens up your options at that point in life.

You don't have to have as much income as you needed when you don't have car payment, house payment, any sort of debt repayment. And so she took me away from my 40th birthday and she thought it was just going to be a fun time in the mountains and little did she know I had been thinking these things and had a legal pad with just sort of a potential option on each piece of paper. I think I had 10 or 11 different options. No kidding. So we're sitting in the hot tub at the mountain place and I bring out the legal pad and like, hey, I wanna think about doing something very different for the second half of our life.

You know, I've been thinking about this, but I didn't want to throw it at you half-baked. I wanted to not be kidding around by the time we talked about it. So we talked about a number of different options, and because both of our parents are nearby and not getting younger, we felt like the options that were far away from where we lived probably weren't the right thing because we wanted to be near, be able to care for them as they get older. And one of the options was to volunteer at our church to lead a church plant. Where we were elderly at the time, Hope Baptist Church had, I think, gotten to about 300 a Sunday.

And the way we're structured, we have sit-down lunch, potluck lunch together after the service every Sunday. So sit-down lunch for 300 is not really sustainable. And our elder team had talked many times about the potential of church planning, but I wasn't in the place in my life to volunteer before then, but then I was and when I volunteered, I think all of us were excited about the possibilities of that. And so 11 and a half years ago, Sovereign Redeemer was planted not far away from hope. It really wasn't to conquer a whole new geography.

It was really a response to church growth and wanting to keep local church size in a place where sort of the relational dynamics and the ability to shepherd stays reasonable. Yeah, 15 minutes away. 15 minutes away. Yeah. Yeah.

And we're alive today. Alive today. Yeah, what a joy. Hey, so anything else you want to say? You know, I look back on how little I knew on the day when I was saved, how little I knew years after I was saved, how proud I was and had no right to be.

And just the thought of my condition just drives home the point that there's really nothing in us that draws God's attention and draws His affections towards us. God wouldn't have chosen me because there was something in me that was attractive to Him, and He didn't. And so it just makes me enormously grateful that he would desire for his own good reasons to have mercy on me. Hey, I'm really grateful that God had mercy on you. We've had a great time together, haven't we?

Yes. And the Lord is so kind to us in that way. So man, thanks for telling that story. I know there's a lot more to say, but... Well, hey, here's the other thing that should be said guy.

Hey, God gave us six children Uh-huh. Yeah, there these children are walking with the Lord I thank God for his grace in their lives and now Janet and I have are about to have our fifth grandchild There you go. And I am preaching to my grandchildren and I know it doesn't have to be that way, and who knows what the future holds, but it's a very sweet life right now. Love it. Yeah.

Love it. Okay, well, thank you, man. Pleasure. Okay. Well, God is full of grace and truth and he rescues the undeserving even when they don't really know too much about hardly anything.

What a joy it is to have a Savior like the Lord Jesus Christ. And thanks for sharing that. And thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and coming here to Jason's sermons. Now you know a little bit more about him. We'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.