John McKenna:
senior editor
Denominational
Publications

PASADENA--John McKenna joined Denominational Publications after the closure of Ambassador University in 1997, where he served as chair of the Theology Department.

"I am grateful to God for giving me favor with the WCG," Dr. McKenna said. "I have found in our church a fresh commitment toward learning to articulate the grace and truth of God, the passion for which I often find lacking in many churches."

Dr. McKenna commented on how he became a Christian.

"Christ came to me in 1971 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, when the Flower Children were desperately seeking a new way of life for themselves, perhaps far removed from their families and old friends.

"To explain what a graduate in physical chemistry from Princeton University was doing in this sub-culture of society is too much for me right now," Dr. McKenna continued.

"Suffice it to say here that self-destructive tendencies in our race fully raged in the depths of my existence. It was not until, because of years of all kinds of bad habits, when the gates of death had drawn near, that I cried out to God.

" `God, if you are really there, please help me.' That his answer came in the form it did, continues to surprise me even to this day. I would not be alive except for the surprise of God in my life."

Dr. McKenna became part of the Jesus Movement in California in 1972. He hitchhiked from San Francisco to Laguna Beach because he had two brothers there he wanted to tell about Jesus.

He married Nancy "Mickey" McVicker a few months after she was saved at an Outreach Ministry with which he was involved for two years. They enrolled in Fuller Seminary and stayed there for 10 years, during which time he earned a master of divinity degree and a doctor of philosophy degree in historical theology.

He also served as an adjunct professor and a special assistant to then-President David Allan Hubbard.

When President Hubbard retired in 1992, Azusa Pacific University hired Dr. McKenna as an adjunct professor. Primarily, he taught in the university's extended education programs.

In 1996 the WCG hired him to chair the Theology Department at Ambassador University in Big Sandy, Texas. When the college closed, he was asked to return to Pasadena in the capacity of senior editor for Denominational Publications.

Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 1998