By Holly Linzay, Regional Reporter
BOYCE – Charles Rogers M.D. says he firmly believes that God led him to become a physician in order to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He makes house calls in his rural community and does not charge for his medical services. The doors that open to him as a medical doctor have provided the means to share the story of Jesus.
“I’ll get a call, and when I knock on their door, I go in and start taking a medical history. But I get to mix in a spiritual history too,” Rogers said. “I believe God gives me discernment, and I know when there is an opportunity to lead someone to Christ.”
Not only has Rogers been blessed, he says, in having a part in leading dozens to the Lord through the house calls he has made as a medical doctor, but he is also serving as pastor of St. Clair Baptist Church in Boyce.
“I’m a pastor first, and a doctor second,” Rogers said. “But I’ve been able to go into many homes as a doctor and share Christ where I never would have been invited in as a pastor.”
For years, Rogers had a surgical practice and a medical office, but now carries his black medical bag into people’s homes or on medical mission trips as part of a Disaster Relief medical team. His medical profession evolved through the years, Rogers said,
“I believe God wanted me to see that the M.D. was simply a stepping stone to a much bigger picture of what He has placed in me to do,” the pastor said.
In 1991, Rogers started going on medical mission trips. He journeyed to Mexico, Honduras, Russia and Sweden. At that time, Rogers and his wife, Debbie, thought God might be calling them to be missionaries. They attended a World Missions Conference at Glorietta, N.M. to explore that calling and interviewed with the International Mission Board.
“I knew God had a calling on my life, but I wasn’t sure what that was exactly,” Rogers said.
He was teaching surgery at LSU Medical School in New Orleans. Heeding the call to preach, Rogers also became the English-speaking pastor on staff at a Chinese church. But he just knew he was not where he should be.
“I had chronic fatigue, I was under pressure with my work load, and it was a living nightmare. I wasn’t on the ideal path,” Rogers said, adding the mission trips “kept him going.”
Eventually, Rogers left academic medicine in 1993 and moved his family to Arkansas, where he opened a private practice. The move proved to be a “big mistake,” Rogers said, because he was not following in the footsteps of his calling.
“I knew I needed to preach,” Rogers said, “and felt we should move back home to Louisiana.”
By 1995, the Rogers family returned to Louisiana, where he started a private surgical practice. After a few years, Rogers stopped charging people for his medical services.
“Doors were opening and I didn’t want that tool to be a financial barrier in a person not knowing Jesus, so I stopped charging people,” he said.
He no longer made a living through his medical practice, so he started teaching at an area high school, in addition to preaching. Although Rogers started preaching at various churches, he says he still was not satisfied with just “filling a pulpit.”
He was ordained at Kingsville Baptist Church in Ball, and for the next several years served as pastor/evangelist/physician. But like a ping-pong ball, Rogers said he was bouncing around trying to find God’s will for his life.
“I was desperate. I knew I had to do something else. I sought God’s counsel,” said Rogers. That led to classes at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where in 2007, Rogers earned his master’s of divinity degree in biblical languages.
That same year he accepted a pastorate at a church in Bogalusa. After much prayer, he decided to close his private practice and to just make doctor house calls.
“Doors will open and people will say things to me that they wouldn’t say to their pastor,” Rogers explained.
Where once his medical degree was something he used to “try to manipulate God with,” Rogers said, it has evolved into a mantle for ministry.
When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Rogers went to Haiti as the medical doctor for the first Louisiana-deployed Disaster Relief medical team.
“There was a complete collapse of the medical structure in Haiti,” recalled Rogers.
Haiti was without electricity, water was scarce, there were earthquake tremors daily, and people would hurl demonic curses and perform voodoo services all around them. Yet it was in the ruins of Haiti, Rogers says, that he discovered the calling of his heart.
“I knew I didn’t just want to go on mission trips anymore. I wanted to be involved in disaster relief. As the world grows darker, God is going to make the church relevant again, and I think one way is through disaster relief,” Rogers said.
After he had been in Haiti for about three weeks, Rogers says he was approached by three Haitian men.
“They came up to me and said, ‘We decided you are Haitian.’ I asked them what they meant, and they said I was different. They said I actually listened to their stories. My heart really begun to open up to God at that time. I knew I had to completely surrender to His will,” Rogers said.
During his time in Haiti, Rogers said that he knew God was going to test his obedience by having him step out in faith and move. The Rogers sold their farm and resigned from the church he had been at for three years.
“If we will make ourselves available, God will move, and open a door,” Rogers said.
In 2011, Rogers accepted the role of senior pastor at St. Clair Baptist Church, a place where he said he knows he is in God’s perfect will. In addition to the pastorate, Rogers serves the Louisiana Baptist Convention in the capacity of state medical coordinator for Disaster Relief Services. He also is a NAMB-endorsed chaplain working with the Disaster Relief organization and the Cotile Volunteer Fire Department chaplain.
When he is asked by other physicians why he is not using his medical degree to its full potential by working full-time as a doctor, Rogers has a ready answer: “I say I am using it. I use it every day to reach someone with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”