The Dillinghams had three daughters along the way. Another one died in infancy. The girls were “preacher’s kids,” which is not an easy way to grow up. My mother was second among them and she was a rather strong-willed child. She became even tougher as an adolescent and young adult. She had heard all the talk about her grandfather’s prayers and she vowed she would never marry a minister.
A person should be very careful about telling God what he or she will not do. In time, my mother came to understand the foolishness of that statement.
That brings my father’s story into the picture from the Dobson side of the family. When he was a baby, he was dedicated at an altar one night by a highly respected minister named Doctor Godby. He had preached that Sunday morning, and afterward, he remained on the platform all afternoon praying for the evening service. That night, Jimmy was brought to the altar and placed in Doctor Godby’s arms. The old man anointed the baby’s head with oil and prayed for him. Then the minister said, “This little boy will grow up to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the nation.” There were no other ministers in the Dobson family. That prophetic word from Reverend Godby was shared with Jimmy when he was grown, but to my knowledge, not before.
When my father was six, he told his family that he wanted to be an artist. He was the only member of five Dobson children who knew from childhood what they wanted to do with their lives, but Jimmy was emphatic about his plans. Through elementary school and well into high school, he never wavered. He wanted to be a classical artist, in the manner of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rafael, Rembrandt, and the other legendary painters and sculptors throughout history. Art was the passion of his life.
Jimmy was seventeen years old, walking to school one day, when out of nowhere the Lord spoke to him. He said, “I want you to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world.” It wasn’t spoken in an audible voice, of course, but the young man knew he had been spoken to.
My dad was terrified. He said, “No, Lord! No! No! No! I have my life already planned. Talk to one of my four brothers. They don’t know what they want to do in life. My course is set.”
Jimmy tried to argue down what continued to be an irrepressible “call.” He would get it all settled and tucked away, but it kept coming back even stronger than before. He couldn’t shake it off. He told no one about his inner conflict except his godly mother, and she didn’t believe it. I wonder if she recalled the prophetic words of Doctor Godby.
Jimmy’s senior year in high school was a time of turmoil. As he approached graduation, his father came to him and said, “Pick out any college in the country you want to attend, and I’ll send you there.” Grandfather Dobson owned portions of five Coca-Cola plants among other enterprises, and he was very successful financially. Even though he made a lot of money, R. L. Dobson never gave up his job as a conductor on the Kansas City Southern Railroad.
My dad was the youngest of five brothers, and the other four had gone on to colleges or universities by the time Dad was in high school. One of them, Willis, later earned a Ph.D. in Shakespearian English from the University of Texas and was head of the English Department for a Christian college for forty years. He committed his life to Christ when he was nine years old and never veered from it until he died one Sunday morning at seventy-four. Toward the end of his life, Willis was a compassionate and godly man who was kind and gentle with everyone. He regularly served ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola to the trash collectors on hot summer days. At seventy, he ran a shuttle service with his car, taking “old people” to and from church. He once gave his brand-new overcoat to a homeless person he met on the street. It was, he said, “because I had two coats. He had none.” His son, who was there when the gift was made, cried when he told me about it.
Neither Willis nor his brothers knew the dilemma Jimmy was facing. Was he going to attend a seminary, as he knew God wanted, or enroll in a school to prepare him for a career in art? He had to decide, but the internal battle was intense. One morning he got out of bed and as his feet touched the floor, he seemed aware of the voice of the Lord again. It said, “Today, you will make your choice.”
Jimmy went to school that morning in a state of depression. He could think about nothing else as he moved from class to class. After school, he walked home still in despair. What would he do?
He found the house empty that afternoon and began to pray about the decision. He was in the living room of what we all came to know as “the Big House.” He paced back and forth, praying as he weighed his alternatives. Then suddenly, as he would later describe, he looked up to heaven and said aloud, “It is too great a price, and I won’t pay it!” There was defiance in his voice. He said the Spirit of the Lord left him like one person walking away from another.
A few minutes later, my dad’s mom came home. She was a ninety-seven-pound mother of six whom we would call “Little Mother.” She found her youngest son pale and shaken. His hands were trembling.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” she asked.
Jimmy tried to tell her about his struggle with a call to preach, but she brushed it off. She said, “Oh, you’re just emotional. Let’s pray about it.” They knelt together and Little Mother began to pray for her son. She was a “prayer warrior,” but this time the heavens were brass above her. About three minutes later she stopped in mid-sentence.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “I can’t pray for you. Something is wrong.”
My dad replied, “You don’t understand it, Mama, but I do. I have just said no to God, and He is gone.”
There are numerous references in Scripture to men who were called by God for specific purposes, but they refused. Moses was one of the first. Jehovah spoke to him from a burning bush and ordered him to lead the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. But Moses had the temerity to argue with the Holy One of Israel. He offered a lame excuse: “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exod. 4:10).
Have you ever told God He was being unreasonable when He asked you to do something? I have and it is risky business. We read in Exodus:
Jehovah said sternly, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” (Exod. 4:11–12)
Amazingly, Moses continued to object, saying, “O Lord, please send someone else.” Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses (Exod. 4:13–14).
Other patriarchs of the Bible initially said “no” to the Almighty. Jacob wrestled all night with an angel from God.1 Gideon refused to lead the armies of Israel against the Mideonites until finally yielding. With only 300 men, he won a stunning victory against 180,000 armed soldiers.2 Jonah was unwilling to preach to the wicked people of Nineveh and tried to run away from God. He soon found himself in the belly of a “big fish” and had a change of mind.3
There have been millions of Christians in more recent times who have also argued with God. Dr. Jim Kennedy was one of them. He refused a call to preach because he wanted to be a dance instructor for the Arthur Miller dance studios. Imagine that! He ran from God for more than a year before yielding. Then he went to seminary and became a much-loved and respected pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He also founded a witnessing program called Evangelism Explosion, through which more than six million people came to Christ. Kennedy almost missed the call of a lifetime.4
My dad was just as headstrong. He had his own way and enrolled in the prestigious Art Institute of Pittsburgh. He turned out to be a very talented young man. Jimmy Dobson graduated at the top of his class. On graduation morning, his paintings were sitting on easels across the platform, each bearing the designation “Number 1.” As he was walking down the aisle to receive the honor, a verse of Scripture echoed back from his childhood: It said, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it” (Ps. 127:1 KJV).
Dad came back from Pittsburgh to his parents’ home in Shreveport, Louisiana, in hot pursuit of a dream. However, the Great Depression had descended on the American economy and there were no jobs available. Jimmy not only couldn’t find a position as an artist, he was unable to secure any kind of work. Weeks and months went by without success. Finally, he was hired by a small Texaco service station at the edge of town where cars seldom came. He was paid one dollar a day to pump gasoline, clean bathrooms, and remove grease off the pavement. My dad would refer to that time as his days of “Egyptian Bondage.” The Lord left him in this dead-end job for seven years until he became sick of himself and his lofty dreams.
Then Jimmy met a pretty girl named Myrtle Georgia Dillingham. Some say she looked rather like the 1920s starlet Clara Bow. Meeting her was the only exciting thing going on in my dad’s life and he was crazy about her. Unfortunately, she didn’t feel the same way about him. He pursued her unsuccessfully for months. Finally, their relationship came to a crisis point one evening at her parents’ home. He was trying to win her affections but she treated him rudely. My dad was a proud man, and he finally had enough. Jimmy looked deeply into her eyes for a moment without speaking. It was his way of saying, “Good-bye, my love.” Then he walked out the door. She knew she had pushed him too far and he wasn’t coming back. My future existence hung in the balance. Get it?
My dad was six feet four and he always walked fast. It was raining and Myrtle ran after him. She was barefoot and he heard the patter of her feet approaching him from behind. She caught up with him a block from her house. In that moment, as the rain soaked them both, she fell madly in love with James C. Dobson. She adored him for the rest of her life.
Jimmy and Myrtle wanted to get married but it was impossible to survive financially as a couple. My dad hardly earned enough money to feed himself, much less support a wife. They decided to wed secretly so that they could continue to live with their parents. It was three months before their families learned that they were husband and wife.
One night when my father was visiting his secret wife at her parents’ home, my grandfather began to worry about what the couple was doing in the living room. He sneaked out the back door and crawled along a side fence where he could look through the window. He was shocked to see Jimmy and Myrtle kissing and hugging. He burst through the front door and accused my dad of taking liberties with his daughter. What a surprise it was for Little Daddy to discover that his darlin’ daughter was married, and that the man who had been “taking liberties” was his son-in-law. M.V. would soon learn to love Jimmy Dobson like his own flesh and blood, but he and Bessie were pretty ticked at first. How could this Texaco employee take care of their daughter, especially when he couldn’t even afford to rent an apartment?
Surprisingly, my dad had not told “Myrt” (his pet name for her) about his call to preach. That was a deep dark secret that he didn’t want to even think about. He also knew she probably wouldn’t have married him if she had known he might become a preacher, like the rest of the men in her family. As far as Myrtle knew, she was the wife of a “starving artist” who had plans for eventual greatness. They weren’t going to church or living a committed Christian life. Among their church friends, they would have been called “backsliders.”
About that time, a local church scheduled a revival meeting in Shreveport and called Rev. Bona Fleming as the evangelist. There was no television or Internet available in those days, and a revival in a growing, well-attended church caused quite a stir. The Dobson family was following the event with interest, too. The grown children decided to meet at their parents’ home and go to the evening service together. When the time came to leave, four sons, their sister, and mother crammed into the family car. Then Willis noticed that Jimmy was not with them.
He said, “Hey, where’s Jim? He’s not in the car.”
Willis climbed out and went looking for his youngest brother. He searched all over the house, calling his name. My dad was hiding on the side porch, sitting in a swing. Finally, Willis found him. He came and stood before Jimmy, who was looking down.
“Jim,” he said, “aren’t you going with us to the service tonight?”
“No, Willis,” my dad said without looking up. “I’m not going tonight and I am never going again.”
Willis, who had a great love for the Lord, said nothing. As my dad was still sitting with his head down, he saw big tears splashing on his brother’s shoes.
My dad was touched and he said to himself, “If Willis cares this much about me, I will go because he wants me to.”
Because Jimmy had made everyone late, the service had already started by the time all seven Dobsons filed in. The church was completely packed except for some seats on the front row. A young woman was singing as they walked down the aisle, and the lyrics resonated in my dad’s heart. Suddenly, he yielded. The struggle was over. He said, “All right, Lord. I will do what You want. If You ask me to give up my dreams of being an artist and become a preacher, I will do it. I’m tired of running away. You can have me.” He was weeping by the time he reached the front pew.
The singer finished and sat down. Reverend Fleming perceived that something significant had taken place in the young man sitting before him. He walked over to the edge of the platform, put his foot on the altar, and leaned forward. He then pointed directly at my dad and said,
“You, young man. Right there! Stand up!”
Jimmy stood obediently.
“Now I want you to tell all the people here tonight what the Lord did for you while the young lady was singing.”
My dad turned and told the crowd, as best he could, about yielding his will to the Lord. It might be said that this was his first brief “sermon.” For the rest of his life, he was committed heart and soul to Jesus Christ.
Then he went home to his tiny apartment and told his new wife that she had, indeed, married a preacher. To her credit, she also gave her heart to the Lord and stood beside her husband in ministry for the next forty-three years. I never heard her complain once about being a preacher’s wife. A woman can make or break a man, and my mom built my dad’s confidence and helped make him the great man he became.
Two surprising things occurred in the next few days. First, as soon as my dad yielded to the call to preach, the Lord gave him back his art. There was nothing sinful or dishonorable about using the talent God had given to him. The problem was that his plans didn’t include God. The lesson he was learning is that Jesus Christ will not settle for second place in our lives. He will be Lord of all or not Lord at all. It’s true for you and me, too. Jesus spoke of that obligation when he said, “Take up your cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23 NLT).
When Jimmy Dobson became a minister, he used his artistic talent in his work. When he died, he was head of the art department at MidAmerica Nazarene College (now University), where a fine arts building there bears his name today.5 In short, my father gave up nothing. It was all returned to him with a cherry on the top. Our home is decorated with his beautiful paintings, and his works hang in hundreds of homes, buildings, and churches. Nothing was wasted.
The other thing that happened is that the president of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh wrote my father a letter offering him a prime teaching position at a fabulous salary. It was precisely the kind of job he had been searching for while languishing at the Texaco station. However, that letter became lost on the president’s desk and wasn’t found until months later. The president then sent the original letter to my dad, along with a cover letter describing his mistake. He wrote, “I wondered why you didn’t even do me the courtesy of responding to my offer.”
If my dad had received the original letter when it was written, he would have jumped all the way to Pittsburgh. However, by the time the second letter arrived, my dad had accepted the call to preach and the issue of his career was settled forever.
Little Mother, my dad’s mom, had never stopped praying for her son during his time of travail. Clearly, God was intervening in his life even when there was no evidence of His presence. We see again in this account the power of prayer in the lives of His people.
The story didn’t end there, of course. In fact, there were huge obstacles in the road ahead. Jimmy was a very shy young man with the temperament of an artist. He had never spoken a word publicly in his life except for that night at the service. He had not made so much as an announcement in church. Humanly speaking, he was wholly unsuited for a career in the ministry and he knew absolutely nothing about that field. Also, he had missed his opportunity to go to seminary. Even his family thought he was making a huge mistake, although they only muttered their misgivings among themselves.
My dad asked the Lord, “What am I going to do now?” Then he heard a compassionate voice that said reassuringly, “I’ll give you a little help.”
My father threw himself into the challenge. In the first week after his decision, he gave up his job as (by then) manager of the Texaco service station and began working on a local preacher’s license. He finished a home study course in record time, working ten to twelve hours a day through the scorching summer months. He preached a few times at the invitation of his in-laws, the Dillinghams, and began to get the hang of it. But he was still very green.
He then contacted the presiding elder in his denomination and asked if he could preach occasionally in his district. The elder reluctantly referred him to one of the churches he supervised. It was located some distance away in Mena, Arkansas, where the local congregation was looking for a pastor. They invited Jimmy to come preach what was known as a “trial sermon.” It was the first and only time he would submit himself to that indignity. At that point, however, he was hardly in a favorable bargaining position.
Jimmy and Myrtle prayed in the car on the way to the train depot and asked for God’s blessing the next morning. Myrtle kissed him warmly, and when he looked at her, she had tears in her eyes. Having been brought up in a minister’s home, she knew far better than her husband about the trials and sacrifices that a pastor and his family would endure, especially in a small church. As he boarded the train, she said again, “You can be sure I’ll be praying for you.”
The journey took almost a full day, and Jimmy spent that entire time going over his two sermons meticulously. When he arrived in Mena, he checked into his hotel and then walked around the town and past the church. Then he returned to his room and tried to sleep. After a fitful night, Sunday morning came creeping in. Dad was nervous as a cat.
Years later, he wrote about the events of that day, which tells us quite a bit about the character and humility of the man.
I took my Bible and walked again toward the church. When I was about a block away, I saw another man who looked strikingly like a preacher with a Bible under his arm. He was approaching the church from the other direction. We met on the front steps and I introduced myself.
“Hi, I’m James Dobson.” I said. “My presiding elder, Brother Brian, sent me to preach two trial sermons at this church today.”
The man looked surprised and said, “There must be some mistake. I am Ben Harley, and Brother Brian told me distinctly to come here and preach two trial sermons today.”
I was utterly dismayed and confused by his statement. What was the ethical thing to do in a case like that? Brother Harley was an older man with many years of experience. At length, I did the only thing there was to be done, which was to bow out gracefully.
“Since there was a mistake,” I said, “you go ahead and preach and I will simply sit back and enjoy the services.” (… what I was thinking about the presiding elder shouldn’t be put in writing.)
Brother Harley would not hear of my suggestion. He proposed a better solution.
“Why not let me take one service and you take the other.”
On his insistence, I agreed. I knew the odds were all against me. Brother Harley was already in a pastorate not many miles away and he wanted a change. I was looking for my first charge. He had 25 years of experience while I was a rank beginner. Nevertheless, I swallowed my pride and went through with it. Harley would preach the morning sermon and I would speak at night.
Harley’s message was filled with clichés and bombast. He was preaching one of his favorite “sugar sticks” he had given before, and the audience was very receptive to him.
The evening service came quickly and it was my turn. I know the reader will forgive my candor when I reveal my miserable efforts to preach that night. I had no sugar sticks to offer. I became rattled and lost my confidence. Ministers call that “getting in the brush.” It was one of my most difficult experiences.
The board met immediately after the evening service and it took them only a few minutes to make their decision. The spokesman came to me first. He was “so sorry” to tell me that the church had called the other man. He said there was nothing against me, I was given to understand. He said I was a fine young man and he was sure I would find a good church somewhere, etc. He then gave me an envelope that he said contained some “expense money.” He regretted that I had come so far. I thanked him and shook hands with Brother Harley and hoped that he would have a great ministry in Mena. Then I said “goodbye” and left.
When I got to the hotel, I opened the envelope that had been handed to me by the spokesman. It contained $3, which was considerably less than it had cost me to be there. I brushed a few tears from my eyes as I packed my suitcase to catch the night train back to Shreveport.
I was sitting there on the train thinking it all over, when a poor woman came down the aisle. She was dressed in cheap ragged clothes, and trying to handle several small children. They took the seat opposite me. Presently I heard the conductor come by and ask for her ticket. She began to cry. She had no ticket, she said, but she was going to see her mother who was at death’s door. Her mother lived only a few miles down the track.
“Please don’t put us off the train,” she pleaded. “I promise to pay the railroad back when I get some money.”
Before the conductor could reply, I took the three dollars out of my pocket and paid the woman’s fare. I felt a great oneness with all the little people in the world that night.
It was not easy to tell Myrtle of my misfortunes, but once I began to recover, we laughed at the humor of my situation. My wife was understanding and supportive, as she has always been.
Those were the beginnings of darker days to come, but then we began to pray in earnest about how I could fulfill God’s calling.
My dad was still trying to answer the “how to” question when he approached the presiding elder again. (Yes, it was Brother Brian.) Jimmy asked him if there was a little church somewhere—anywhere—that was in desperate need of a pastor. He specifically requested something small that he couldn’t ruin. Dad would later wish he hadn’t been so humble about his request because he got what he asked for.
Jimmy received an invitation several months later to serve as the pastor of a very small Nazarene Church in Sulphur Springs, a little farming community in East Texas. He was twenty-seven years of age. The church had only ten members, and the salary was whatever people put in the offering plate the previous Sunday. It was sometimes 50 cents or less. The ravages of the Great Depression were still very evident in rural Texas and no one had any money to spare. The farms had not been wired for electricity.
My paternal grandfather, R. L. Dobson, then died and willed Coca-Cola stock to his grown children, including my father. My family survived on the dividends. Without that money we might have starved, although God was working in our lives. Dad gave the balance of the money to the church every month to keep its doors open, and God blessed his ministry there. My parents were loved and the church grew rapidly. By the time they left four years later to accept other responsibilities, there were 250 members at Sulphur Springs Church of the Nazarene. They had built a parsonage and constructed a building for Christian education. Most important, Reverend Dobson had learned how to lead a flock.
My father went on to have a highly successful ministry as a pastor and evangelist. He led tens of thousands of people to Christ and became a very effective preacher. Even now, more than thirty years after his death, I hear often from older people who knew him and attended his services. Just recently, I received an unsolicited note from a man I’ve never met. This is what he wrote:
When I hear you talk or read what you’ve written about your dad, it always takes me back some 50 years. A superintendent of our denomination told me that your father was the greatest evangelist in the church. This man emphasized how he affected entire congregations, including children.
Keep following in your father’s footsteps.
It was true. My father had a divine anointing and I was one of his converts. I’ll tell you about that in the next chapter.