Three years ago, Zack Williams, a struggling drug addict and alcoholic wandering through a spiritual void, found himself alone on a barren Utah mountainside in the bitter, sub-zero cold of November.
Zack and Summer WilliamsThe York native, after 10 years of addiction and four rehab stints, had gone West in a last-ditch attempt to turn his life around through a wilderness substance-abuse recovery program. Part of the regimen meant spending three days alone on the mountain.
Williams had been reading a Bible for about six weeks, but he wasn’t allowed to take it with him up the mountain for his “solo.” A sympathetic counselor advised him to “take time to listen” to God while he was on his own.
The third day on the mountain, Williams was praying and listening. While writing a letter to his wife, Summer, he tried in vain to remember the words from Scripture that followed “For God so loved the world -” when the thought suddenly dawned on him: “For God so loved – Zack.”
The moment “was like something out of a movie,” said Williams. The wind began to blow, Williams “cried out to God” and repented of his sins, and he immediately heard God’s voice in his mind, telling him to go and preach the gospel.
From that moment, he left behind a life of sleeping in a van in a hospital parking lot (so he wouldn’t be robbed) and began to turn his life around. He stopped being verbally and emotionally abusive to his wife (who he said never stopped witnessing to him and praying for him throughout his addiction) and began spending more time with his two young sons, Tucker and Noah. He took classes at Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute in North Carolina and Foothills Theological School in Landrum.
After serving a short time as a youth pastor, he became pastor of Second Baptist Church, Great Falls, in April 2011. In June of the same year, his church started a seven-day revival meeting that turned into a 50-day meeting resulting in 50 salvations and altering the spiritual landscape of his town. Other churches joined in the meetings and impromptu prayer meetings that sometimes extended from evening into the early-morning hours.
Williams’ church led Chester Baptist Association with 38 baptisms last year.
Three years after finding God on a mountainside in Utah, Williams, 30, was recognized Nov. 13 as the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s Small Church Pastor of the Year during the SCBC’s annual meeting in Greenville.
“This is nothing I’ve done,” Williams said after receiving the award. “It’s the work of God. It shows that God can take anyone and use them for his glory if we only submit. He can use us in ways we could never have imagined.”