ABOUT DOUG

Of his early life Doug has said, “We were on the ragged edge of starvation, in them old cotton fields back home.” Starvation is perhaps an overstatement of their condition, but like most East Texas cotton farmers they lived fairly difficult lives. When Doug was born, in 1940, whatever benefits the rest of the country was reaping from the vaunted New Deal had passed them by. They were mired in the economic slough of the Great Depression. Unemployment stood at 18%. Of course, Doug’s parents had to deal with these problems while he basked in the bliss of infantile ignorance. His father, spying greener pastures north of the Red River, moved the family to Oklahoma City.

Doug was educated in the Oklahoma City public schools, graduated from Putnam City High School in 1958, went off to the Navy, came back and eventually got a B.A. in psychology from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. He acquired a wife, studied a year at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and was blessed with a daughter, Lisa (1971), and a son, Sean (1973). Continuing his studies, Doug obtained an M.A. in creative writing and a Ph.D. in ethics (The Union Institute in Cincinnati). He supported his family by working for the U.S. Postal Service in Labor Relations, and eventually by teaching philosophy and humanities at several colleges and universities. Doug’s first wife, Sandy, died with cancer in 1995. He later remarried a high-school friend, Janelle Williams.

Spiritually, Doug has traveled a road many would recognize as like their own. “It was never easy,” he has said. “And where it might have been, I made sure it was difficult.” He was saved in 1957, due to the prayers and counseling of Young Life leaders, and fell in with the Navigators, who immediately set him the task of memorizing Bible verses. Early in his Christian experience someone put a Scofield Bible in his hands, and it transformed his life as few things ever have. He became a dispensationalist, learned about, and believed in, the pretribulational rapturing of the Church, and in general learned the church truths that came from the so-called Plymouth Brethren, who had so profoundly influenced Dr. Scofield. In all things, God was faithful, keeping Doug and bringing him along to maturity in spite of his inclination to failure and defeat. “The Lord just wouldn’t let me go,” he said. “His grace was always sufficient.”

In 1973 Doug began meeting with the Brethren in a small local assembly. “I believe the Brethren have got it pretty much correct,” he says.

He has led many home Bible studies, teaches from the platform, and has done evangelistic work in churches and in prisons. He has also written several books for publication. In about 1985 he began the radio ministry that has become Dialogue. “With radio preaching,” he says, “you never know exactly what you are accomplishing. It’s like the sower—you just throw out the seed and leave it up to God to bring in the harvest.”

Amen. So may it be.