Pastor Says Glory Goes to the Ministry, Not the Minister

A Palm Springs radio station had Buena Park pastor Wiley Drake on the air Tuesday morning and didn’t ask a single question about homeless people sleeping in his church parking lot. Instead, the interviewer wanted his take on the TV sitcom character “Ellen� coming out of the closet on a future episode.

A mark of Drake’s media status is that the interviewer was merely the latest in a long line of people, both local and national, who want a piece of his mind. And let it be said that this 53-year-old Baptist preacher does not flinch from the opportunity. Neither camera nor microphone nor notebook intimidates this native Texan, who says he is only doing God’s work on Earth and if the city of Buena Park wants to rumble with him, well, so be it and bring it on.

Because there are skeptics as well as heathens among us, the protracted squabble led me to this question for him: In the ongoing saga of Wiley Drake and the homeless, how much of it is about Wiley Drake and how much of it is about the homeless?

A fair question, Drake conceded as he sat in his sparsely decorated First Southern Baptist Church office after doing the radio spot. He begins by pointing out that he was ministering to the poor and needy long before anyone saw his name in the papers.

“Here’s the thing,� he says in his Texas drawl. “In spite of the fact that I probably have been rightly accused of being somewhat self-aggrandizing and a media freak, the point of it is, in all honesty, I began to think several years ago that I was not going to get all that. And I was just going to have to settle back and agree that I was going to be a nobody. And I accepted that. And the fact that I have become a somebody now. . . . “

He doesn’t finish that thought other than to point out that while in Boston last week, a woman on the street said she recognized him from TV.

Drake faces nine misdemeanor counts filed by the city. The nub of the issue, he says, is his refusal to personally order homeless people off church property. He would negotiate on every other alleged violation but that one, he says.

And that’s why--once you get past unanswerable questions about whether Drake is a media hot dog or not--this issue is worth the attention. Take Drake out of the equation and ask this question about the homeless in a county that doesn’t have enough facilities for them: What would Jesus do?

“The Scripture says as much as possible, live under man’s law,� Drake says. “But it comes to a point where sometimes you have to obey God’s law rather than man’s, and that’s where we’re at on this one issue.�

Drake’s moment of truth, he says, came one Monday morning about six years ago when he encountered a man who had spent the night outdoors, under a church breezeway. The man had urinated on himself, left beer cans lying around and was stinking drunk when Drake came to work.

“I became very indignant,� Drake says. “How dare he come onto God’s property, how dare he come on church ground and pass out with his beer cans and pee on himself? And I got very angry and kicked him and made him leave. As he finally got to his feet, he looked at me with deep, hurting eyes and said, ‘I didn’t think I’d be treated like this by a church.’ �

Because Drake is so media-savvy, the temptation is to doubt the story. It’s too pat, too good. But Drake’s track record since then lends authenticity to the account.

“I came to a decision in my ministry after that incident,� Drake says. “I came to this church [in 1987] to use it as a steppingstone to go to a larger church, and by 1996 I wanted to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I began to realize I was not going to become that. I began to realize God had called me to a ministry that had very little notoriety, very little glory, and it was dealing with drunks, pimps, prostitutes and poor people and con artists, and I began to realize our ministry was changing. And I came to a crossroads: Did I really believe that Christianity made a difference in people’s lives, as it had in mine, or was it just another club?�

When he arrived 10 years ago, the church gave out free dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the needy seldom numbered more than a dozen or so. If Christian charity was all right then, why is it not now when the number of needy is greater, Drake asks.

It is not lost on Drake that he found the limelight he thought he would never see. “At this point, I’ve sort of shifted gears and said, ‘Yes, I do want the attention,’ � he says. “Because I think it’s bigger than First Southern Baptist Church. And bigger than Wiley Drake. And bigger than Buena Park.�

How big remains to be seen. In the meantime, Drake says, the issue is simple: “I have made it very clear to the city and USA Today and AP and Dan Rather’s group that I have one boss, and he is God. I’m a Baptist and proud to be one. . . . But the bottom line is that I’m not here to serve Baptists. I’m here to serve God.�

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.