If
anyone can be educated to drink in a socially acceptable way, Arthur Williams
had all the education anyone could want. By the time he was 15 years old,
he could not remember anytime in his life when his father's excessive drinking
had not been a constant source of tension and anxiety in the home. Indeed
it was just about that age that he recalls the final trauma of the separation
ultimately leading to the divorce of his parents. He never doubted that
his mother and father loved each other, it was just that they couldn't live
together. He vowed that alcohol would never ruin his life as it had his
father's.
Yet by this time, in spite of all that he had seen, he had already begun to use and abuse alcohol. At 16 he had experienced drunkenness for the first time. Alcohol had become part of his life. His vow was pathetically useless. By the time he was 28, he was seriously addicted. After only 2 years of marriage his wife Beth and himself were obliged to sell their home to pay off the debt that his drinking and lifestyle had amassed. Beth was suffering the same agony of mental and emotional strain that his mother had experienced. His recollection of those days is vague, which is perhaps a blessing, but his memories tend to be of shame in the way alcohol degraded his family life, almost robbing them of what is really important. The material and financial losses of those early days were the least of the cost of his drinking. Who can measure the emotional, mental and spiritual strains that any form of addiction creates? The perpetual fear and anxiety, the traumata of withdrawal, the continual struggle of trying again to reform and stop drinking, only to have those hopes of change for the better dashed to pieces, as the old patterns were re-established; the end of each cycle recurring as in a downward spiral to lower levels of degradation and depravity than before. These are the immeasurable cost of substance dependence.
No-one can be helped, alcoholic or otherwise, who does not want help. On 6 November 1970, for the first time in his life, he admitted his life was a mess and beyond his control. Alcohol was the biggest factor in that mess. On 9 November he visited his doctor, where, to his amazement he made the greatest discovery of his life. His doctor left him in no doubt at all, that the root cause of all his problems was really a spiritual lack, requiring the forgiveness and resurrection power of a loving Saviour, Jesus Christ. That night he trusted Christ as his Saviour and experienced cleansing and a peace of mind that only the Lord can give.
To say that the next 6 months were difficult and eventful would be an understatement. He drank again on 7 occasions during that period. His last bout was in May 1971, which culminated in him being admitted to a mental hospital. Here the Lord met him afresh, restoring and subsequently filling him with the Holy Spirit and delivering him from self and sin. Here his life of service for God began. Beth, his wife, had come to Christ just a few months earlier. Now together in faith they sought the will of God.
A year at Cliff College in England was followed by the privilege of being a lay evangelist on a circuit of the Methodist Church in Ireland. From there God called him to the pastorate of the Findlay Memorial Church in Glasgow, where he remained until January 1982. During those six years in Glasgow, God graciously added fruit with many people from an adictive background finding Christ as Saviour. This work was growing in such a way that it was necessary to set up an agency to establish and extend it. In this way the vision of a work amongst alcoholics, drug addicts and their families, first given nine years before in a mental hospital ward began to form. Thus the Stauros Foundation was born in 1980.