NATCHEZ — Andy Blair was sitting on a plane seven years ago watching the sunrise when he decided to turn his life over to God.

It wasn’t the moment he realized the splendor of God’s creation, it was just a moment after Blair hit rock bottom.

The plane was headed from Texas, where Blair and his family were living at the time, to Florida, where Blair was going to an alcohol rehabilitation facility.

“I just said, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore, so whatever you want me to do, I’ll do,’” he said. “I don’t think I really meant it at the time, but at that moment, I really felt like the whole weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.”

Blair, a Kentucky native and Morehead State University graduate, was, in his mind at the time, at the top of his game before an intervention from his best friend’s wife caused him to realize he had an alcohol problem.

He worked in sales for Fortune 500 companies, such as AT&T and Cintas, where he “made big money and drove big cars.”

But Blair was flat broke spiritually.

All the while, Blair attended a large church in Houston, singing in a choir and putting on a front.

“I felt like it was all a lie,” he said.

On the heels of a suspension from his job for a drinking incident, his best friend’s wife confronted him after a night of drinking.

“She said she didn’t want me hanging around her husband anymore, that she didn’t want me to have anything to do with him,” Blair said. “She said, ‘You’re a drunk, and you need help.’ I had never had anyone talk to me like that. That’s when I realized I had a problem.”

In addition to a drinking problem, a big ego had caused him to be a stranger even to his family.

“I really thought I was something special,” he said. “I remember being at my mom’s in Ohio. I was up there for some award I had won, and she heard me talking on the phone and said ‘I don’t even know who you are. I love you, but who do you think you are?’”

Blair recalls his father’s addiction and alcohol-fueled arguments with his stepmother while on family vacations in Treasure Island, Fla. Blair also remembers seeing what it looked like for his father to get sober. He was sober for seven years before he died in 1995.

It’s only fitting that Blair ended up at rehab in Treasure Island and the roommate of a young man from Kentucky who was the grandson of the man who gave Blair’s father his start in business.

When Blair got out of rehab, he was promoted in his job and moved to Florida.

Feeling a call to preach, Blair started looking for a position at a church and applied to be lead pastor at Crosspoint Church in Natchez.

Blair, running a residential painting business at the time, and after not hearing back for a few months, decided to take an interview to get back into sales after not hearing back from the church for a few months.

A couple of days before the interview, Blair got a call from one of Crosspoint’s elders, Del Loy.

The son of an alcoholic father, the grandson of alcoholic grandparents and the great-grandson of a moonshiner and a preacher, Blair says his addiction and his ministry were predestined.

“I was either going to be a preacher or a drunk, and I made the decision to be both, I guess,” he said.

Blair said he felt a calling to become a preacher early in life, but joined a fraternity in college and walked away from church, only to find himself coming full circle back to the church.

“I always knew what I needed to do,” he said. “For years, I knew. I could hear God calling me, but I thought, ‘Oh that’s funny. Look at me. I’m making all this money. I don’t need God.’

“I was a mess of a person before I decided to turn my life to God.”

Blair credits his wife, Becky, for helping him get sober and sticking by his side. He and Becky have two daughters, Emily, a junior at Furman University, and Betsy, a junior at Trinity Episcopal Day School.

Blair’s journey to sobriety and to the pulpit has been long, but Blair said it is the best tool he has for his ministry.

“If God can take me and do with me what he has done, that’s a miracle,” he said.

Loy said Crosspoint is blessed to have Blair.

“I personally feel like his story is an asset,” he said.

And Blair’s main mission as a preacher aligns perfectly with one of the main goals of Crosspoint, Loy said.

Blair said his mission is to make sure everyone feels welcome at Crosspoint.

“Whatever you’re struggling with, alcoholism, sex addiction, or whatever, you’re welcome here,” he said. “My philosophy is that a church should be a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.”