Larry Wolfe
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) This passage is the perfect description of Doug Warwick.
Born in Chicago but raised in West Des Moines and later Raleigh, North Carolina, Doug played high school baseball and basketball. He then attended the University of North Carolina before earning a degree in marketing at Oklahoma State.
He followed in his father’s footsteps and began working for IBM, first as a systems engineer in California. He quickly earned a promotion to sales representative in Tulsa. His successes there led to a high-level marketing position at IBM’s Divisional Headquarters in Atlanta followed by his being named Marketing Manager for the Tucson area. It was there that he made some bad decisions that slowed his career and destroyed his first marriage. He stepped down from that position to transfer back to SoCal where his ex-wife and two children had moved.
His positive turnaround began when he met his current wife Monica who, in turn, introduced him to Jesus Christ. Monica and Doug married in 1989. Doug continued in the corporate world for several more years, working at Texas Instruments for seven years before accepting a position as a day trader in the natural gas market with APS in Phoenix. After the family moved to Arizona, they became involved with Cavalry Chapel Tri-City in Tempe. Shortly thereafter, Doug decided that he wanted to share his lessons with others and formed a Bible study group that, at first, met in their living room. As his devotion and interest grew, that eventually led to his being ordained as a pastor and forming the Cavalry Chapel in Ahwatukee. Doug worked at APS and served as pastor at the same time for about five years before he retired from Corporate America in 2003 to devote full time to the ministry.
Those ministry responsibilities have grown to be pretty much all-consuming with twice weekly services, evening Bible classes and other duties filling nearly every day and evening. But Doug wouldn’t have it any other way.
He does manage to get away a couple times a week to play senior softball. He joined our league this past year and was named Rookie-of-the-Year in our Lakes Division; quite a feat for someone who hadn’t played for nearly 30 years! Doug’s other diversion is reading; in particular, he loves reading histories and biographies.
Doug and Monica have now been happily married for 28 years; their combined families include seven children, three grandkids and “one on the way.” The Warwicks now live in Ironwood and, luckily, most of the kids live in the Phoenix area, too, so family and grandkids are another primary focus of their lives.
In Doug’s words, his life changed from centering on “me” to focusing on Jesus Christ and others. And with that he says, “My life changed from Hell on Earth to Heaven on Earth.”