7 Questions with Deryl Lackey

This week we bring you the Director of Missions for the Inland Empire Association, Deryl Lackey. Featuring Deryl is quite timely, as he and the association are hosting TWO Evangelism grant workshops in the next two weeks (September 9th & 16th). Be sure to check out the CSBC.com events page for details on those workshops! Deryl served as a law enforcement chaplain for 30 years and is currently serving the Redlands Police Department as a volunteer chaplain. He is also the Board Chairman of the Baptist Foundation of California. He is celebrating 43 wonderful years with his high school sweetheart, Brenda, this year. They share 6 children and 19 grandchildren who thankfully all live within 30 minutes of their home. When Deryl isn’t neck-deep in serving the community and his family you can *catch* him fishing or out on the fairway!

I just finished reading Building Below the Waterline by Gordon McDonald and I am in the middle of reading Sermon Illustrations by Dr. Jim Wilson from Gateway.

That’s really a great question! Well, besides all the obvious ones, I would lean toward Joshua or Luke. Probably more so Luke. He was an incredibly capable individual who is all over the book of Acts, but you would never know it. I so admire his ability to be a really effective tool for God. He doesn’t go around getting attention for himself. I think it would be a very interesting conversation to be had with him.

…Under. I had to think about it. I haven’t earned the right to have that responsibility yet. I can barely get the trash out on time! I’ll have to graduate to higher levels before I decide those kinds of things.

You know, I have found that by just showing genuine interest in people and conversing with people about their life and showing care about them, God is very good about bringing Himself up when He wants to. So, I don’t need to force Him into a conversation. I think people are very averse to bait and switch. It’s amazing how quickly people open up when they feel your genuine interest in knowing their story.

I have sky-dived twice! The first was when one of my daughters turned 21, and then again when another daughter turned 18. I remember we fell about 9,000 feet in about a minute. It was a lot of fun!

I actually have a couple that have been important to me in my life. On a personal level, I like when God said to Abraham in Genesis 12… ’you will be a blessing.’ I think that means that people’s lives were enriched when Abraham touched them. So, on a personal level I want to be a blessing to people. One of my goals is for people’s lives to be better because they met me and you know, I was used by God to bless them in some capacity. In my professional work, my favorite verse is Isaiah chapter 50, verse 4. The word “weary” has always stuck out to me. When I was younger, I thought life was about an abundance of words. Isaiah however said, ‘God I’m looking for the right word at the moment in a person’s life’. I love that type of ministry when God’s Spirit allows you to speak the words of their life at that moment, conveying what God wanted them to hear. I feel these two passages really align.

In the last couple years, the whole picture of Heavenly Father, Abba Father, or Everlasting Father. I love the portrayal of our relationship with God as being what I call the father-child relationship. That has just become much more precious and meaningful to me in the last few years.