John Stancil: Scripture, Sex, Success

John Stancil--IBLP Board Member

A little history

Curtis Hutson was a mailman who started preaching revivals in his free time. When he was just 22, he preached at Forest Hills Baptist Church near Decatur, GA.  The story goes that by the end of the week the pastor had resigned and the church had called the kid mailman with no formal training to replace him. Inspired by a message by Jack Hyles, Hutson eventually quit his post office job to focus on evangelism full-time.

Hutson pastored Forest Hills for twenty years, bringing the membership to nearly 8,000. (His lack of education did not prevent Hutson from serving as president of Baptist University of America from 1974-1980!)
  
John Stancil was 14 when he "trusted Christ as his personal savior" and joined Hutson's church. Young John worked his way up from janitor to director of the bus ministry, which brought in over 2,000 attendees on a given Sunday. He also married Brenda Cannon, with whom he had three children. The couple wrote a booklet on bus ministry (Busing--the Real Bring) which was published by Sword of the Lord in 1975.

1n 1978, Dr. John Rice invited Curtis Hutson to come to Murfreesboro, TN, to help edit "Sword of the Lord". Hutson edited the publication from 1980 until his death in 1995. Hutson also tapped his friend John Stancil to join him in Murfreesboro. The Stancils moved to Tennessee where John worked as Sword of the Lord's conference director and circulation manager for several years.

Scandal

In 1988, John and Brenda Stancil divorced. Five months later, Jack Hyles himself officiated at John's marriage to Yullie (Yuok) Chong, a Korean student at Hyles-Anderson College.

According to one source:

Brenda said she later learned that "he had been seeing Miss Chong in Indiana for quite a while before his divorce became final and that he had spent Christmas of 1987 with her and her family after telling our children he would be home alone. She was in Murfreesboro on at least four occasions . . . ." All this was while the Stancils were still married.

One of those visits calls attention to an even more unfortunate and unsavory matter. Since college regulations called for Miss Chong to stay with someone else while at Murfreesboro, arrangements were made for her to visit in the home of Mrs. Doris Roberts, a Sword employee of long standing and Stancil's secretary, business manager and close confidant. Conveniently, the latter was given a plane ticket to visit her son in Florida at that time, leaving Miss Chong without proper chaperone.

A lady who went to the house to meet her and get acquainted relates, "When I got to the door, I found she and John there alone making love on the sofa." (She defined "making love" as "lying fully prostrate, clothing in disarray, with movement, stroking, kissing, and bodies touching"; she said she could not "say for certain if sexual intercourse was occurring or had occurred," a matter that seems immaterial when considering the fact Stancil was still married to another woman.) The lady watched for a while, then left and went to a friend's house nearby and asked her to return as a witness, finding "the two were still on the sofa." The lady placed her business card on the window of Stancil's Mercedes-Benz and left.

The affair made waves in the wider Independent Fundamental Baptist community. John Stancil's career as a Baptist conference speaker was over.

Buses and Music

Months after their wedding, John and Yullie Stancil took stock of their their marketable skills. 
Buses. Religious publishing and marketing. Music. 

They bought their own bus and began conducting charters for schools and churches around Murfreesboro. They called their new company Anchor Trailways & Tours. By 1995, their fleet had grown to about ten buses and they were ready for the big-time. They moved their company to the Nashville area where it has grown to a fleet of more than sixty vehicles. 

Stancil is reported to have “a doctorate in transportation” and calls himself a “stickler for detail.”  Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne Division, is Anchor Trailway’s largest account.

On the side, John Stancil also runs his own IFB publishing/evangelism company--Anchor Bible Concepts. ABC sells King James Bibles (including the Scofield Bible) and soprano Yullie Stancil's three musical recordings.  One of these albums was produced by IBLP's offshoot Principle Music in Indianapolis, with orchestration composed by Loren Elms and Tracy Ann (Collins) Biddle. The album was released in 2002. According to the IBLP website, Yullie Stancil "has a beautiful singing voice and uses it to promote Godly music." John Stancil currently serves on Bill Gothard's Board of Directors at IBLP. 

Another of Yullie's albums was produced by The Crown College of the Bible in Powell, Tennesee. John Stancil is also chairman of the board of Crown College, which was founded by Temple Baptist Church's pastor Clarence Sexton.  Sexton, a speaker at Bob Jones University's Bible conference last year, has been criticized for praising Jack Schaap, who is now serving prison time for having sex with a minor.

On a happier note

John's ex-wife Brenda Cannon Stancil became a reporter for The Examiner in Beaumont, TX. As an award-winning journalist, she writes with compassion and grace. She has championed single parents, battered women, those treated unfairly by the justice system, and others--offering them hope. After years raising her three children alone, Brenda married Ted Henley in a shipboard ceremony.

Just for fun

I am personally amused by this photo of John Stancil donating a $10,000 check and bus services to a country music charity concert.  Apparently Anchor Trailways has a close relationship with the Nashville music scene, frequently shuttling artists to shows in Muscle Shoals, AL. This despite the strong stance taken by IBLP and Stancil's conservative church against music with a backbeat!