“Organizing the Global Women’s Leadership Forum, which brought 400 staff women from across the globe to Thailand for a week-long leadership training, was probably my most ambitious project. We just marked its 20th anniversary.” -Judy Douglass
[00:00:24] Judy Douglass: Two people who’ve had the most impact on me. One would be Bill Bright because when I did the magazine, all of a sudden I was reporting to him and some other people as well because he didn’t have time to really supervise and so those were sometimes tense times. Bill and I have one huge difference. Bill loves superlatives. Everybody was the greatest or the most talented or the best and that’s the way he talked. I’m a journalist. Don’t even believe superlatives are acceptable words, because nobody is the best or the greatest or anything.
And so Bill would write these flowery promoting things and I would get it and bring it back to what I thought was realism. And he would come back, and he’d say, no, you need to… And I would put a little bit more back, but not all of it, and we would go about five rounds before I didn’t go back to him anymore.
I just decided we’d gotten it as far as I was willing to go and as much as he really needed. But that was challenging because we didn’t always agree on things and yet he was always kind and gracious to me and positive and encouraging. But more than anything, he was trusting God.
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[00:01:53] Tommy Thomas: My guest today is Judy Douglass, a prominent figure within Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
Throughout her career, she has held various roles within Cru and has become well known for her leadership and speaking. She served in positions such as staff member, mentor, and advocate for women in leadership within the organization. In addition to her work with Cru, Judy is a prolific writer, addressing topics related to faith, leadership, and personal growth.
These writings offer practical guidance, encouragement, and hope to individuals navigating various challenges in life, particularly in the context of family relationships and spiritual journeys. Judy, welcome to NextGen Nonprofit Leadership.
[00:02:38] Judy Douglass: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m looking forward to it.
[00:02:41] Tommy Thomas: I’ve been looking forward to this. I was thinking back, I guess the first time I met you was probably ‘73 or ‘74. That was, before the turn of the century, huh?
[00:02:51] Judy Douglass: Definitely before the turn of the century. Yes, I was on staff then too.
[00:02:57] Tommy Thomas: I want to learn a little bit about your childhood. I know when I listen to a podcast and they start asking people those questions my ears perk up. So maybe take me back. What was it like growing up in your hometown and your family?
[00:03:11] Judy Douglass: It was like it is for most people who grow up in Texas.
[00:03:16] Tommy Thomas: Hot?
[00:03:16] Judy Douglass: Opinionated. My family helped settle the State of Texas on both my mother’s and my father’s side.
My mother’s side, they came with Stephen F. Austin when he settled down near San Antonio. And on my father’s side, it was after the war. And they moved to Dallas, which was just beginning to become a city. And so, I’m very Texan through and through, though I haven’t lived there in a very long time, but my family is still there.
[00:03:49] Judy Douglass: I have three sisters, and we are still alive, and we get together every year or year and a half. When my mother died, we all agreed if we weren’t intentional, we wouldn’t see each other. So, we became intentional, and we do that. My father was a doctor. My mother had been a nurse, basically.
There was this expectation that you can do anything, you’ll be supported and encouraged, and that was true.
[00:04:23] Tommy Thomas: So, what did you want to be when you grew up coming out of a medical family?
[00:04:33] Judy Douglass: I really don’t like anything medical very much. From the time I was eight years old, I wanted to be a writer. I started a novel when I was eight and it was about my favorite topic, horses. And so, I loved horses, and I loved writing and they started to go together at a young age. I still have the manuscript of the chapter I wrote of my only novel ever.
[00:04:59] Tommy Thomas: What was high school like for you? Did that manifest itself in high school? Those two loves?
[00:05:05] Judy Douglass: They did. My high school was a very high-level school. And so, there were lots of smart kids. I didn’t care for the social structure, but I loved the fact that I got a great education.
Probably my biggest opportunity came when I studied journalism for a year, and the journalism teacher saw real hope in me, I think. And so, she encouraged me to work on the school paper, and she did things like she took an article I’d written for the paper and sent it into the Texas High School Press Association writing contest, and it was a feature, and I won for the whole state of Texas.
[00:05:57] Judy Douglass: I didn’t even know I was entered, but that was encouraging that I could do that, and that she thought I had enough potential that she would enter that for me without even telling me. So that was really a good thing. The horses, I had this, my father wasn’t about to buy me a horse. He refused many times since I asked him many times, but he had a doctor, friend, with a horse and no one to ride it.
And so they got together and I got a horse and I rode that horse for a number of years. At first, just fun with my friends, but then he said, she’s a saddle horse. She’s really a good horse. So, he wanted her trained. So, we went over to the training state of stable where I learned to write English and do some jumping and learned all the more proper things than just enjoying riding a horse.
[00:06:53] Judy Douglass: And so that was maybe one of the happiest days of my life when my father says, I have a horse for you. It was a great experience, and I loved it and it paid off later.
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[00:07:05] Tommy Thomas: My next question was going to be, what are people always surprised to find out about you? But what I would imagine, I certainly didn’t know the horse story. Is there anything else that people might be surprised to know that might know you or would call you a friend? What might they not know?
[00:07:21] Judy Douglass: Probably a couple of things that would surprise them because I’m very much a strong advocate for what I care about. They might not know that I’m really a soft-hearted pushover and I’m interested in making sure people thrive than even making sure things happen the way I want.
And the other thing that always seems to surprise them, not anyone in my family, but them, is I’m not a rule follower very well. I know rules are needed. And I know it is required, but basically when I see rules, I look at what’s their objective and then it’s how can I fulfill that objective, maybe keeping the rules and maybe not.
[00:08:09] Tommy Thomas: So, you’ve served a long time with Cru. Anytime I interview somebody that’s been with an organization a long time, I ask them when you joined, did you think it would be a career?
[00:08:21] Judy Douglass: It didn’t surprise me, but because my parents were not happy that I was joining Campus Crusade for Christ, I said, it’s just a two-year commitment because that’s all we were signing up for.
But in my mind, it probably was longer, but I sure didn’t know it was going to be the 60 years that I’ve been part of the Cru staff.
[00:08:44] Tommy Thomas: Oh, so when I met you, I think you were managing one of our magazines. And I suppose you had a staff reporting to you. What do you remember about that first management experience?
[00:08:56] Judy Douglass: Oh, my goodness. I remember, one, that I was over my head, because what happened was, I went out there and I was planning to go on campus. When I decided to join the staff, I had to give up two important things. I was engaged to a young man I’d gone with all through college. And he wasn’t interested at all in being a part of Cru.
And, I said, Lord, when are you going to tell him? And God said, if you marry him, you won’t be able to do what I want you to do. And, okay, that was something I wanted. I told the Lord when I met him that I would choose your way. And so that, I choose your way, was my pattern through life.
[00:09:42] Judy Douglass: And, so I said, okay. But I was also giving up my dream to become a writer and to maybe eventually be a magazine editor. But when I got to the staff conference, Bill Bright called me into his office and he said, we have this magazine we started to use on the campuses, to help staff talk to students about topics.
We wondered if instead of going to one campus, you would come to headquarters and do this magazine for all the campuses. And I’m like, what? Yes. So, God gave me my dream back just right away. The other one came later.
[00:10:27] Tommy Thomas: Was that the Collegiate, I’m trying to think, was that the Collegiate Challenge?
[00:10:31] Judy Douglass: That was the Collegiate Challenge. And I did that for several years with the whole editorial staff and then their man named Robert was the designer and he was far more knowledgeable than I was. And what was interesting was that we and Campus Life Magazine from Youth for Christ at the same time, we’re looking at most Christian magazines, which were tiny print little pictures.
Yeah. Just not even readable. And not certainly enticing. And I said, we got to do something. And Bob was really creative. And we ended up making a magazine that when we took it to the Evangelical Press Association convention and entered their contest, we won Periodical of The Year of all the categories, because they’d never seen a magazine like it.
[00:11:27] Judy Douglass: And it was full of color, and it was stories, and it was just a totally different thing, but that was that then we decided to start what became the Worldwide Challenge because we realized that staff were having a hard time convincing their parents that they should join this organization that parent’s thought was a cult and also help people, donors and those parents and anyone else understand what it meant to know and walk with God.
And the things we were teaching the students, lay people by then, we wanted others to hear. And so, we said, and this is one of the biggest things, hardest things I ever did was we said, okay, we’ll do this magazine. Basically, I was the editor, and we had about six journalism school graduates.
[00:12:23] Judy Douglass: We were not very old and not even very old in the Lord. Not really strong. We had no knowledge of what went on in the churches out there. And so, we’re going to do a magazine that’s going to represent our ministry. And we were really over our heads, but God was so good. We had no subscribers.
We went to our staff and talked them into giving it to their donors. And so we had to start it off. We had 35,000 subscribers because the staff did that. Our theme for our campaign was tell your supporters you love them 12 times a year. And so it was unbelievably wonderful. God gave us wisdom on how to put together a team and I just marveled at what we were able to do and how God used it in people’s lives.
[00:13:18] Judy Douglass: And it only ended recently because of the cost of postage and the use of net and that there were other ways to communicate, but when I look back at my years on staff, that’s one of my main highlights is getting to start the worldwide challenge and see it touch so many lives.
[00:13:40] Tommy Thomas: Now was my friend Chuck McDonald on your team? He and I joined the staff about the same time.
[00:13:46] Judy Douglass: Chuck McDonald was on my team.
[00:13:48] Tommy Thomas: And he was a University of Missouri J School graduate, if I remember.
[00:13:53] Judy Douglass: Which at that time was considered the best.
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[00:13:55] Tommy Thomas: So, let’s go to mentors. Someone in your life who has brought you along on this journey.
The two people who had the greatest impact on my life were Bill Bright and Steve Douglass
[00:14:06] Judy Douglass: Two people who’ve had the most impact on me. One would be Bill Bright because when I did the magazine all of a sudden I was reporting to him and some other people as well because he didn’t have time to really supervise, but I did a lot of work with him planning the magazine, editing the magazine, helping him write books, helping him write the first five transferable concepts.
And so those were sometimes tense times. Bill and I have one huge difference. Bill loves superlatives. Everybody was the greatest or the most talented or the best and that’s the way he talked. I’m a journalist. Don’t even believe superlatives are acceptable words, because nobody is the best or the greatest or anything.
[00:15:02] Judy Douglass: And so, Bill would write these flowery promoting things, and I would get it and bring it back to what I thought was realism. And he would come back, and he’d say, no, and I would put a little bit more back, but not all of it. And we would go about five rounds before I didn’t go back to him anymore.
I just decided we’d gotten it as far as I was willing to go and as much as he really needed. But that was challenging because we didn’t always agree on things and yet he was always kind and gracious to me and positive and encouraging. But more than anything, he was trusting God. I’ve known a lot of people who trusted God and I’ve read many but knew Bill very well.
[00:15:58] Judy Douglass: And he trusted God more than almost more than anyone I’d ever seen. And that was a huge thing in teaching me to walk with God on a consistent basis and believe that he would lead me and give me what I needed before me. So, he was probably at that time the biggest influence spiritually in my life, the biggest mentor.
The other person I would mention is Steve Douglas. Steve and I dated for five years before we got married. But we were friends and then we were dating, and it was a long time. Sometimes everybody said, give up on him. And I said, yeah. And, so I said, Lord, I’m done.
[00:16:48] Judy Douglass: And the Lord said, no, wait, don’t give up. Don’t quit. And so, it took five years before Steve came to a census. But the point I want to make is he was concerned that his parents had not had a good marriage. His father was an alcoholic, and he just was afraid he had too much of his father in him, which, not true, really, except for smart.
He was afraid he wouldn’t be a good husband as opposed to being so afraid of marriage. And he loved me. And so, from him, I learned a lot of principles of managing and leading because that’s what he did. He went to Harvard. And then he came to Cru to reorganize it, which I didn’t appreciate.
[00:17:36] Judy Douglass: I had to move out of the president’s office. But he spiritually just loved the Lord and sought him and wanted what God had for him. And then we were married for 47 years until God took him home two years ago. So just watching him live his life, lead the ministry in the 20 years he served as President.
And I just learned how to work with people. He was maybe the kindest person I’d ever met. Just always responsive to people. Responsive to those who worked for him lifting them up. One of the girls that traveled with me, we were on a trip together with Steve and his assistant and we were coming home from a long international trip.
And so we’re all tired and she’s dropping us off at our house and he says, what can I pray for you? And she says, oh, I’ve got a chair that’s falling apart and I just need somebody to help me put it together, so pray for that.
[00:18:47] Judy Douglass: He’s knocking on her door with his tools in his hand and he fixed her chair and she’s never forgotten it. The president, tired from a long trip, hurt her knee and went to meet it. And that would be what he was like. He was amazing with our children. He coached soccer for our older daughter for 12 years, I think maybe it was only 11, but because he wanted to be with her. Because he’s naturally a coach, by the way, I’ve always thought if he weren’t leading this ministry, he would be a coach somewhere. Also, he loved the girls that were on the soccer team. Before every game, he called each one to tell her what she would be expecting to do the next day, and his confidence that she would do a good job.
[00:19:38] Judy Douglass: And he also did it so he could have opportunities to tell people about Jesus. And, he was very intentional. I’ll tell you one other thing he did. I’m nice to people. I really am, but I don’t go out of my way all the time. And so in our neighborhood, he would go walk in the morning and to get exercise. He’d listen to scripture on the way out and then he would pray on the way back. He would look for opportunities to meet the neighbors and talk to them. And for several years, until his body was really not working as well, he picked up trash in our neighborhood and the whole neighborhood knew what he did.
[00:20:27] Judy Douglass: They didn’t know who he was necessarily, but they knew, oh, he’s the man who picks up the trash. I have great pictures of him. So, he’s seeing, cause it’s usually still dark and his pictures, his paper wrapper and a thing that holds three paper, plastic bags. So, he can put the trash in it.
[00:20:49] Tommy Thomas: Wow.
[00:20:49] Judy Douglass: It was amazing. I learned a lot from both of those two men. There were others, but you asked for the most.
[00:20:56] Tommy Thomas: You’ve probably already answered this question, but maybe not – relative to team leadership, what’s the most ambitious project you’ve ever undertaken? And how did you get your team to rally around it?
[00:21:11] Judy Douglass: Two. Okay. One was starting the Worldwide Challenge. And I already basically explained, none of us really were equipped to do that job. They entered into it, and we learned and grew together, and the exciting thing is I can name one thing after another that those people are now doing so that they learned well, I learned well, we all worked together, the magazine benefited staff and their donors, and their parents and it was amazing and I am grateful.
The biggest thing that I ever did was the Global Women’s Leadership Forum. No, actually, the biggest thing that I did was adopt a boy, but that’s another story. The Global Women’s Leadership Forum, because I’d always been able to do things that I thought I could do, and others apparently thought I could.
[00:22:13] Judy Douglass: I looked around a lot and noticed that again, I didn’t come from an evangelical Christian background, so I didn’t know any of the rules. I just saw, where are the women leading? And so, I just had it that I should see what I could do about it. I first did study and learn some things and when Steve became the U.S. Director, I suddenly had a little more beyond the magazine that was different, and I wasn’t doing the magazine because I had two children by then and so I started writing to all of our mothers, encouraging them that God could still use them, even if they’ve got 5 children at home.
[00:23:06] Judy Douglass: There were ways that the ministry could benefit from what they had to offer. And so, I wrote a book called What Can a Mother Do? And it’s finding significance at home and beyond. It’s still mostly a really good book, things have changed, but as my kids got older and I had a team of people, I didn’t have to work all the time.
They did a lot of the work, but I began to know a lot of the other women on the field and all of the women in any leadership were called senior women, as opposed to a real title so I just got to know some and grew and studied and got bold. And when Steve became President, he was willing to stand behind me.
[00:23:57] Judy Douglass: And we said, we’re going to have a global conference to bring together women who have shown potential to lead and help them get started at it. And we called it the global women’s leadership forum. And in 2004, so we just celebrated 20 years since this happened. We brought about 400 staff women from all over the world together, for a week in Thailand.
And the criteria were potential for leadership or maybe even given some leadership opportunities, but it was not you send whoever the next director’s wife unless she shows the potential and we brought them together and we started out and we said your leaders and they all last sticker.
[00:24:53] Judy Douglass: And we said no really and we’re going to help you start. So, we did a week of training. Some of it was spiritual. We had a wonderful woman, who at 57 left the mission field with her husband and went to seminary and became a professor at Gordon Conwell. And so she came and did our devotions for us.
[00:25:14] Judy Douglass: And Andrea Buczynski, whom I know you’ve interviewed, was just appointed Global Director of Leadership Development. It took three years for me to convince my husband to tell the board that yes, she would be the Vice President of Global Leadership Development because that’s what the previous person’s title was.
And we weren’t nearly as tight and hard to get through as some places are. Anyway, we taught them important skills like leading and bringing a team together and helping people to evaluate themselves and their coworkers and see where they can grow. But we also taught them how to write and how to speak.
[00:26:03] Judy Douglass: Everything’s just beginning. And how to raise funds, because in Cru, if you want to do stuff, and so they had a wonderful time. We had a fun time with them. They went and rode elephants and things like that. But it was incredible. And all of us, and this is true, I’ve heard it over and over, had this sense that they were in a holy place.
We walked around in this hotel in Chiang Mai, and we could sense God just smiling at his daughters who were believing that they could be more in the kingdom than they thought. And it took a long time to raise the money. I raised the money for it. And to pull together the team that could do it. And when it was almost, when we were just a few months out from doing it, most of the team that was planning it said, this is too big.
[00:27:01] Judy Douglass: This is too much. This is going to fail. And then we’re going to be embarrassed and it’s going to set us back, not move us. And so, the small group of us that were leading it went and talked and prayed and came back and said, God gave us this assignment and we have to do it. And nobody would object as it turned out.
It was wonderful that our Director in Switzerland had three women at the conference. They had quotas for their number of staff, and he wrote to me afterwards. He said, if you’re going to do things that make anybody else like these three women are now, I’ll send anybody because I’ve never seen such transformation in somebody.
[00:27:49] Judy Douglass: And so, it was just believing in them and then beginning to equip them. And then the last thing I’ll mention is we said, and if you want to go back to your country or your ministry and begin to start something to train some more people, we have a group of us and various ones of us will come to you and do training. I think we did 40 training sessions in the next two years and right now we have maybe only three global vice presidents who are women, and very capable women. And so that’s what drives me more than anything, is to see people become who God made them and do what God has for them. That vision is what guides me all the time.
(If you are reading the transcript, note that we will continue this conversation with Judy next week)
“Because I’m a strong advocate for what I care about, people might not know that I’m really a soft-hearted pushover. I’m interested in making sure people thrive even more than making sure things happen the way I want.” -Judy Douglass
Links and Resources
Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas
The Perfect Search – What every board needs to know about hiring their next CEO
When You Love a Prodigal: 90 Days of Grace for the Wilderness by Judy Douglass
Secrets of Success: God’s Lifelines by Judy Douglass
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