Skip to main content

God brought Douglas Freeman to the right spot at the right time for ministry.

By Doug Freeman

An “aha!” moment is one where you realize God brought you to right spot at the right time for ministry. God has you exactly where you should be.

My 40 years in information technologies took me everywhere from Boston to Amsterdam, Munich to Paris, and finally to Dallas, where I found my spiritual home, Christ Community Church (RCA). Under spiritual guidance from Richard Koerselman and Dale Assink, I experienced an “aha!” moment. God called me into full-time ministry. In response, I took evening classes at Perkins School of Theology while continuing to run my software company. In 2004, at age 59, I was ordained.

After selling the company, I began ministry as part-time associate pastor at Christ Community Church and then at Hope Reformed Church. Meanwhile, I served as needed as a chaplain at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Garland, where I formed a seniors’ ministry that provides free handyman services.

Later, I became a full-time chaplain at the Heart Hospital Baylor Plano. One day, my former handyman colleagues called, asking if I would help build a wheelchair ramp for a woman whose leg was recently amputated. So on a bright Saturday morning, I met the woman’s son at her house. He recognized me. I was the chaplain who, six weeks earlier, sat at his mother’s bedside after her surgery and prayed for health and for getting help during her recovery.

“You were the one she asked to pray for help,” her son said. “You and your handyman colleagues are the answer to your own prayer.”

Another “aha!” moment: God brought me through that journey to this place with my colleagues in answer to prayer. It is the right spot at the right time for ministry.

Doug Freeman is a chaplain at the Heart Hospital Baylor Plano in Plano, Texas.

 

[Photo courtesy of Sarah Gregory]