John Wecks wasn’t planning to stay in the pastor role forever. He actually wanted to teach and train pastors. John says, “That was always my long-range goal, to go into teaching. But I felt like I needed to pastor, because I would be teaching pastors at a Bible college or seminary.” By 1983, John had decided that it was time for him to move on from his role.
He had already made that decision when the trials began. John recounts that, for a number of reasons, it was a very difficult season for the church. He shares, “In those six months before I left, we had one situation after another of hurt and pain in the church. Randy and Martha McCracken—he was one of the elders—their oldest daughter, Amy, got sick with a brain tumor and died within six months. [She was] seventeen. Well, when she died, eighteen. She died Easter morning.”
Tad Cooper recalls the sad scenario too. “When we came to the church, she was sick,” he says of Amy McCracken. “She had cancer. And she actually died on our first anniversary, April 3rd of 1983.”
As sad as Amy’s death was, though, the church’s season of tragedy wasn’t over. John shares more:
There was a lot. Mo Anvani and his wife Lisa—who I mentioned that I led to the Lord—he put his two boys in the car to go to Carlsbad Caverns on vacation. Couldn't talk the man into a vacation—finally talked him into it. So he was headed out East Texas toward Carlsbad Caverns [and] blew out a front tire. This was before seatbelts. It was hot, the windows were down, [and] all four of them were tossed out of the car as it flipped six times. And Mo got caught under the car, and he would have been burnt by the exhaust except the head of one of his boys was between his knee and the exhaust, and that boy's face was just burned and disfigured. The mother, Lisa, was thrown out the window, and her body was thrown onto a barbed wire fence. She had forty-two breaks between her neck and her pelvis and wasn't expected to live. The oldest son jumped out the window while [the car] was flipping, somehow, and landed in grass, and he was the least hurt of any of the four. But that happened around the same time as Amy's death….
They all survived, and she [Lisa] became pregnant again. She was told at one point she'd never have children again. She did become pregnant. Had a third child. They named that child after me, John, and he died within a short time. Well, my heart sank again for this family.
Around the same time as these events, there was another difficult situation—not another death (thankfully) but an issue of church discipline. John says, “One of our regular attendees had to be disciplined by the church….He was publicly disciplined by me from the pulpit in a very gracious, loving way. And I encouraged the people to pray for him.”
John and Tad Cooper both reached out to this struggling member. Tad recalls:
There was a guy.…who had married into a family that was in the church. And this family is a pretty troubled family in a lot of respects, but I began building a relationship with this man who was a bit younger than me, and he already had two or three children. His marriage relationship was in turmoil….
It was a hard time….John and I dealt with this a lot, but I was discipling this man, and he really started struggling and turning away from the Lord. He had a struggle with drinking….
Where the church was—1217 South Carrier, just up on Main Street and over in Arlington—was the county line, and back in the day Grand Prairie was dry….It was a dry county. And so they had a bunch of bars right there on the county line of Lincoln and Grand Prairie. And so, on I want to say two or three occasions—I did it, [and] at least on one occasion John Wecks and I went together—we looked through the bars, and we’d go get him [this church member], and we’d pull him out, literally….
And I remember one time….John and I were there, and we said, “Come on, let's take you home.” And in his kind of drunken stupor, he said, “You see these two guys? These guys really love me.”
That's a kind of a fond memory [of] God working through imperfect, frail people, to try to help other people who are struggling. And God used John and me in that time, in that situation. And [the] sad, tough thing was we had to end up basically disfellowshipping. [He was] kicked out of the church. We did the steps in Matthew 18 and had to follow through.
The church is called to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), and in a small congregation especially, situations of such grief and heaviness certainly take their toll on the church body. They also take a heavy toll on the pastor. John describes the experience of trying to shepherd and comfort the church effectively through this season:
I was so distraught that I'm not sure I was a good pastor to too many who also might have been grieving. I mean [it was] just devastating….I was also working on my doctorate in ministry. [The] stresses of all this were just pressing on me and vicious….I went to a Christian counselor because I knew I just needed help. So that's what I did, and I was helped. Greatly.
Even amid such dire challenges for the church, John was able to find help and hope. And surely God used him—imperfect and struggling himself, but a faithful minister of the gospel nonetheless—to shepherd the church effectively during this time and point them closer to Christ.
Thankfully, not all of these stories ended in tragedy, and some of what was lost was restored. After their horrible accident and the loss of their baby, God blessed the Anvanis. John shares, “They became pregnant with a fourth child, and he lived and is thriving and doing very well. In fact, I think they had two more boys. Anyway, they're doing really, really well in the Lord. And in life.”
Regarding the man who was removed from the church for his habitual sin, John says, “He eventually repented. And came back and publicly confessed and told everyone he had repented. And he was welcomed.”
According to Tad, “Earl Swain … apparently, he saw this young man, who was no longer young, a number of years later. And he got involved in a cowboy church maybe in Midlothian, I don't know exactly where. But apparently he really got back with the Lord.” John also adds that the man “eventually became a cowboy pastor.”
God was and has always been faithful to build and bless His church, even in times of strife. Sometimes He even does so, not despite, but through times of strife. But, as Scripture says that God uses trials to produce perseverance, character, and hope (Romans 5:3–5), Grand Prairie Bible Church persevered through this season and continued to live out God’s calling for His church.