Barrow Co pastor back in pulpit after tough battle with COVID

A Barrow County church got a special treat on Easter Sunday. After four months battling COVID, its beloved pastor was back in the pulpit.

By all accounts, 38-year-old Zach Adams is a walking miracle. The doctors and nurses who treated him, didn’t expect him to live, much less return to the job he was called to do--preach.

“I am the pastor of Calvary 316 back from a four-month vacation,” he began the sermon. “It was an interesting ride.”

After being diagnosed with COVID just after Christmas, Adams was taken by ambulance to a local emergency room in Monroe on Jan. 4, barely able to breathe. He credits the paramedics with understanding the gravity of the situation.

“I can say with 100 percent certainty that, if not for their swift actions, I would have died. Those gentlemen saved my life,” he tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

Days later Adams would be transferred to Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta where he was put on a ventilator and a coma was induced.

“COVID destroyed me--from my lungs being incredibly damaged to… full kidney failure. Again, I was on death’s doorstep,” he says.

His father, also a pastor, asked the doctors what was needed to give the family hope. He was told his son had to wake up. And he did on Feb. 3.

“The doctor immediately tried to temper the expectations of my family. He told my dad even if he lives, he’ll never preach again. He’ll have a hard time carrying on a prolonged conversation. He even said my family should expect me to be on a ventilator for the rest of my life,” says Adams.

But defying those odds, the tracheostomy tube in his neck would eventually be removed and Adams was released from the hospital on March 12, breathing on his own. And on Easter Sunday, seated in a chair, he preached for the first time to his congregation since Dec. 19.

“I am not here apart from a miracle,” he told church members. “So, if you need evidence of the miraculous power of Jesus Christ, I’m sitting here.”

Adams is still unable to use his arms which fell out of joint while he was in a coma. That too is expected to heal. When asked why he was allowed to go through this, he answered, “Why not?”.

“I might never know ‘why’ until Heaven. But it’s not for me to know why. It’s for me to know that God has a purpose in my life because I’m alive. And if you’re alive, there’s a purpose,” he says.

For now, Adams will continue to preach and be thankful that his wife has a husband, his children have a father, and that he can go on sharing God’s word.

“It’s been inspiring just to see how the Lord has used a very difficult thing that me and my family have gone through, to encourage other people and their trials,” he says.

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