EP 28 — FOR REAL · MADE HERE
Rev. Otis Weatherspoon
Senior pastor of a church two streets from his old corner
SAMPLE PROFILE — FILM SLOT
His story is coming to the series soon.
The Corner
Otis Weatherspoon was raised mostly by his grandmother in a house near First and Eureka, and she kept him in church whether he liked it or not. He didn't. By seventeen he was spending more time on a corner than a pew, holding money, feeling necessary.
An arrest at eighteen didn't stick, but the night in a cell did. He remembers the sound of the door more than anything the officers said.
I know that corner. I stood on it. More's waiting on you than what's out there.
Two Streets Over
His grandmother never lectured him after that. She just asked him to drive her to church, every service, for a year. Somewhere in that year the sermons stopped bouncing off.
He worked regular jobs for a decade, answered a call to ministry at thirty-one, and did seminary coursework nights and summers. Today he's senior pastor of a congregation two streets from his old corner, not far from Douglass Park. Some of the men he stood out there with sit in his pews now. A couple are deacons. He doesn't tell that story as a miracle. He tells it as an option.