A Sermon With Some Real Punch
Billy Joe Daugherty preached a routine sermon on Nov. 20. Then a man socked the preacher in the face—and the gospel traveled at the speed of broadband.
Most preachers would love it if one of their sermons made national news. That’s what happened to Oklahoma pastor Billy Joe Daugherty—but he had to get punched in the face first.
When Daugherty was hit and bloodied on Nov. 20 during a Sunday morning service, the Christian kindness he showed his attacker made headlines on NBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. David Letterman even mentioned the unusual incident on his CBS Late Show.
A nondescript visitor named Steven Rogers delivered the unexpected blow to Daugherty’s clean-cut face at the close of the 11 a.m. service at Victory Christian Center in Tulsa, Okla. As music played during an altar call, Rogers approached Daugherty and hit him with his fist—leaving the 53-year-old pastor with blood steaming from a gash above his left eye.
Daugherty told one TV reporter: “The first time I was hit, what went through my mind was, Did he just hit me? I mean, it was bam, bam.”
A staff member and security guards subdued the assailant while Daugherty led the congregation in prayer to forgive the man.
“There was some humor in it all,” Daugherty told me in an interview on Monday, just days after two stitches had been removed from the cut below his eyebrow. “My wife kept singing. The piano player kept playing. I told the congregation, ‘It’s time to praise God.’ So we shouted and praised Him.”
After the assault, local station KTUL Channel 8 posted a news item about it on their Web site. As of early this week, the site had more than 2.6 million hits—breaking the station’s previous record of 400,000. And national TV networks began contacting Daugherty for interviews.
“What started out as a bad situation turned out to be an opportunity to share the gospel,” Daugherty says. Numerous television networks have done segments on the incident—as have Internet news giants AOL and Yahoo. The church has posted the video of the entire sermon—with the footage of the attack and subsequent apology—and many people are ordering copies.
Why did this happen? Rogers, who is 50, certainly had no obvious motive to attack Daugherty. Police records show that Rogers has a history of violent assaults.
Daugherty says God allowed the incident so more people could hear about Jesus, who suffered beatings, torture, humiliation and public execution yet still loved His enemies.
“I have been able to tell people that Jesus suffered a whole lot more than I did,” Daugherty says. “When Jesus was crucified, He said, ‘Father, forgive them.’”
Daugherty not only forgave Rogers from the pulpit but he also visited him last week at a Tulsa jail. He says Rogers has a troubled past, like many have among the underprivileged people who are part of Victory Christian Center’s weekly outreach programs.
Ironically, Daugherty has never been attacked during any of his numerous missionary trips to Haiti, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and other dangerous countries. He had just returned from a trip to Russia’s Ural Mountains when the Tulsa assault happened.
It all goes to show us that anything can happen anywhere, and that Tulsa sometimes can be as dangerous as Moscow, Beirut or Islamabad.
And, to Daugherty, it also shows that Americans are hungry to hear more about Christ’s love and forgiveness. Especially when it is not just preached in words but practiced—in spontaneous and unscripted fashion—in front of a live audience.
CHARISMA ONLINE :: Nov. 29, 2005A Sermon With Some Real Punch