Terry and Ashley dive into the future of Orphan’s Promise and what it’s doing to change the world. 

SEARCHING FOR A FATHER

Tim Johnson grew up in Sarasota, Florida. The only male figure in his life at that time was his grandfather Butch. While Johnson’s grandmother was very loving, his grandfather was an angry alcoholic. When he was drunk, he took his anger out on his wife and not the kids. Butch did provide for them financially but when Johnson stayed at their house, it was like walking on eggshells. Confused by his love and fear for Butch, Johnson was looking for direction because his own father wanted nothing to do with him.

His mother loved him and his siblings and tried to provide for her kids by being both a mother and father by working multiple jobs to make their lives better. While she was working, the kids stayed with their grandparents. Times were tough growing up, but when Tim started playing football, he found something he was good at.

Football gave him a built-in community. It also served as an avenue to explore his identity until he found clarity in his faith during college. In 1984, facing a personal crisis during his sophomore year, Johnson was hospitalized with a suspected case of spinal meningitis. While lying on his back in the hospital, he looked upward and prayed, asking God for help. This was a pivotal moment in Johnson’s life that sparked his search for deeper meaning and purpose. After that, he began reading the Bible and attending church gatherings, eventually leading to his full commitment to Christ. This faith gave him clarity about his life's purpose: to fulfill God's plan rather than his own. As he continued to mature and learn about God as a father, Johnson no longer questioned his identity or where he belonged. Johnson knew he was a child of God and no longer fatherless. As his time at Penn State ended, he describes a powerful moment when he was touched so strongly by the Holy Spirit where he began to cry uncontrollably. In that moment, he sobbed with every part of his being. He explains, “I was sitting on the floor around a small table, and suddenly, I felt as if there was an outpouring of fresh oil. There was a presence. I was captivated, completely immersed in this feeling of love. It was the most life-changing, deepest experience. It was pure love.” This event marked a significant turning point in his spiritual journey and personal healing.    

Selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the sixth round (#141 overall) of the 1987 NFL draft, Johnson played for three seasons. In 1990 he began playing for the Washington Redskins for five seasons. In 1991, Johnson played with the Redskins which became the World Championship team, earning a Super Bowl ring in Super Bowl XXVI. In 1992 he was selected to the Pro Bowl, and the following year he was elected the 1993 Redskin of the year. 

In 1996, after playing football for almost a decade, he retired. In 1996, Johnson transitioned into ministry, becoming an ordained pastor in 2000. He founded the Orlando World Outreach Center (OWOC) in Florida and has since dedicated himself to serving communities in need. His ministry emphasizes unity, healing, and proactive service to address societal divisions and crises.

In his book, Fatherless No More, Johnson outlines a three-step pathway to freedom centered on spiritual identity and reconciliation:

1. Acknowledging the need for a father: Recognizing the void left by absent or flawed earthly fathers and accepting the necessity of a paternal relationship for emotional and spiritual wholeness.

2. Confessing the impact of fatherlessness: Identifying how the lack of a father’s love has shaped behaviors, self-worth, and relationships, including tendencies toward performance-based validation or emotional withdrawal.

3. Forgiving earthly fathers: Releasing resentment and "debts" owed by absent/abusive fathers, which Johnson describes as critical for breaking generational cycles of pain and embracing divine love.

The ultimate freedom comes through embracing a new identity in God, described as an "unshakable love" that replaces earthly insecurities with purpose and belonging. Johnson emphasizes that this spiritual fatherhood, realized through Christ, provides the security and validation humans inherently crave.

THE FATHERLESS NO MORE INITIATIVE

The Fatherless No More Initiative focuses on helping those whose fathers were absent or not positive role models for their children. Particularly focusing on incarcerated men, its mission is to guide participants toward discovering their identity and value through a relationship with God as the Heavenly Father, empowering them to overcome trauma and abandonment and pursue personal transformation.
Key Features of the Initiative include:

1. Spiritual Foundation: The program emphasizes connecting participants with the Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, helping them understand their sense of belonging, beliefs, and behavior regardless of their earthly father relationships.

2. Work at Rikers Island: In 2022, Johnson expanded the initiative to New York City's Rikers Island correctional facility, offering mentorship, hope, and faith-based guidance.

• Correction officers chose participants based on their readiness to embrace change.

• The program fostered a sense of family among inmates, helping them overcome abandonment and trauma.

3. Impact: The initiative has helped men at Rikers Island build trust, discover their identity, and find hope for a new life through faith. Former participants have credited the program with transforming their lives, enabling them to pursue education and work in criminal justice reform.
The Fatherless No More Initiative continues its work by investing in humanity, believing in individuals’ potential for change, and offering them tools to rebuild their lives spiritually and socially.
 

For more information on Tim Johnson click the LINK! 

CREDITS

Author, Fatherless No More (Zondervan, 2024); Senior Pastor, Orlando World Outreach Church 
(OWOC); President of Orlando Serve Foundation; Founder, Fatherless No More initiative; NFL Super 
Bowl champion (Washington Redskins, 1991); Sports Illustrated All-Pro; NCAA Football All-American, and Penn State national champion; Previously named National Faith-Based Leader of the Year by John Maxwell; BA from Penn State; Married w/ four adult children. 
 

“Every day he would beat me. Every day, multiple times a day,” says Johnny Chang.
“I remember, like, just fearing for my life. And I would freeze up and next thing you know, I'm seeing stars.”
 
From the age of five, Johnny Chang suffered physical abuse from his father. The beatings became a source of anger and led to fighting with his peers. “I was just very, like, filled with rage,” says Chang. “I would just see red. And then I would come to like, oh, snap. You know, I either have like something in my hand or like the person's on the floor or like, we're just like, bloody, everyone's bloody like it just, it was really bad.”

Johnny grew up in East L.A. in the housing projects.  By age twelve, he’d joined a gang. “I had seen the gang members, even the Asian gang members with money. They had cars, clothes, notoriety. There was just some kind of pull. And on top of that, I noticed they were very tight-knit. They were very family oriented,” says Chang.

Feeling at home with his new gang family, Johnny began committing violent crimes. At twelve-years-old, Johnny was sent to a juvenile detention center for “the worst of the worst.” Over his four years there, he witnessed sexual assault, was in more than forty fights, and became even more hardened. “When I saw that, I was like, ‘You know what? Even if I die, like, I'm not going to let these people step on me,’” he says.

At sixteen, he was released. As a 17-year-old, Johnny was tried as an adult, and sent to federal prison for an assault with a deadly weapon. He knew being locked up in the penitentiary was another level. “I was scared,” he said. “You're now in there with people who are like, you know, adults and they're crazy. You know, they'll kill you.”

He served eight-and-a-half years of his ten-year sentence and wondered what real life looked like on the outside.
“I just felt this uncertainty like, I had seen people who had completely been rehabilitated in prison and they say, ‘I'm never going to come back here.’ But six months later, they're back. It’s not...it's not hard to come back, you know, it's very hard to stay out. So, it's like I was just existing at that time and I felt a lot of emptiness inside my heart,” he says.

Johnny tried living a “normal” life. “I applied to like a lot of places and nobody called me back. So at that point, I really felt like a rage again and anger,” Chang says. “And I'm like, ‘Okay, if you're not going to give me a chance, then I'm going to just go and live the way that I know.’”

Back on the streets, he was making thirty to forty thousand dollars a month, selling drugs. For Johnny, it wasn’t enough. Chang says, “I still felt that emptiness, still felt that void, which blew my mind. I thought if I made some money, I'll be okay, you know?”

During a robbery attempt of a rival drug dealer, Johnny’s fellow gang member was shot. A few days later, another friend was killed. “So it's just like death all around me,” he says. “And I really started to think. I never really thought about death because I was so caught up in the moment.”

His mother, who became a Christian while he was incarcerated, asked Johnny for a ride to church. “The pastor's like, ‘Hey, Johnny, heard a lot about you. Glad that you're home. Your mom has kind of talked about you a little bit, but, would you like to have some black bean noodles?’ And that's actually like my favorite dish,” says Chang. “I just parked the car, went inside and ate the black bean noodles. It was really, really delicious. And he starts to kind of ask me some...some questions.”

The pastor shared the good news of Jesus with Johnny and spoke very directly about his need for a savior. “And I'm like, ‘Wow!’ And he talked about emptiness, void, you know, this feeling that I felt. It was as if he was like dissecting my heart and like, pulling out pieces and like showing me and like, giving me the antidote. It's almost like a light bulb clicked and it turned on,” Chang says.

Johnny gave his life to Christ and noticed a complete change in his life and in his heart. A friend told Johnny, the change is clear. “He says, ‘You know, it's obvious that you're so peaceful,'” says Chang. “'Like you're not what you used to be.' You know, he's like, ‘I could see that, like, emanating out of you.’”

He has since reconciled with his father, who has also become a Christian. Today, he’s podcasting and ministering in prisons.

Chang says, “I think God has really led my life to put me in a position of being like in the bottom of the bottom right, the lowest of the lows, going to prison and just drug everything, gangbang and everything. And I feel like God did that so I could understand people's hearts at different levels. You know, not everyone's been to prison, but we're all interconnected by sin and struggle. There is hope, but it's not in this world, it's not in money, it's not in fame, it's actually in God alone. And that's just what I'm here to do, is to shed light on that.”
 

Gary Youngblood is a retired US Army vet living with his wife, Patricia, in Fletcher NC. They were sleeping in their home when Hurricane Helene ripped through North Carolina with high winds, torrential rain and flooding.   

“It was about five in the morning when I heard the crash of the tree, and it landed on the corner of the house, which is the master bedroom. It didn't take long to get out of bed and get out of the way, but, praise the Lord it didn't do any physical damage to us” Gary recalled. 

When they went outside, they found that a 100-foot tree had fallen in the storm.  The damage to the roof was minimal, but Gary wondered how he would ever remove the giant tree and debris from his yard, especially after his recent injury. 

“I had fractured my left ankle in a couple of places, and I had had to stay off my foot, but I used it getting out of bed that morning. We had a big debris problem,” Gary continued.

Hurricane Helene was one of the deadliest U.S. storms of the 21st century, with over 100 confirmed deaths in North Carolina alone.  Property damage was staggering.  

Operation Blessing’s Disaster Relief team was on hand to provide emergency assistance and to help people like Gary.     

“These guys, gracefully give up their time to come out and, give me a hand.  And they've really been working hard today,” Gary told us.  “You guys showed up today, and got this tree cut up and getting it rolled up to the highway to get it hauled off, really put in a lot of work.”

But it wasn’t until after we finished the cleanup, that we learned that Gary and his wife are CBN Partners 

“We've been, with CBN for quite a while. You know, we're monthly partners.  And I think it goes way back to when, Pat was running for president,” Gary explained. 

“We found out through this ministry of CBN with Operation Blessing, that it's doing good. It's going to people that need it, the people that need the help.  And you guys have really shown the love of Christ, you know, to us today.  Amazing,” he said with sincere gratitude. 

Do you know that CBN partners can reach people around the world for Christ every day? We invite you to join us in ministry together as we provide financial support to those in need through our life-giving surgeries, food and clothing programs, humanitarian aid, and so much more! When you give today and become a CBN partner, you’ll help transform lives in the name of Jesus Christ! Join us now!