American pastor Rusty Williams has an amazing life story to tell, as well as a story about developing his faith. The occasion was his long-term effort to build a church—a vision that took 14 years to accomplish! While preparing the written version of this interview, I attended the first worship service in the completed church, just as HopeTV was broadcasting the programme.
The last 14 years of your life have revolved around the project to build the new church in Alpharetta. Have you ever considered that you have followed in the footsteps of previous generations in your family?
That’s true. My father played a key role in building a church in Cohutta, Georgia, and my grandfather in building a church in Apison, Tennessee. However, my parents ended up leaving the church for many years.
Did that happen before or after the church was built?
Afterwards.
Sometimes, after such devotion and sacrifice, problems arise.
I was in seventh grade. On Saturday mornings, it’s often the children who say, “I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to do that.” But now it was the parents! I said, “I have to go to church.”
My dad drove me there and dropped me off at a different church to the one he had built.
Then came my teenage years. When I was 14, all my close friends had become so rebellious that they decided to stop going to church. After a while, I stopped going to church too. I’d stay home and watch cartoons, which, back then, were only broadcast on Saturdays. At first, I wasn’t doing anything terribly wrong, but after I started hanging out with the wrong crowd, I ended up drinking alcohol, smoking, and doing drugs.
Was there no one in your family to support you? Not even your grandparents?
It’s interesting that you ask me that. When I was 21, I told God that I would return to church by the time I was 27.
Very specific!
But God couldn’t wait that long; God made me return at 21.
What happened?
After seven years of not going, my grandfather invited me to a series of sermons. People from the church also came to the garage where I worked as a mechanic for my dad and invited us to the event. I looked at the flyer. This was around 1990, when America was about to go to war with Iraq. I wondered what was going on. The flyer said they were going to talk about events in the Middle East, the Pope, and similar topics, and I thought, “This interests me; I’ll attend.”
The preacher said right from the start that there would be 18 more presentations, which shocked me. I thought, “This must be a joke.” The sermon on the first night didn’t address any of the questions in the brochure.
I thought, “I’m not going to attend 18 meetings!” I left and did what I usually did on Friday nights: I went out drinking. I didn’t think about the meetings again.
After about nine gatherings, my grandmother needed a lift. Isn’t that interesting?! It was my grandfather who had invited me to the meetings in the first place, but now it was my grandmother who needed a lift. I told her, “I’ll give you a lift.” I was still interested in the presentations. That evening, the preacher started to answer the questions in the pamphlet. So, I kept going.
While I was there, something incredible happened: God revealed Himself. I was sitting there, following the programme and watching the preacher, when I suddenly realised that something was happening in the hall. I realised it was God’s presence. I was amazed. I thought, “This means something!” I don’t remember ever having this experience before, although I later recalled God’s presence from when I was a child since God reveals Himself to children, too but I hadn’t realised what it was all about before.
I went through a period when I thought, “Maybe I’ll quit smoking for Jesus; that would be a good thing.” I managed not to smoke for a week, but I didn’t want to give up alcohol and drugs. They have a narcotic effect; you lose your willpower. I didn’t smoke for a week, but then I started again. You feel so small! You don’t know what’s happening. You say you want to stop, but then you say you want to carry on, you’re no longer thinking clearly.
Another week went by, and I said to myself, “That’s it, I’m doing it! What could be better than quitting smoking for Jesus?” I didn’t smoke for another week, but I drank, and then I drank and smoked again. It just happened. I was drunk; I’d had some beer. I was talking to a friend about the meetings I was attending, Jesus’s return, and how fed up I was with that lifestyle. I was frustrated that I couldn’t quit smoking. I spilled my beer, crushed my cigarettes, turned to my friend and announced, “I’m going to be baptised this Wednesday night!”
This Wednesday night?
Yes. I asked them, “Are you coming to my baptism?” When I woke up the next day, I was no longer drunk and thought, “What have I done?!” However, I had told everyone that I was going to be baptised, so I called the pastor and told them that I wanted to be baptised on Wednesday. He said, “Yes, you can come.”
About a month later, I was sitting in my room when I felt God’s presence. It was as if he were telling me, “Rusty, I want you to go to Southern University and study to become a pastor.” I can assure you that I took that to be the voice of God, because it was the last thing I would ever have thought of myself. I wasn’t a public person and couldn’t stand being in the spotlight.
What were your initial career plans, and what courses were you taking at the time?
Business finance. I was a third-year student and had passed all my general education courses when I made this radical change. Many people supported me during that time. I made a Hungarian friend. He was a different kind of person. He was friendly, but he was also different. He had an amazing and sincere relationship with God and knew Jesus without a doubt. His life of prayer had a huge influence on my work as a pastor.
Later, while studying for a Master’s degree, I read a book by one of my professors. I was deeply moved by a passage about God’s presence. The idea was that when you don’t feel God’s presence, you must trust that God is still there. Sometimes, you pray and don’t feel God’s presence, and sometimes, you pray and do feel it. I later learned that if you pray for long enough, you will always feel God’s presence. If you reach that point in your prayers and remain there for long enough, you will always feel God’s presence.
Thanks to the active influence of these people, my faith is now unshakable. I’m sure you’ve also filled out a questionnaire about spiritual gifts. I did one too and found that I have three main gifts: leadership, administration, and teaching. However, when I looked at the other spiritual gifts, I scored 3 out of 22 or 24 under “faith”! Do you know what I thought that meant? That my faith is just a figment of my imagination. In other words, God says He will do this or that, and I think, “Will He, though?” To be honest, I told myself back then, “I don’t want illusions!”
Three or four years ago, I took the test again. God had been working in my life, and when I took the test again, my three gifts were confirmed: leadership, administration, and teaching or preaching. As for faith, where I’d previously scored three points, ten years later I scored twenty-two! I realised that this wasn’t about illusions anymore. God had guided me through an experience through which I grew in faith. God doesn’t leave you where you are; He helps you grow in faith.
Can you tell us about that experience?
About 15 years ago, I founded a new church in Alpharetta, a suburb north of Atlanta. But the construction process was long. Firstly, an acre of land cost between $150,000 and $175,000. We started with 60 people, and it took seven years to raise the first $100,000. It was an interesting journey: we began to pray, and our trust in God grew.
One person through whom God worked was Rick Mosley, the chairman of the building committee and a real estate agent. He would always say, “We need to buy some land.” I would reply, “We don’t have any money.” But he insisted, “It doesn’t matter, we need to buy some land.”
He found 10 acres of land for $2.1 million. The economic recession had begun and the owner had committed suicide. The whole country was in a downward spiral and home prices had dropped drastically. We didn’t realise that land prices had fallen as well. The land that had cost $2.1 million was now on sale for $500,000 but we managed to buy it for just $400,000.
What an astonishing difference!
Instead of paying $150,000 per acre, we bought the 10 acres for just $40,000 per acre. Even so, we didn’t have all the money, so we took out a loan. However, we still didn’t have any money for construction. I began to doubt the whole project.
Then, a woman from church started saying, “We must not only pray, but also fast.” We returned to fasting and prayer. Meanwhile, the economy had begun to recover and the estate agent called me. He had found a buyer for our property and recommended that we sell it and buy another one further away. He told me to invite the client to come and see me, and to tell him that we wanted £975,000—otherwise, we wouldn’t sell. It seemed crazy!
The client, who represented a large company, came to see me and didn’t even try to negotiate. He offered us $975,000. After paying off the loan, we were left with £500,000 for the church. That was the first miracle, and we were amazed. We had sold the land and had an extra $500,000.
As the economy was recovering, we started looking for another property. Prices were rising, but our budget remained the same. Finally, we found a 10-acre plot for $75,000 per acre. It was located across the street from a neighbourhood of million-dollar homes. The residents suddenly began to oppose the plan. We said that the Lord would grant us victory. We prayed and signed the land contract. We did everything we could. However, a committee we were depending on put our project to a vote and rejected it.
Across the street lived a man who was much richer than any of us could ever have imagined. He boasted that he was selling one of his companies for $2.2 billion.
Billion?!
Yes. He was opposed to our project. I thought, “Maybe we should try to befriend him.” I arranged a meeting. I was calm, but he was very upset. I thanked him for coming to the meeting. He replied, “If you had got angry with me, I would have stood my ground, but I can see that you are very kind.” I don’t know what that person did for a living, but we prayed and decided to get to know our other neighbours as well.
We organised another meeting. The neighbourhood was a gated community. I thought, “Let’s tell them about our beliefs.” I spoke to them about Jesus, the Sabbath, the state of the dead, and hell—all in seven minutes. A woman came up to me in tears, saying she was so happy to learn that her mother wasn’t burning in hell. Another person apologised for his church changing the Sabbath day. I thought, “At least we know the people in this gated community!”
Perhaps that man hadn’t made much money from the sale, but he had enough to do whatever he wanted. He called me and said, “I’m hiring a team of lawyers at $550 an hour to sue the city, and then I’ll sue you. You’re not going to build a church in this upscale neighbourhood!” I was stunned. “Lord, what are we going to do? I don’t want to be sued.”
And spend all your money on lawyers!
Exactly. The city officials said, “You’ll win, but it’ll be very costly and the trial will drag on forever.” I’d seen things like that before. The trials had lasted five, six, or seven years. In the end, you win the case, but at what cost?
The Bible says that victory belongs to the Lord and that He will fight for us. But this person is suing us. Jesus said, “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” I asked myself, “How do you reconcile these two things?!”
Maybe we should just give in. Besides, let’s suppose we win the lawsuit. What would we do after that? Invite our neighbours to church? That wouldn’t work! We reached an agreement whereby that gentleman gave us $188,000 in exchange for us giving up that piece of land. We weren’t even the owners, but thanks to the Lord, we earned some money.
Now, we have to buy land a little further away. I was afraid it would take a year and that land prices would increase in the meantime. Both of those things turned out to be true. After much prayer, the Lord led us to another property.
It took a very long time, a year, but I had faith. In the meantime, interest accrued on the money we had in the bank. We found a 10-acre property. After lengthy negotiations and discussions with neighbours and officials, we bought nine acres for $20,000 per acre.
I thought to myself, “This is God’s work!” When we arrived there, I said, “Let’s not view the prices of these properties as if we were grasshoppers in their presence. God will provide. I don’t know how, what, or when, but God will provide.” Looking back on that statement of faith, made 14 years earlier, I suddenly realised: “Yes, God had done exactly that.”
Fourteen years had passed, though, filled with negotiations, committees, calculations, construction preparations, and the building site. What happened to the church members in the meantime?
Your words remind me of my parents, who faced the same problem: they built a church, but then stood on the sidelines for 20 years. But God hadn’t finished His work. I don’t know how He was working in their lives, but He sent some people from a church 45 minutes away. They wanted to see a horse, so they suggested, “Why don’t we go and see Larry’s horse?” After talking about the horse, my dad was invited back to the church after 20 years. He had to pass 15 other churches to get there, and he still goes there today. God is certainly at work!
I’m so glad to hear that!
When we say “church”, it’s not just about bricks and mortar, it’s about fellowship among people. Together, we are building the Kingdom of God. We prioritise a life of prayer, and that is how we strengthen our faith.
