Saving souls in Sin City
NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — When Tyler Yeager, a fourth-grade…
A maroon hood to go with his red coat
Lads to Leaders director receives an honorary doctorate during Freed-Hardeman University lectures.
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HENDERSON, Tenn. — Frances Johnson hurried home from Alabama Christian College to tell her parents that she and Jack Zorn were getting married.
But her mother, Sarah, also had big news. “It’s not menopause,” she proclaimed. “I’m pregnant!”
Frances didn’t expect to get a husband and a baby brother at the same time. Neither did she realize how important all three of them would become in the spiritual development of tens of thousands of Christian men and women.
Participants receive certificates at the Lads for Leaders convention at the North Las Vegas Church of Christ in 2022.
“Only God knew,” said Rhonda Fernandez, the daughter of Jack and Frances Zorn, as she addressed a room full of dinner guests — several of them in red blazers — in the Hope Barber Shull Center at Freed-Hardeman University. Later that evening, her uncle and Frances Zorn’s baby brother, Roy Johnson, received an honorary doctorate of humanities for outstanding citizenship and service to the church.
Johnson, a preacher for more than 50 years, has served since 2003 as executive director of the ministry his brother-in-law founded, Lads to Leaders. Jack Zorn was minister for a Church of Christ in Warner Robins, Ga., and started a preaching class for eight boys in 1968. Frances Zorn helped train young women.
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Now more than 500 Churches of Christ participate in the program, and some 20,000 youths take part in Lads to Leaders conventions on Easter weekend at 10 sites in the U.S. and five in other countries.
Children line up for food during a Lads to Leaders event in the jungles of Chintapalli, India. “This is our convention for L2L,” said minister Ricky Gootam, who coordinates Lads to Leaders in India. “We had 2,000 come to this from over 60 village churches where we work with in the brethren.”
V.P. Black, a preacher for Churches of Christ for 70 years and a longtime fundraiser for Christian universities, once described Lads to Leaders as “the Little League of Christian education.”
Roy Johnson’s involvement in the program predates his role as executive director, Fernandez said. Almost from the time he could walk, he accompanied his sister and brother-in-law, known for his iconic red coat, across the nation on trips promoting Lads to Leaders. As the couple’s health declined, Johnson took on leadership of the nonprofit. Frances Zorn died in 2017, and Jack Zorn followed in 2021.
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Johnson also worked for 23 years as an executive with Boy Scouts of America. Lads to Leaders’ highest honor, the Red Coat Award, is reminiscent of BSA’s Eagle Scout rank.
At Freed-Hardeman, Roy Johnson stands with Lads to Leaders graduates (from left) Sarah Pollock, Catherine Grisham, Caroline Grisham, Zaquan Kemp, MacKenzie Scarborough and Jack Hamilton.
‘Lead better’
Among the attendees at a dinner honoring Johnson were six students who earned the Red Coat Award. Each completed a rigorous set of requirements, participating in Lads to Leaders for at least four years, earning honors in disciplines from Scripture memorization to public speaking and demonstrating Christian leadership. Each also completed a service project approved by a Red Coat Committee.
Jack Hamilton
Jack Hamilton’s project was a speech tournament he organized for his home congregation, the Castle Rock Church of Christ in Colorado. Participants gave sermon illustrations following the example of the apostle Paul’s speech to the people of Athens in Acts 17. Each speaker took an everyday item or concept from modern life and used it to point listeners to Jesus, as Paul did with the Athenians’ statue “To an Unknown God.”
Lads to Leaders “prepared me by giving me a lot of Bible knowledge,” said Hamilton, now a freshman at Freed-Hardeman. “It also encouraged me to study more on my own.”
Sarah Pollock
Sarah Pollock has participated in Lads to Leaders since she was in kindergarten. The Florence, Ala., native earned her Red Coat in 2022.
“It definitely helped me with public speaking,” said Pollock, a sophomore at Freed-Hardeman who recently was chosen to serve as a coordinator for Interface, the university’s freshman and transfer orientation program.
Zaquan Kemp said that the program “helped me speak well, prepare well and helped me lead better.”
Kemp, who earned a Red Coat in 2019, is a sophomore at Heritage Christian University in Florence, an institution he learned about by visiting a booth at a Lads to Leaders event in Orlando, Fla.
Zaquan Kemp
Kirk Brothers, president of Heritage, attended the dinner for Johnson. He said that Kemp has excelled in his ministry studies and served as an intern for the Conyers Church of Christ in Georgia.
“From a local preacher perspective, it does so much,” Brothers said of Lads to Leaders. At Heritage, “when they go into homiletics class, they’re a step ahead.
“But it’s not just teaching or putting a lesson together. It’s helping kids use their gifts — even if that’s art or puppets.”
Truth in an upside-down world
Before the Wednesday night keynote at the Freed-Hardeman Bible Lectureship, president David Shannon and board chair Scott Latham gave Johnson a maroon hood, conferring the honorary rank of Ph.D.
Roy Johnson speaks to attendees at the 88th Freed-Hardeman University Bible Lectures.
Johnson thanked his wife, Brenda, who put aside her medical career to help him in his ministry role. The couple has three sons and 10 grandchildren.
Johnson also stressed the need for Christian education — in homes, churches and universities — in an ever-changing society.
“We live in a world where everything is turning upside down,” he said. “Right is wrong. Wrong is right.”
Surrounded by family members and Freed-Hardeman administrators, Roy Johnson accepts the honorary doctorate.
He saluted Freed-Hardeman for maintaining a firm stance for the truth of the Gospel.
Justin Rogers, dean of Freed-Hardeman’s College of Biblical Studies, said that Johnson “has tirelessly poured himself into the nonprofit world of training young people for leadership.
“The untold thousands of lives he has influenced will be revealed only in eternity.”
Freed-Hardeman University president David Shannon, left, takes a selfie with Sarah Pollock, Catherine Grisham, Caroline Grisham, Lads to Leaders executive director Roy Johnson, Heritage Christian University student Zaquan Kemp and Freed-Hardeman University students MacKenzie Scarborough and Jack Hamilton.
