DOUG FOSTER

Folk Singer, Folk Musician, Worship Leader and Associate Teacher

Guitarist, banjo and bass player, teacher, session musician, and composer Doug Foster cannot remember a time when music wasn't important to him. At an age when most of us were looking forward to watching Captain Kangaroo, Doug was into Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Spade Cooley, Django Reinhardt, and The Carter Family.

In his sophomore year of high school he began playing with a Folk Music group named the Coachmen at Gatlinburg, TN during the summer. By then his musical horizons had expanded to include some rock and jazz and classical. He continued to play coffeehouses and small group concerts whenever they could be scheduled around school. By the summer of 1964 he played on a coffeehouse circuit that extended from Virginia to California and almost made it to California that summer. He did get as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico and a coffeehouse named The Three Cities of Spain before having to return to East Tennessee for school.

Doug had every intention of continuing his budding career in Folk Music, but Uncle Sam called and Doug entered the U.S. Army, taking Basic at Ft. Benning, GA, Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, Officer Candidate School at Ft. Sill, OK and was stationed overseas in South Korea (1968-1969). While in Korea, Doug had the opportunity to tour with USO groups and even had the great experience to tour with Bluegrass legend, Ralph Stanley by filling in for Stanley's bass player who had taken ill just before leaving the States for Korea.  Doug returned to the USA in September of 1969 and entered the Music School of Cameron University in Lawton, OK as a performance major.  By the end of his first year at Cameron, Doug had begun playing shows, TV commercials, and teaching privately.  Over the next few years, he did a lot of commercial music, clubs, pizza parlors, etc.  He also continued teaching privately.  In 1971, Doug formed a band doing contemporary Pop music and began touring the Southwest and Southeast United States. School would have to wait.

Returning to his religious roots and conversion to Christ, Doug began helping out in the music program of his church in 1974. Before long he was leading music in a small Baptist church in Tuskahoma, OK. In 1976, he felt called to take a full-time music ministry position at First Baptist Church, Broken Bow, Oklahoma. After only a year, Doug and his family of three (wife, Jeanne and two year old Matthew) moved to Dallas, Texas to finish school at Criswell College.  Following school in Dallas, Doug and his family with the addition of twins, Samuel and Susanna, returned to First Baptist Church, Broken Bow, OK.  In 1982, Doug was called to pastor Forest Hill Baptist Church in Idabel, OK.  He was still teaching guitar privately and teaching guitar classes at Eastern Oklahoma State College.  In addition, Doug has always been involved in the music ministry of his churches.

Doug earned a Masters degree from Oklahoma University, Norman, OK in 1989 and continued to serve Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma. In 1994, after 18 years of full-time church ministry, Doug and family moved to Birmingham, Alabama to take a faculty position at Southeastern Bible College, where he worked for seven years in Fund Development.  In 2001, Doug took a Development position with the Alabama Baptist Children's Home and is happily sharing the Children's Home story (with music enhancement) with hundreds of Baptist churches in Alabama.

Doug began teaching at Lorna Music in 1995 and although he presently only has time to teach one evening per week, he loves teaching his students guitar, banjo and bass.  He continues to be active in local church music ministry and has composed a number of original arrangements of hymns for solo guitar and original songs portraying the Bible message and stories from the Gospels.