Douglas Coe

Douglas Evans Coe (October 20, 1928 – February 21, 2017) was associate director of the Christian organization, The Fellowship, (also known as a family of friends in Christ, the prayer breakfast groups). He has also been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham." In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States by Time magazine. Coe was an ordained Presbyterian elder and served as a lay minister.

Douglas Coe was born in Medford, Oregon. He attended Willamette University in Salem, graduating in 1953.

Coe's ministry in mentoring and discipling was widely known, as well as his enjoyment of athletics and his devoted family life, having raised three boys and three girls. Somewhat diffident about attention and reluctant to do public speaking he routinely denied requests for interviews and speeches to large audiences. He was born and raised in Oregon. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Willamette University. While enrolled as a college student, Coe met Dean of Men and future Fellowship associate and Senator Mark O. Hatfield. Coe became involved with Young Life, a campus youth ministry, in Salem, Oregon, and went on to start a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship with Roy Cook while enrolled at Willamette University. Coe and Cook became involved in laymen’s groups of various kinds and helped establish a “navigator house” in Salem. They met Dr. Abraham Vereide when he visited Salem, the capital of Oregon for a Governor's Prayer Breakfast and were fascinated by his visionary communication of a "leadership led by God, empowered by His Spirit."

After working with Young Life and the Navigators, Coe, in 1958, at the age of 30, was employed by Dr. Vereide at the International Christian Leadership on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. and after initially doing clerical jobs in the office he served as aide de camp to Dr. Vereide and by 1963 had become an assistant director of ICL. He worked alongside of Dr. Vereide, Dr. Wallace Haines, Dr. Clifton Robinson and Dr. Richard C. Halverson, the clergy executives of the global ministry. Coe was trained by Jim Rayburn and Lorne Sanny in the methods of Bible memorization, study and teaching and Vereide also had him mentored by young Billy Graham, an effective youth minister and former president of Northwestern College, a frequent house guest of Dr. Vereide's and a former disciple from ICL's Chicago days. As Rev. Christian Halverson put it, in the eighties, Coe "became the godfather ... but for good, not for bad."

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