HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Last year, pastor Joshua Robertson told Joya Schreurs at the Center for Public Justice a powerful story about how he came to be the pastor he is today. It was a harrowing journey that included a shocking secret that nearly kept him from achieving his potential after high school .
Robertson, a star high school athlete who played basketball and football , had gone through the entire public school system and never learned to read.
Robertson told Schreurs that he could not pass the SAT exams, thus missing out on 25 Division 1A offers out of high school. That led him to attend a school he said he did not really want to attend, Gardner-Webb University, in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. He played there his freshman year, but he failed out in the first semester with a .67 GPA.
When the bishop of the church at which he played the organ while in North Carolina asked when he would come back for classes in January, he told him he failed and was not going back.