The Prince Turned Pauper

There is no fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
John Keats

Not one of the scores of young couples I have counseled prior to their wedding expected their marriage to fail. Others’ maybe, but not theirs. After all, they loved each other. They, of all couples, would stay together.

Yet, some have divorced.

In the same way, no pastor kneels at ordination — those many hands conferring God’s strength — expecting to fail in ministry, or even to stumble. Certainly mistakes are possible. Yes, other pastors have taken a tumble. But not this pastor! No, this one loves the Lord. He is called into ministry. She is gifted by the Spirit. Everything appears promising.

Yet just such pastors — devout, earnest, gifted, prayerful — wind up removing their certificate of ordination from the wall and scanning the help-wanted ads in the Sunday paper. They have committed seemingly fatal errors, and their ministry died aborning. Left with a heavy bookshelf and a heavier heart, they wonder, What did I do wrong?

Although not all mistakes prove fatal to ministry, every one carries a price tag. Blunders severely limit one’s effectiveness. They cause painful setbacks requiring years to remedy. They close doors and dash dreams. They may even dishonor God. No one wants to make mistakes. Yet no one is immune.

Pastors and church leaders venture out, and some of them fall hard — some you would least expect.

Gordon Weekley was one such pastor. From all indications, Gordon appeared destined to preside as a prince of the church. He was born into a godly home in Atlanta, the heart of the Bible Belt. His home church, First Baptist, was pastored by a statesman of the denomination who later became Gordon’s seminary president, “and he had a great influence on me,” Gordon recalls.

Gordon’s path to ordination led him to college at Furman University and seminary at Southern Baptist in Louisville. After seminary, Gordon pastored two small churches in North Carolina, and then, in 1955, accepted a call to Charlotte to become the first pastor of the fledgling Providence Baptist Church. As Gordon put it, “They had a dream, eight acres, and that was it.” But Gordon went to work with his twenty-six people, determined to build a congregation. In the next thirteen years, 2,200 people joined the church. The prince had a golden touch.

Gordon enjoyed the prosperity of the church. A dedicated worker, he loved forging a new church out of nothing. Immersing himself in a day’s work came easily. Maybe too easily. It became nearly a day-and-night obsession.

As the church grew, even with the addition of staff, Gordon kept his frantic pace. “I saw everybody at least once or twice while they were in the hospital. And in the beginning I could, because the congregation was tiny. But I didn’t make the transition to a more sensible approach when the church grew to an unwieldy size,” Gordon admits.

Yet, even with the killing pace, Gordon loved his ministry. It was all he had ever hoped it would be. His church was growing. Its influence was spreading throughout the Charlotte area. People inside and outside the community were taking notice. Lives were being touched. Obviously, God was blessing the work. Gordon calls those “very happy and exciting years.” He was living the pastor’s dream.

Gordon enjoyed a warm friendship with a physician in his congregation. Their families were close, too, often piling into a station wagon and heading for the beach together in the summer. One day in 1958, Gordon mentioned to his friend, “Frank, I’ve got some signs of jitteriness I shouldn’t have, and I’m not sleeping well. You know of anything I can do for it?”

Frank thought for a minute and replied, “There’s a new drug out, and it’s a nonbarbiturate, not habit-forming. I think it might be the very thing for you.” He wrote out a prescription.

Gordon tried the new pill that evening and found it did seem to calm him and make him drowsy. But there was an unexpected side effect: a sense of euphoria. Gordon had to admit, he liked it. And the sleep was gratefully received into his fast-paced life.

The next day he awoke more refreshed than he had in weeks. He dove into his work with renewed energy and delight. He didn’t have to shut down at supper time; he had the energy to extend his day into the evening. He was pleased to be able to get more done. So pleased, in fact, that he took the pill that next night. It, too, calmed him and produced that euphoric boost. Soon the pill at bedtime became a regular practice.

As the days went by, the evening pill seemed to be doing less and less. The nervousness was surfacing again, and Gordon tossed and turned one night just like before. But not only was the calm passing, that nightly warm sense of joy was diminishing, too. If one pill makes me feel good, one and a half will make me feel even better, Gordon thought. So he increased his dosage ever so little, and again basked in that encompassing sense of euphoria. That mistake proved his undoing.

Gordon claims it wasn’t the pressure of ministry that caused his problems. He was having such a good time that he wasn’t even sure there were pressures. After all, people were coming to know the Lord. Buildings were being built and staff members integrated into the ministry. Gordon rode the Providence Church crest with great satisfaction. He was an accomplished pastor beloved by his growing congregation. Maybe there were pressures, but they were the good kind, the ones resulting from growth and prosperity.

And there were always the pills at the end of the evening to smooth the rough edges and make him feel good. The wonders of medical science!

Frank was a good buddy, and because he was so close to Gordon, he didn’t pay that much attention to Gordon’s increasing requests for prescription refills. Had Gordon been a stranger, those requests for greater dosages would have sounded an alarm. But Frank trusted Gordon, thinking it only seemed a short time ago that he approved the last refill. Gordon learned to play the situation well, and no one knew his problem.

Charlotte is Billy Graham’s home town. It was inevitable that the pastor of burgeoning Providence Baptist Church would eventually cross paths with the Graham family. In 1960 Gordon was invited to accompany the Graham team on his African crusade.

Prior to setting out, Gordon went to Frank and said, “I’m going to be over there with all those jungle sounds and all, and you know I’m such a horrible sleeper anyway. Maybe you need to give me a few more of these pills just in case — for this particular trip, anyway. And, uh, we’ll be doing a lot of traveling throughout some nights so we can speak during the days.”

“Well,” Frank replied, “you may need a little something to keep you alert.” So unbeknownst to anyone other than his doctor, the promising young pastor observed the African crusade with a pocket full of amphetamines. He found he got a lift from them, too, and he grew to like their mood-changing, mind-altering effect — a lot.

Gordon hadn’t sought the euphoria in the first place, nor was it his intent to become hooked on it. His growing dependency on the uppers and downers was the work of what he considered harmless medications. For many months, he couldn’t admit that what he was really seeking was the euphoria, or that he was getting hooked on it. Drug addiction and pastoring a successful church just didn’t fit together. Princes don’t become junkies, do they?

Gordon waltzed this dangerous dance for about six years until Frank’s office nurse came to Frank in alarm: “Doctor, don’t you think we’re authorizing too many of these medications for Reverend Weekley from all these pharmacies?” She produced a record of Gordon’s prescriptions from multiple pharmacies.

“All these pharmacies?” Frank looked stricken. “Let me see that chart!” He had not been watching Gordon’s record. Why should he? If you can’t trust your pastor, who can you trust? He’d only wanted to help Gordon, but Gordon, in his continuing need for larger doses, had spread his prescriptions across pharmacies throughout the county.

As soon as Frank examined Gordon’s charts, he called him. “Gordon, why didn’t you tell me — you’re going all over the county to fill those prescriptions! That’s how addicts behave. I’m cutting off these prescriptions effective immediately.”

“C’mon, Frank,” Gordon replied, “you know I need those pills. You prescribed them yourself!” Gordon was wheedling now, but it didn’t work. Frank shut the valve, leaving Gordon without the flow of drugs.

So Gordon sought other sources. He was a cagey user. Never did he have to resort to street sales. A distinguished, urbane man, Gordon conned dozens of doctors into writing him a prescription. At one point, Gordon had a string of physicians and pharmacies running from Charlotte to Richmond. Town by town by town, he’d make a regular run to pick up enough “legal” prescription drugs to last him a month.

With all his ploys, still Gordon was strangely ignorant of his own danger. “I stayed with the church some time after my problem began, and eventually everyone but me knew something was wrong,” said Gordon. “The addict is always the last one to know. Like all addicts, I labored under two handicaps: delusion and compulsion.”

In the pulpit Gordon’s demeanor became hyper — talking too fast, facial muscles twitching, awkward gestures, and sometimes slurred speech. His wife noticed. She would say, “Have you looked in the mirror recently?” and Gordon would respond, “Of course. I look at myself every day.” But he couldn’t see what others saw.

What others saw wasn’t good. From a healthy weight of 180 pounds, Gordon dropped to 126. One woman in the congregation told him outright, “You look like walking death!” But Gordon couldn’t understand. The amphetamines made him feel healthy and energetic. He thought he could take on the world — until the effect wore off, and he would drop into deep depression.

Finally one Friday morning in November 1967, Gordon looked into the bathroom mirror. He recalls: “I can’t tell you why the image had escaped me for so long, but that morning I saw a gaunt, emaciated, ashen-skinned man staring back at me, and I was frightened.” He spent the next couple of hours in frantic, bewildered self-recrimination, and then sat down and penned his resignation from Providence Church. He sent the letter to the church with his son and didn’t set foot in that church again for fifteen years.

The church had not fired Gordon, a kindness he clings to to this day: “They never did let go of me!” They loved him and prayed for him, asking that he be delivered. But that monkey on his back had a firm grip.

A parishioner arranged a job for Gordon, but within four months it became obvious he couldn’t handle it. He spent the next eight months in a private mental hospital for depression. When he left the hospital, he was back in search of his drugs within forty-eight hours.

During the next six years — wandering from town to town, in and out of treatment programs and mental hospitals, spiraling downward — the prince, the pastor of a stellar church, the guy whose “success” most pastors only envy, became a pauper. His church had given him a gracious, beautiful home — not a parsonage but his own home — and he lost it. His marriage broke up. He alienated his children. He could neither find nor hold a steady job.

Gordon took to wandering, removing himself from the reach of all those who loved him and wanted to rescue him. Living on a meager disability check, the pauper took up residence on street corners, park benches, and in rescue missions. Finally mixing alcohol with drugs, Gordon hit bottom. The director of the Charlotte YMCA had to throw him out on the street — Gordon, the erstwhile civic leader — for the drunken disturbance he was causing.

Today, presiding over the recovery center he directs in Charlotte, Gordon once again projects prince-like qualities.

“I wrested myself from the grip of God and wandered for seven years, but I never lost my salvation,” Gordon explains. “And something I thought I had lost, I hadn’t: my calling. I had blown my ministry sky high. I had divorced, lost my church — I had nothing. I was an addicted, fallen preacher. But a deacon friend visiting me asked, ‘Have you forgotten Romans 11:29, that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance?”‘ I was stunned into silence. But it was true.

“It took some doing, but I did return to my calling. And I found when God fixes you back up, he fixes you better than ever before.”

So how was Gordon “fixed up”? It happened as suddenly as the downward spiral had been gradual. Gordon was holing up in the facility he now directs, the rescue mission where he occasionally preached as a pastor for the “poor, drunken bums,” and he cried out one night in September 1976: “God, either fix me up or take me away!”

He meant it. And God did it. The next morning when Gordon woke up, he headed for the medicine cabinet for the pick-me-up pill he always popped. But for the first time in eleven years, Gordon realized he didn’t want one. He hasn’t had one since.

It was nothing short of a miracle. There is simply no other explanation for it. Gordon has since been told that the quantities of medication he was taking should have left him a vegetable, if not killed him outright, yet today he is healthy. He should have experienced terrible seizures as he came down from his dependency, yet it never happened.

Gordon received love from many sources. Even during his darkest days, deacons from Providence Baptist sought him out in the mental hospital. Preacher friends found him, even as he tried to hide from them, and they pressed their concern on him. Hundreds of people kept praying.

Now Gordon again meets in executive sessions with the Y director who once tossed him onto the street. He preaches in pulpits across the South. Rebound, the center he now directs, is resurrecting other lives like his. From the depths of a colossal mistake, Gordon has returned to productive and satisfying ministry.

Gordon’s story may seem almost too pat: a pastor’s mistake tumbles him into dramatic circumstances, he lives through a nightmare, and he recovers from it following a desperate prayer. But Gordon’s experience illustrates several points.

First, no one — not even a pastor, not even a successful pastor, a nice person like you or me — escapes mistakes. Failure grabs the spiritual along with the unspiritual.

Second, serious mistakes may begin with small, seemingly innocent decisions. Who would have thought a “harmless” prescription would eventually cost Gordon nearly everything?

Third, Gordon, like many of us, displayed the natural tendency to downplay the danger and ignore warning signs. This mistake on top of his original mistake compounded the mess.

Often pastoral mistakes are more subtle than Gordon’s. “What about those mistakes that aren’t resolved with a snap of your fingers?” you ask. “I’m not going to become a junkie. My mistakes are more likely to be hiring a mismatch for a staff position or starting an experimental worship service that bombs. How can I recover from these kinds of blunders?”

Mistakes do come in all guises, from garden-variety goofs to mortal sins. The following chapters will examine the rogues’ gallery of outright failures and not-so-obvious blunders.