Later this month, the defending National League Champion New York Mets will take the field against the Milwaukee Brewers in Citi Field. Popcorn and cotton candy will be eaten, the 7th inning stretch will occur, America’s favorite pastime will be enjoyed by over 30,000 residents of the country’s largest city, and at the end of the game everyone in attendance will have the opportunity to give their life to Jesus.
Wait, what?
That’s probably not the sequence of events that one expects to take place at any sporting event, much less one being held in one of America’s most liberal cities.
But that is exactly what will happen on May 21st when, for the first time ever, the New York Mets will host “Faith and Family Day.”
And after the game, a massive Christian rock concert and testimonies from players, an Alabamian named Scott Dawson will walk out on stage and close the deal.
So how does an Alabamian who is little known outside of the tight-knit circle of Christian evangelism end up on stage in front of tens of thousands of New Yorkers?
“I always just wanted to build a team to share the gospel,” Dawson said in a phone interview with Yellowhammer. “I had a vision for what that might look like — a great team — but I didn’t really know how God was going to put it together.”
At some point almost three decades ago Dawson found himself at a Campus Crusade for Christ event being led by famed Christian evangelist and author Josh McDowell.
“I started sharing my vision with Josh and he told me something I will never forget,” Dawson remembers. “He said, ‘Scott, God always uses personalities. He can do whatever He wants, but he chooses to work through people and personalities.’ That sounds simple, but it took away all the pressure I was feeling and made me realize, hey, I just need to be available for God to use me however he sees fit.”
Dawson decided he would start by hosting a student conference. It drew 89 students the first year — a success. He also began speaking at high school and junior high assemblies.
Flash forward twenty years and those same events now attract tens of thousands of attendees. Dawson has spoken in roughly 2,000 schools and his conference, now known as “Strength to Stand,” hosted 12,000 students in 2015.
But Dawson has always viewed sporting events as a unique opportunity to reach people.
“I remember one night I went to my son’s baseball team party at the Birmingham Baron’s stadium,” Dawson recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome to preach the gospel to this crowd?’ So we explored the idea and found out that if you help baseball teams fill up their stadiums, you can do just about anything you want. So we partnered with churches to buy tickets and after the game we did a one-night event. By the third inning of the first game we ever did, our team was already saying, ‘Okay, we’ve got to keep doing this.’”
“Safe at Home Ministries,” which was founded to host similar events at minor league ballparks around the country, was born.
Dawson says that was around the same time he met Rick Burgess, co-host of the Alabama-based, nationally syndicated Rick & Bubba Show. Burgess has long been outspoken about his Christian faith, and the two hit it off immediately.
“He’s now my best friend on the planet,” says Dawson, who has been a frequent guest on Burgess’s show and given the talk show host opportunities to speak at large events.
“God put our platforms together,” Burgess told Yellowhammer.
And their bond deepened significantly in 2008 when Burgess’s two-year-old son, Bronner, tragically drowned in their family swimming pool.
“(Our relationship) was solidified when, of all places I could have been doing ministry on the night my son went to heaven, I was speaking at a Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association event. That’s significant.”
The Burgess-Dawson partnership has proven to be a successful one in terms of people coming to know Christ. While both of their ministries continue to grow individually, the events for which they have joined forces — including the popular “StadiumFest” series — have been some of their largest.
“Then out of the blue one day I got a phone call from a Major League Baseball executive asking if we wanted to be part of the Kansas City Royals Faith and Family event,” Dawson said. “They had approached Hobby Lobby about being a sponsor, and the guys at Hobby Lobby — who are incredible — told them they would only do it if they worked with us on the event. Now we’ve worked with the Royals, New York Mets, Tampa Bay Rays, and we’ve gotten calls from other teams all over the country and from just about every major league sport.”
From an eager Samford University student sharing the gospel at events with a few dozen students, to the headline speaker in stadiums three decades later, Dawson says he’s still just preaching the gospel to anyone who will listen.
“Anyone who’s ever preached has been told by somebody ‘You’re the next Billy Graham!’” He laughed. “I don’t think about that kind of stuff. I just think, ‘How can our team most glorify Christ with our lives?’ And that’s what we do, and it’s been amazing to see the ministry He has built.”
