Pastor Gordon A. Humphrey Jr. drops dead singing Pharrell's 'Happy' from the pulpit
Pastor Gordon A. Humphrey Jr. of United Ministries gave his last service on Sunday.
The 60-year-old pastor was preaching at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago and singing Pharrell Williams' hit song "Happy" when he suddenly collapsed at the pulpit.
"I'm not sure if they determined the cause of death but it's been said he may have had a heart attack," Pastor Greg Hunter, a mentee of Humphrey, told the Christian Post.
Members of Humphrey's congregation immediately came to the pastor's aid but to no avail.
"They did call paramedics right away. They had people in the church that are in the medical field working on him as well and he was taken to the hospital," Hunter said.
Up to the time of his death, Humphrey had served as a senior pastor in Olivet Church in Oakland, California; Olivet Church in Stockton, California; and the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, where his father, Gordon Humphrey, Sr., pastored for some 40 years before him.
Speaking of his mentor's death, Hunter said, "Every location was devastated. Stockton, Oakland, Shiloh, everybody was devastated."
Despite the unhappy turn of events on Sunday, Hunter wants Humphrey to be remembered as someone who died doing what he loved and doing it as best he could.
"We are putting emphasis that he passed doing what he loved to do and he loved preaching and that's the relationship he had with God and when he preached he gave it his all. So he passed doing the thing that he loved to do and that is [to] share the word of God and minister to the body of Christ," explained Hunter.
In the wake of Humphrey's passing, Hunter only has words of praise for the late pastor.
"For years he walked the streets and met with drug addicts and gangbangers that [were] against each other and [made them] begin to love. He brought all people together," he said.
According to the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church Facebook page, the pastor's body will lie in state on December 20 at the church and a memorial concert will be held the following day. The interment is scheduled on December 22.
