First Baptist Atlanta Honors Life of Dr. Charles Stanley

“When you look at the people that were great giants of faith in the Bible, every one of them was handpicked by God,” he said. “Here, we’re celebrating a man who was born to a poor couple in a rural intersection north of Danville, Virginia, Dr. Charles Stanley,” George continued. “He was born to a textile mill worker. His dad died when he was only 9 months old. He used to talk about his mother working in the bleachery of Dan River Mills … he used to look at his mother as a single mother and see her come home absolutely worn out and hoping he had been OK from the time he got home from school and she got off her shift at the textile mill.”

George pointed out that Stanley grew up in a “humble home.”

“Nearly every kid he played with had a daddy, and he used to tell the stories about how there was a vacant lot beside his house, and the boys from his school would all play games and athletics in that field, and then inevitably, their dads would get off work and drive up and honk the horn,” he added. “One at a time, those little boys would go jump in the car with their dad and he’d watched the taillights of their cars drive off and look up and say, ‘God, why don’t I have a daddy to come honk the horn and let me get in the car?’ These are the kinds of things he talked about even in the twilight years of his life.”

God “looked down from Heaven and said, ‘I want him. I’m choosing him. He is going to be a broken vessel. He’s going to be a vessel who realizes he needs a different kind of daddy, a daddy that he didn’t have on Earth, I’ll be a heavenly daddy to Him,'” George said.

“And God put His calling upon his life, supernaturally. The call came from God, and God’s call comes to us too.”

Stanley, the founder of In Touch Ministries, passed away last Tuesday in his home. He served as First Baptist Church of Atlanta’s senior pastor from 1971 to 2020.

Before George’s sermon, the First Baptist Atlanta congregation sang some of Stanley’s favorite hymns and “Battle Belongs,” a modern worship song by Phil Wickham.

George also addressed some of the challenges Stanley faced in his ministry, including being rejected by the committee when he first applied to be the senior pastor in 1971, just a few years after joining the church as an associate pastor in 1969.

The prominent pastor had also been punched in the face by a church board member after warning him not to use a curse word. During the 1990s, Stanley faced opposition to his senior pastor role from his church after his marriage to Anna Johnson fell apart. According to church bylaws, divorced men were prohibited from serving as deacons or ministers.

“Almost half the church wanted him ousted because his marriage fell apart,” George said.

“But he said, ‘I can’t quit. God has called me to preach. So he didn’t, he didn’t quit,” he continued. “I’m not here to argue the merits of that. I’m just telling you when he was going through that time, behind the scenes, he was broken. He was being spilled out. And we could go on and on through other things that we know he’s been through in public life. Remember this: God was not just working through him. He was working in him and on him.”

Photo courtesy: ©Department of Defense/Sgt. Nancy Lugo/Public Domain

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.