Heath Lambert: I am thrilled that Dale Johnson is joining us on the podcast this week. For those of you who don’t know, in March of this year, the ACBC board elected Dale Johnson to succeed me as the ACBC Executive Director. I went to the board last year and told them that I believed that the Lord was calling me to focus exclusively on my responsibilities at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and to step away from my ministry role at ACBC. And the board asked me to sit on a transition committee with four other members of the board, and through a series of interviews and a nationwide search, the Lord led us to Dale Johnson, and I am thrilled at this selection. I really believe he is the best man to lead our organization going into the future. I am thrilled to be a supporter of his and continue supporting ACBC as it begins to exist under his leadership. He’ll formally take office as Executive Director on October 2nd at a formal ceremony at our meeting in Fort Worth, Texas.
So, I want to be sure, you know you’re invited to be there for that special occasion. On May first, he will become an employee of ACBC, working as the Executive Director elected, and we’ll be teaming up on how to make this transition as smooth and easy as possible for him and for the organization. And so, Dr. Johnson, we are so glad that you’re here and what I want to do on this podcast. We’re going to have two more interviews with you, but on this podcast, I want our listeners to hear a little bit about you and your personal life. So, tell us about your family, your wife, your kids, and where you live.
Dale Johnson: Thank you, Heath. I really appreciate it. So glad to be here, and to be with you, and to even have this conversation is really exciting. And to think about the position that ACBC is in now and even looking forward to seeing the ministry grow is just exciting to me as well. (I am) quite humbled by that announcement and the ability to lead ACBC. Currently, my wife and I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and I serve on the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I have six children ranging from age 14 all the way down to twin girls who are three. And so, quite a range, life is never dull with that many folks in the house. And so, that’s a little bit about us.
Heath Lambert: Well, that’s exciting. It sounds like a great family. Tell us about how you came to know Jesus Christ.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home with very faithful parents who love the word and who had us as children in church. I have two siblings, and they brought us to church very faithfully. Church was not just an outward expression it was something that was lived in the home. And at the age of eleven, through a preaching service, the Lord, through his word, just began to convict me and helped me to see that the faith that my parents had was different than what I understood, and I began to see the conviction of sin and the person that I was. And to be honest, knowing that if I didn’t know Christ, I wouldn’t spend eternity in heaven. And so it was through that preaching ministry the Lord brought me to himself. I certainly, at the age of eleven, didn’t understand the fullness of what salvation meant. Faithfully, the Lord has taught me the beauty of his salvation, the beauty of the Gospel in the full redemption of Christ. And so, that’s been a wonderful experience in growing. The Lord has been faithful through my life through salvation. Just helped me to understand his word, living faithfully even through high school and through college, just was very faithful to me in keeping me. Often, I would give gratitude toward my mom for praying so many times, probably keeping me out of tons and tons of trouble. So, I’m certainly grateful for the family that I grew up in and the pure gospel that I heard growing up,
Heath Lambert: You are sharing about your call to Christ. What about your call to ministry? What happened in your life that led you from being a follower of Jesus to want to be someone who is pursuing and doing vocational Christian ministry?
Dale Johnson: That’s a great question. So, growing up in church, a lot of older people, even from a very young age when I was a teenager, would describe me as somebody who they thought would be a preacher boy. When they said that, I didn’t really appreciate that, to be honest with you, because I had the vision to play professional baseball, something I’d always wanted to do, and had a chance to play in college. And it was through my college days that the Lord began this process of calling me to his ministry. Again, I still had the vision and wanted to play professionally. Finally, during that time actually during my sophomore year, the summer time, instead of going to play in a wooden bat league which was kind of the expectation; I went on a mission trip to the Philippines. And during those three weeks had an opportunity to preach the gospel more than 60 times in different places, street preaching, and in schools and around the Philippines. And it was through that time that the Lord really began to make a call in this direction. Still some unwilling because I really wanted to play baseball. The Lord continued to work in my life through my junior year. Several things happened, along with getting married to my middle school sweetheart. And it was actually during that time had lots of conversations with the Lord we saw God do some amazing things, even on our college baseball team. And it was actually me studying psychology as a major that the Lord really began to shift my heart to see that psychology described man differently than the way that the Bible describes who man is.
And it was through that pursuit of understanding who God is, despite what was being talked about from a worldly secular perspective, that the Lord really began to open up my heart to the needs of the gospel for others. And I always had the desire to minister to others really cared for others, so much so that I wanted to pursue a secular career in counseling. My dream came true, though, I had an opportunity to go and play professionally. Ironically, I was placed in Provo, Utah. And during my time in Provo, Utah, every evening after our game, we had an opportunity to go to some local apartment complexes, and I was able to share the gospel nearly every night as many times as I wanted. And I think the Lord used that as an opportunity for me to place baseball on the back burner and begin to see the need for the Gospel in the world. And so, I think during those days, I didn’t love baseball any less, but the need for the Gospel in lost places just became so apparent and such a burden to my heart. It was at that moment I retired from baseball, pursued Seminary that next winter term, and began to follow the Lord in vocational ministry.
Heath Lambert: Well, that is encouraging to me, and I know to so many others of our listeners to hear how the Lord has been working in your life to call you to himself and to call you to ministry. And I want to encourage you to listen next week to the Truth and Love podcast because we’re going to continue our interview with some questions for Dr. Johnson about how the Lord led him to ACBC, so I want to be sure you join us next week for that.
