In 2004, Doug Perry was running a multi-million dollar business that he had started in 2001. In 2005 it was named the #4 Fastest Growing Company in Kansas City by Ingram's Magazine. It was twice named the "Most Family Friendly" workplace in Kansas City. It was named one of the "Top 25 Under 25 Employees."
But he knew that God had called him to ministry when he was 16 in 1983. He'd gone to college to prepare to be a pastor like his father, Dr. Robert Perry. He went representing William Jewell College to the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas in June of 1985. It was the most underhanded, political, lying, scheming, back-stabbing, weasely thing he'd ever seen. It was then that something broke off. He went to church, tried to be good, got Bachelor's degrees in Religion and Psychology, but couldn't fit in "churchianity" any more. He went into the business world.
Early in 2004 a wonderful sweet couple that worked in his furniture store got engaged, were preparing to marry and wanted to go be missionaries in Thailand. They gave Doug a book - "Revelation in World Missions" by K.P. Yohannan from Gospel for Asia. (Get one free at GFA.org) Doug began to see how his business could be used for ministry. The book referenced other books like, "The Heavenly Man," by Yun and Hattaway about the underground church in China. (Order on Amazon) Brother Yun gets broken out of a high security prison by angels, tortured repeatedly, endures crazy badness, fasts without food or water for 74 days and more. It wrecked what was left of his Baptist brain! Please read these two books!
Another book referenced was, "World Christian Trends: AD 30 to AD 2200. Interpreting the Annual Christian Megacensus." by Barrett and Johnson. (Order on Amazon) It is a huge scholarly tome describing the state of Christianity across thousands of metrics, as self-reported by thousands of denominations. It's HORRIFYING. Things are SO bad, they can only be described as supernaturally bad. Nobody could be this stupid without help. More on that on our Churchianity page and Doug's book, "Open Letter of Apology to the World."
Doug started writing about the financial mismanagement of the church from a business man's perspective. He had a website called WhatHaveWeDone.org and was writing on some public forums, sharing what he learned as he learned it. In November of 2004 he got an email saying, "Hey, there's this guy from New Zealand in Kansas City that sounds a lot like you." It came with a link to Andrew Strom's site. He had moved his wife and six kids with him from New Zealand because of a passion for the revival history of Kansas City. (He writes about it here.) Doug's focus was on the organization and structure and finance (very Baptist), while Andrew's focus was on the gold dust and feathers and laughing (very Charismatic). They met and Andrew said, "I like what you're saying. I think what you're missing is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit." Well, that was news! Doug's parents were missionaries in a third world country. They weren't cessationists, but the Baptist dad pastor just avoided the Book of Acts so as to not cause trouble.
So, Andrew invited him to a home group for them to pray for him to get the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. On November 23, 2004 he went - loaded for bear, aware of lost time and opportunities, committing whatever to Him. And Doug prayed to stupidest prayer, biggest prayer he could think of - and he was a BIG student of revival history and had read EVERYBODY. He prayed with all his heart, trying to make up for lost time, "Lord, I don't care what it costs, my life, my family, my wife, my business, reputation, prison, torture - I just want to be the most dangerous person on the planet to satan." And he knew things were bad, but he didn't know how bad or what to do about it. He was praying to see through the eyes of Jesus. And Jesus answered!
You probably ought to watch the video. It's less then 10 minutes. This is "young Doug" from 2008 retelling the story.
"God showed me the globe with utter blackness over the US and Canada with greasy black tendrils spreading out all over the world. At the same time there is a reel of faces of little kids whipping by really fast. And I can feel the love for these little kids and how the blackness is killing them. I know that it's about the Church - and I can feel the wrath of God for what we're doing to His kids. I didn't get a prayer language - I got screaming and groaning for the GIANT burden He put on me." (Please watch the video.)
If you want, here's a longer version from 2013 retelling the story and more of what came after.
Click to go to the next page - 2005 Everything Starts Shaking
