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Our founder, David Rogers

David Rogers founded Joshua's Way and led it until he died on July 25, 2010. A lawyer and a Bible teacher, he built the ministry around one phrase: to know and to do. Joshua's Way carries that work on in the Upstate and in Ethiopia.

Who he was

David grew up in Greer First Baptist Church, among members who, he joked, "may have changed my diapers." He practiced law, including work in family court. He and his wife, Louise, raised two children, Caleb and Kate.

Friends kept asking when he was going to "stop talking about spiritual things and thinking about spiritual things and do something." In his words, "Eventually, Joshua's Way emerged."

In January 2010 he was ordained, after a year in which he had been asked to take on pastoral work: marrying couples, baptizing, counseling. He thanked the ordination council for "taking a chance by ordaining a lawyer."

What he taught

Much of David's work was teaching. Under his leadership Joshua's Way offered courses on the Bible, Christian theology, church history and spiritual formation, along with conferences, lunchtime book reviews and Bible studies that met in Greenville restaurants. He also taught a Sunday morning class at Greer First Baptist, and some of the recordings on this site come from it.

The recordings show his range. He taught books of the Bible such as 2 Timothy, Titus, James and Habakkuk, the parables and the hard sayings of Jesus, how to interpret Scripture, how to make moral choices, and the life and ideas of Charles Darwin. His writings move just as freely, from prayer and holiness to Christian unity across race and nation, war and peace, and faith in a political season. Christians, he wrote, "follow neither an elephant nor a donkey. We follow the Lamb who is the Lion of Judah."

The ministries he led

David believed teaching had to lead to action. When the ministry was new, the leader of another nonprofit told him Joshua's Way could not be both a teaching ministry and a mercy ministry. David allowed that it was hard, then asked, "what good is teaching if we ignore the repeated admonitions of Scripture to put our faith into action and, in particular, to help the needy among us?"

So Joshua's Way did both. It became a collection center for Operation Christmas Child, helped a small church in La Puerta, Venezuela, and its work came to include Cross Culture Network, which connects international students with the community around them.

Ethiopia drew him back again and again. He traveled there with his brother Paul, Dan Johnson and Atu Bekele to plan the ministry's work with an Ethiopian partner church. On later trips he taught leadership to men and women completing a Joshua's Way training program, brought surgical and medical supplies to the hospital in Pawe, in western Ethiopia, and preached in Pawe with a pastor interpreting.

"There is no place on earth where the darkness is so dark that it cannot be overcome with the Light of Christ."
David Rogers, "Early Morning in Pawe"

His work carries on

When the door to further work in Pawe closed, the ministry's Ethiopian partners pointed it to Bahir Dar, where the GAMBY Medical Mission has helped poor women receive surgery. At home, courses and book discussions, Operation Christmas Child and Cross Culture Network go on. Dan Johnson, who traveled to Ethiopia with David, leads Joshua's Way as its president.

"Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them." John 13:17

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