Articles
My Friend Johnny Douglas
My Friend Johnny Douglas
On last week, I had the privilege and opportunity to preach a gospel meeting at the Temple Crest church of Christ in Tampa, Florida. Johnny Douglas is the evangelist for this congregation. To make a long story short, Johnny and I have been friends since 2003. We first spoke when I was the evangelist for the Caroline Street church of Christ in South Bend, Indiana. In August 2003, I had preached a gospel meeting for the 74th Street church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. In October 2003, brother Douglas was preaching a gospel meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was heavily attended by members of the 74th street congregation. During the week of the meeting, they were passing of tapes of the meeting I had just done for them. Brother Douglas heard one of the tapes and requested my contact information. During this time, I did not have a cell phone, so he called me at the building and we hit it off from the very beginning.
Like all preachers, we are faced with many problems, i.e. evangelizing the lost, restoring the unfaithful, preaching to individuals who do not want to do better, dealing with brethren who are determined to ruin you, etc. For years, I have been the source of encouragement to many preachers dealing with the above and even more and I still do to this day. However, when I was going through my dark night of the storm, these same individuals decided to jump ship, act like they did not know me, or would even join in the attacking because it was the “in” thing to do. I wanted to give up preaching, but Jesus had another plan. When all others forsook me, Jesus never did and neither did my friend Johnny Douglas.
There was a time in my career as an evangelist I was doing 10-12 gospel meetings/lectureships per year. It took me years to get to this point, but days to have these same meetings cancelled. In 2004, my itinerary went from being full to non-existent. Brother Douglas called me up and wanted to know my availability to do a meeting for him in August 2004. I told him I was available, but he might want to consider somebody else because everybody else was cancelling with me. Johnny would not hear of it. He received a lot of “heat” from brethren for having me preach at the lectureship, but Johnny did not care. He said, “I need a preacher who lives and preaches truth. I need somebody who is right with God. You are and I don’t care what anybody says about you.” Since then, I have done two more meetings for this congregation.
What I love about brother Douglas is not only his friendship, but his devotion to God, Christ, and the message of the cross. Every time, brother Douglas and I are together, we go throughout Tampa inviting people to the meeting, we set up Bible studies, we teach Bible studies, we visit the unfaithful, and we visit the sick/shut in everyday!!! This brother is really involved in the work at Temple Crest. He knows every member’s name, schedule, phone number, home address, and place of employment. Yes, this brother took me to member’s jobs, IF they were “slipping” in the faith. This is a lot of energy and commitment coming from a preacher who is approximately 35 years of age older than me.
On Sunday night, he even called a sister who he noticed to be ill during morning worship. When she informed him that she did not have the money to renew her insulin prescription, for she was diabetic; Johnny instructed her to call in her prescription and we went to Walgreens at 11:00pm Sunday evening. Brother Douglas paid for the prescription, along with a month supply of needles, and delivered them to her. Sounds like something our Lord would do.
You can always tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. We need more preachers, as well as Christians like brother Douglas. I am not ashamed to say Johnny Douglas is my friend and I am honored he considers me his friend too.
