From homeless addict to theology student

DALLAS—One night six years ago, somewhere between Fort Worth and Dallas, Hal Benard Carouthers was hunkered down on all fours in the dirt behind orange barricade barrels and heavy equipment at a freeway road construction site, praying to God for a rescue. The dizzying blur of cars and trucks sped past, each emitting a loud “whoosh” and a blast of night air.

Still revving from a cocaine binge and unable to come down, he was insane, he recalled. He’s convinced of it. Inanimate objects were doing strange things back in Fort Worth, before he’d started his trek down the side of the freeway toward Dallas. The television was talking back to him.

He had tried to get sober by drinking himself down.

“But God wouldn’t let me fall asleep,” Carouthers said.

Somewhere along the asphalt, he broke, waving the white flag to the God who had been reminding him of a commitment he’d made as a teenager.

He’s been sober ever since that night.

He has the peace that comes with assurance, and is working out his salvation with gratitude, humility and submission.

Add to that a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Criswell College. He walked last month, and plans to enter a master’s degree program there this fall.

That night on the freeway is sketchy in his mind. With the kindness of strangers at the Fort Worth bus station—he doesn’t know how he got there—he ended up in Dallas at a shelter, then at Parkland Hospital, then to the familiar confines of the Union Gospel Mission.

Weeks went by with no relapses. Weeks turned to months. Carouthers was again attending the Bible studies he had attended before at places like Union Gospel and Dallas Life Foundation, where he participated in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. He began to own the faith he had embraced as a teenager, that moment at age 16 when he said the gospel sunk in and he said yes to Jesus.

“I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face,” Carouthers recounted from that moment in the early 1970s. But that joy would later give way to drugs and alcohol, times of sensing the pull of God, and then relapses into addiction. He enlisted in the Army at age 17, also serving stints in the Navy and Air Force. He would bounce between the civilian world and the military; his time as a civilian was wrought with missteps—a mixture of good paying jobs (he graduated from several trade schools) and then months of addiction and homelessness.

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Bill Thompson, director of the Union Gospel Mission, and Bobby Worthington, then the director of the AA and NA programs at Dallas Life Foundation, knew Carouthers. He’d been around, but this time was different.   

“Hal came to Dallas Life twice, I think, in the 90s and then later. He was in our Christ-centered 12-step program. He was there recovering from that and you know, the Lord did a work in his life,” Worthington recalled.

“The thing to remember,” Worthington added, “is that God can move in the hearts of the homeless and they be saved.” Sometimes, the changes are radical.

Darren Larkins, who was converted at Dallas Life’s inner-city chapel, is in the master’s program at Criswell also.

“You don’t get to see that all the time but God does allow you to see it some of the time,” Worthington said.

Years ago as a Criswell College student himself, God placed the homeless of east Dallas on Worthington’s heart, he said. Now an adjunct professor of evangelism at the school and director of its urban missions and encounter missions programs, Worthington continues to see the homeless as a mission field.

Worthington keeps in touch with Carouthers, encouraged him to enter the master’s program in the fall and is scheduled to serve on Carouthers’ ordination council this summer.

“As a professor you are mentoring students in the classroom and outside of the classroom, and you get these rewards,” Worthington said. “To see him go through the struggles and the change that God has brought in his life, it just means a lot to me. It means a lot to me to be able to go to his ordination service. That’s just the spirit of God working in his life.”

The decision to go to Criswell was slow coming.

“One of the chaplains told me, ‘You need to get started on what God has for you to do because you may not be able to even finish it.’ Dr. Bill Thompson told me, ‘You are getting older and you will want to be able to minister effectively.’”

Thompson was the one who pushed for Carouthers to enter Criswell College. Once there, Carothers was pleasantly surprised, he said, to see a familiar face in Worthington teaching there.

“I was going to serve God no matter what,” Carouthers said. “Criswell had been burning in my mind and for the first time in my life I knew that was where God would have me be. Dr. Worthington encouraged me and made himself available to me, as did several other of the professors.”

Mentors such as Worthington, James Bryant, Daniel Streett and David Brooks challenged him, cheered him on, made sure he had what he needed.

“How you doin’, Hal?” Brooks would ask. “You need anything?”

“Hanging in there,” he’d respond.

“Well, you are hanging well,” Brooks would quip.

“Those professors kept me going,” Carouthers recounted.

It was during Streett’s Greek classes—taught by a language immersion method—that Carouthers recalled hitting an academic wall. Streett and Brooks have Ivy League degrees. Carouthers, with some community college under his belt, was feeling overwhelmed, he said.

“I realized the Holy Spirit was developing my inner man to do those things that he would have me to do. When things got difficult in Greek, for instance, and I got to a point where it was really heavy on me and I felt like I couldn’t go any further, I knew to lean on the Holy Spirit and not on me. I was obedient to continue studying until I found myself making really good grades because I kept my mind on Christ and not on what I could do. I give credit to the Holy Spirit.”

Through it all, Carouthers was being immersed in Scripture and the way of Christ. Two years ago he began teaching a men’s Sunday School class at the Bible church that meets at Union Gospel. Carouthers has also preached there.

With 140 additional beds planned at the mission, Carouthers is hoping to be added as a paid chaplain. In the meantime, he will continue his theological education at Criswell.

Carouthers eventually wishes to pastor a church, he said.

“It’s because of God that I graduated, and he did that for his purposes and his kingdom. And I don’t think he’s through. I have high expectations of being used. But if he didn’t do anything else for me, I’m happy and content.”