Reverend's cancer fight 'an amazing testimony' for his Wesley Chapel church

Mindy Rubenstein

It was 1977, and Scott Taylor was a high school junior in New York who dreamed of playing college football.

Then he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer that starts in the immune system.

He underwent chemotherapy. He lost a lot of weight and couldn't play sports anymore. Doctors told him he would never be able to have children.

Taylor didn't really believe in God then, he said, but he still got upset with whatever God was.

Four years after his diagnosis, as he left his home in upstate New York where he was living as a hippie — afro, tie-dyed shirts and all — Taylor began questioning everything.

Why did he get sick? Why did he drop out of college? "Why, why why?"

"If there's a God, you show me right now," he said.

"I fell to my knees and the presence of God fell over me," recalled Taylor, now 50. "Very quickly the Lord showed me that he existed."

Taylor packed his bags and headed to his home state of Maryland. He threw himself into theological studies, studying under the late Bishop Lewis T. Tait Sr. of Washington. And he found a speciality working as a computer IT specialist supporting government contracts.

He got married in June 1991 — and defied the doctors' predictions by having two daughters with his wife.

Taylor became a minister and started his own churches in a couple states, then came to Florida five years ago. He was starting Good News Global Ministries, a non-denominational Christian church in Wesley Chapel, when he got the bad news.

After 31 years in remission, the cancer was back.

"The next thing I knew I was at Moffitt getting chemotherapy," said Taylor.

But the faith he discovered after his first bout with cancer helped him through Round 2.

"That's why my faith is so strong, knowing that He is always watching," Taylor said. "Until people realize there is a God, they just do what they want to do. When they realize it, their life is changed forever."

Taylor's wife, the Rev. Evelyn Johnson Taylor, led Sunday services for her husband. People in the community prayed for them, brought food, helped around the house.

"God sends people along beside us to do those things that we can't," she said. "We are his hands and his feet on this Earth."

He was touched by the outpouring, but the Rev. Scott Taylor also remembers the doubt on the faces of some parishioners who saw how dark his skin had become, and wondered if he would beat the disease.

"People thought I was going to die, so they left," he said. "The very faithful stayed and they're still there."

And they became part of Taylor's battle against cancer.

"It was a difficult thing for him and a difficult thing for the church as well," said Dawnyell Foster, a speech pathologist and former captain of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleaders who has attended Taylor's church the past two years.

"When the shepherd of our church becomes sick, it's almost like the congregation becomes sick also," Foster said.

But she thinks it was almost like a cleansing.

"Now that he is restoring his health, it's like he is starting to restore the church as well," Foster said. "It has been such an amazing testimony for all of us.

"He's come back with a different fire."

The reverend went through a year of chemotherapy, and then, nine months ago, received a stem cell transplant at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

Taylor, who had been working as an IT professional for U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, is now on long-term disability. But his church continues to grow.

He still suffers from the after effects of some of the medications. He has peripheral neuropathy, for example, which affects him from the knees down: He can't feel his toes and his legs are numb.

"If this has to be my 'thorn in the flesh,' so be it. God's grace is sufficient," he said, citing 2 Corinthians 12:9.

Other churchgoers say they were touched by Taylor's experience.

"He's demonstrated courageous leadership in spite of his ordeal," said Kevin Banks, dean of students at the University of South Florida and choir director at Taylor's church. "He's a very fun-loving guy, so I think it was difficult for him trying to sustain a church and still deal with his own battle. I don't know how he was able to do that."

Those who know Taylor marvel at his sense of humor. "Despite what he's gone through, it never stopped him," Banks said. "I'm sure he has his moments but he never let us see it."

In addition to leading the church, Taylor now oversees others who want to be ordained, and helps with fundraising and conferences. He recently created a Bible College.

"It's been a long, long journey. The journey is still going on," Taylor said. "But you can go through chemo and still have peace and trust in God."