FULL GOSPEL BUSINESS MEN'S FELLOWSHIP IN CANADA

 

PERSONAL FGBMFiC TESTIMONY:

Doug Lawson V.P., Sherwood Park, Alberta Chapter

 

The Lord had his hand on my life from the time my parents first took me to Sunday School as a young child in an eastern Canadian church and read Bible stories to me at night before bed-time. However, as a young teenager, I left the organized church.

 

Because of my university studies in Classical Greek, people at my parents’ church encouraged my parents to give me, one Christmas, the Greek New Testament as a Christmas present. At first when I started to read the Gospel of Matthew, I thought to myself how quaint it was to read these old Sunday School stories from the New Testament, only in the original Greek. However, after reading for fourteen months, the truths of what I was reading in the gospel began to have an effect on me and opened me up to the idea of returning to church.

 

Unfortunately, in my church, the gospel was not really preached. After taking a religious detour through a cult, I found myself attending a students’ retreat in Quebec, organized by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. At that retreat, the leader helped me understand that, as he put it, “Christianity was about Christ”. Because of the way in which I came to faith in Christ, I have always felt the great importance in my life and in the lives of other Christians, that we, as believers, remain centred on Jesus and on the Scriptures.

 

I was asked to share my personal testimony the Sunday evening of the retreat in a Montreal Baptist Church. Not knowing any theology or Bible, I simply told the people at that church about how God had taught me to accept myself. As I look back, I now realize it was at that retreat that I came to saving faith in Christ and began to call myself a Christian.

 

Less than a year later I received the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, evidenced by my speaking in other tongues. I got actively involved in Christian High School work.

 

I taught overseas with C.U.S.O. in Madagascar for two years and then moved to western Canada in 1974, living in a charismatic Christian community on an isolated ranch, where I married Maria. We both taught school in a small northern B.C. city and attended church and FGBMFiC banquets in a chapter where I served in a wide range of capacities. Also, for three years, I was the lay missionary of a mainline Church in this B.C. city.

 

Once my wife retired from teaching this past July, since we have no family where we were living, we decided to move to Sherwood Park, Alberta, near our son and his wife. I am currently in a Masters of Divinity program at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton and doing pulpit supply for two churches in the Edmonton area. It has been a joy and a privilege for me here in the Edmonton/Sherwood Park area to get involved with the FGBMFiC chapter. There is a great group of men in the chapter. The Red Deer Men’s Advance was a success in every way and a delight to attend.

 

My wife and I do not know what the future holds for us, now that we’ve moved to a different province after 31 years in B.C. In the meantime, I have enjoyed my involvement with the work of lay men, who are eager, without pay, to serve Christ in the spreading of his gospel.

 

 

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