He glanced at his handsome African face in the mirror on the hallway wall, checking that his hair was symmetrically combed. He allowed a slight smile of satisfaction at the picture that greeted him there. Grabbing his briefcase, which contained his slim new laptop, his phone and his wallet, he stepped to his front door and let himself out, pausing to insert his key to lock the door from the outside. The cool breeze accompanying the mid-day sun reminded him of early spring back home. Finally, some weather he could enjoy and not just survive.
With his briefcase slung over his shoulder, messenger style, he rode his bicycle to the restaurant on the corner of Colfax and Piedmont, locking it to the bike rack that served the entire strip mall. Jonathan pulled his case off over his head and took the handle in his left hand, carrying it more like a traditional briefcase. As a graduate student of economics, he had acquired a position as a teaching assistant and considered himself a teacher as much as a student. His case symbolized this dual life, in his mind, the shoulder bag of a student and the satchel of a professor, all in one. Jonathan had learned to keep this sort of thinking to himself, trusting only Treena, his wife, with such intimate imaginings.
When he entered the Greek-owned family restaurant, specializing in a mixture of American and Greek cuisine, he spotted Darryl Sampras already seated at a small table by the windows, perusing the menu. Darryl was the assistant pastor to Dixon Claiborne, a well-known local religious leader. Darryl bore responsibility for the missions and outreach programs of the church.
Noticing Jonathan’s approach, Darryl looked up from his menu, smiled broadly and stood to shake the graduate student’s hand.
“Jonathan, so good to see you,” Darryl said, holding onto the handshake an extra second.
Jonathan smiled and bowed very slightly, unsure what the pastor’s extra-long handshake indicated across the dived between Ghana, his home country, and the United States. He had liked the thirty-something, balding pastor from the start, but assumed he didn’t understand him much better than any of the other American Christians he had met in his first year in the States. Darryl had mentioned a desire to have lunch with Jonathan back in October of the previous year. His explanations since then for the delay seemed lacking both detail and remorse, but Jonathan had learned to expect this sort of thing by now, and it didn’t sour his attitude toward Darryl particularly.
A rich combination of sweet and salty odors escaped the kitchen and perused the room, awakening Jonathan’s appetite even more than the bike ride had.
“Hello, Pastor,” Jonathan said, setting his briefcase in the chair next to the window and taking the seat diagonal from Darryl, hoping to avoid his sandaled toes being injured beneath the table.
“Oh, just call me Darryl. No need for titles here.”
Jonathan nodded and smiled in response, lifting his menu to look at what he might like. Darryl had suggested the location for their meeting, when Jonathan cornered him after church that week. Growing in comfort among the Americans, Jonathan had decided to pin the friendly minister to making an actual appointment. He felt that Darryl was the person at the church most likely to help him understand the American religious culture.
Darryl set his menu down after another brief look and Jonathan followed, determined to get as many answers as he could, more than finding the perfect lunch order.
“You know why I attend your church?” Jonathan said, launching his agenda.
“No, not really. Why?”
“In my country, we are used to American churches sending people, usually men, to build things; small projects, like churches or daycare centers. One of those teams came to my uncle’s small village and helped with a medical clinic, bringing their own doctor and a nurse with them. They were from the church that founded your church, Grace Chapel. So my uncle told me that we should look for a church like them when we arrived in the states.”
“What kind of church did you attend in . . . a . . . Ghana, is it?”
“Yes, I am from Ghana,” Jonathan said. “Our church in Kumasi was really a Pentecostal congregation, I think you would say. Most of the big churches there are like that.”
“Oh.” Darryl raised his eyebrows. “So we must seem pretty strange to you.”
Jonathan laughed, his mind winking past the countless ways that a North American, white Bible church differed from the church he attended as a child in the second largest city in Ghana. “In Ghana, a Bible-believing church is usually a Pentecostal church, as well, so we didn’t know there would be a difference here. I am an economist, not a church historian,” he said.
Darryl smiled, pausing to thank the waiter for pouring them water and then giving his order. Jonathan followed, ordering a chicken sandwich and iced tea.
When the waiter left, Darryl followed up on Jonathan’s opening comments. “So, are you wondering what you’re doing with us?” he said, still smiling.
Tipping his head briefly to the left while raising his right eyebrow, Jonathan smiled with tight lips. “No, to be honest, we have found a prayer meeting in town that feels more like our home church. But we have made friends at your church and are content to stay among you for our time in the States.”
“That’s good to hear,” Darryl said, sipping his water while keeping his blue-gray eyes on Jonathan.
“But I do have a question about something I heard from the leader of the house group we are attending this spring,” Jonathan said.
“What’s that?”
“He mentioned that the meeting tonight, with the other big Bible churches in the city, is meant to expose some millionaire guru in California. And he showed me a Web site that contains some pretty outrageous claims about this man.”
Darryl’s face froze and his color flushed to dark pink and then red. He turned toward the window and scratched the back of his head, looking again at Jonathan in the way a boy would when he’s about to admit that he hit the baseball through your living room window.
“Yeah, well that site is probably not the best way to introduce the issue. I know some people are saying pretty crazy things.”
Darryl’s obvious discomfort with the subject actually reassured Jonathan, who feared that this most accessible and reasonable assistant pastor would not see the potential difficulty with this report about the actions of the Church’s senior pastor.
Jonathan cleared his throat and continued. “When I asked our house group leader what it was that this man had done to raise this suspicion, all he could tell me was that the man healed some people and claimed to hear from God.”
This time Darryl grimaced, seeing immediately why Jonathan would find that characterization problematic, given his Pentecostal background. “No, I don’t think that’s a very good explanation of what’s caught the attention of some of the local pastors. They’re not getting together to attack anyone for claiming to heal people or to hear God’s voice. This man is doing something much more questionable, I think.”
That little qualifying hesitation at the very end of his reply left both men hanging in a pensive pause, Darryl because he knew he couldn’t really be sure, and Jonathan because he wondered if Darryl was hiding something from him.
Leaning forward, his elbows on the edge of the table, Darryl tried to come clean, feeling he owed it to the articulate young scholar sitting across the table. “Look, Jonathan, I don’t know all that’s gonna be said at the meeting tonight. I do know that some folks have gotten hold of this and made it into more than I understood originally was involved.” He shook his head slightly, looking down at the table. “Frankly, I need to attend that meeting tonight myself, just to figure out if I’m okay with what’s happening here.”
Jonathan smiled reassuringly, sorry to see Darryl in such distress about his questions, and inclined to believe Darryl’s innocence regarding the kind of witch-hunt that he feared.
“I too will attend with that in mind, then,” Jonathan said.
Darryl grinned. “Afterward, we should get together again to compare our reactions.” When he
saw a doubtful look sink Jonathan’s face, he said, “I really mean it. Let’s schedule a meeting at my office early next week.”
Again, Jonathan smiled, this time showing teeth and breathing a soft laugh, just as the waiter delivered his chicken sandwich.
The Course is Set
In the small room off the side of the stage, where speakers picked up water bottles and Kleenex, Dixon Claiborne stood with Bishop Stephen Jefferson of Emmanuel Holiness Temple, a leading African-American pastor in the city. The bishop filled his pale blue suite with his generous proportions, and his face glistened with the slightest sheen of perspiration.
“Everything set for the choir and the opening music?” Dixon said.
The bishop nodded. “Yes, it is. They’re practicing in a room down stairs designed for just that purpose.”
Dixon could tell that Bishop Jefferson was as impressed as he was with the Calvary facilities. It was hard not to envy the conveniences, and even luxuries, built into the city’s largest conservative church. But Dixon subdued that thought by reminding himself that this evening was not about looking for a position at a bigger church.
“I know your choir will set the right tone for this evening,” Dixon said in a conciliatory key. “It’s all about the glory of God and protecting his precious church,” he said.
“Yes, Pastor, that’s exactly right. Let’s pray the worldly media doesn’t turn it all against us, however.”
Though the bishop may have meant those words as a simple statement of hope, Dixon took him literally and started to pray, calling out to God to protect the proceedings that night and to get the glory in everything that happened. Bishop Jefferson, of course, added his voice not only to “Amen” Dixon’s prayer, but to contribute a lengthy prayer of his own.
Out in the auditorium, at six-thirty, middle-aged men in gray slacks, white shirts, blue blazers, and maroon ties opened the auditorium doors, even as Bishop Jefferson said his final “Amen.” Dixon peaked out the door to see if a flood or a trickle resulted from opening those doors. He was neither impressed nor disappointed. People of all ages, genders and skin tones sauntered down four aisles, many of them rubber-necking at the expansive meeting space. A few moments later, a string quartet bowed the first notes of, Onward Christian Soldiers, a tune that Dixon didn’t remember hearing performed by a string quartet before.
Bishop Jefferson excused himself and headed back down the hallway, intent on praying with, and energizing, his church choir before they took the stage.
Up in the booth, Kyle previewed the video file that had raised his blood pressure earlier, now converted to a format compatible with the main multi-media workstation that commanded the projectors around the auditorium. As if immune to any impact from the content of that video, Kyle watched like a factory worker checking that all the widgets on the conveyor belt were right side up. The techs, Pete and Randy, on the other hand, stared with open mouths at a series of startling and audacious scenes, watching the whole video for the first time.
Glancing at them briefly when the video ended, Kyle grunted, mildly pleased that the video impacted the uninitiated as predicted. “Okay, get that cued up for when Dixon calls for it, about fifteen minutes into the meeting.
Down in the auditorium, Kristen Claiborne led Sara and Brett out the door at the right of the stage and down dark red carpeted stairs, her shiny black high heels planting purposefully on each step, her hand white knuckling the railing to her right. In her left hand, she carried a shiny black purse, containing all of the essentials: cell phone, tissues, breath mints, wallet, lipstick, face powder, and a hair brush. Sara noticed the way her mother gripped her bag and wondered if it contained some vital state secret or something. But then her mother seemed to be gripping everything extra tight that night. This realization contributed to gastro-intestinal turmoil in Sara that she thought might be forecasting ulcers for the years to come.
Brett just looked around at the crowd, sizing them up like a captain assessing the troops before a battle. Unlike the generals who would take the stage, Brett merely had to show up and follow along, like everyone else, but he still practiced for the day when it would be his crowd and his platform.
Toward the back of the multitude waiting to enter the auditorium, Claire Sanchez surveyed her fellow attendees more surreptitiously than Brett did inside. The evening still warm and sunny, Claire fanned herself with an old church bulletin she found stuffed in the outside pocket of her purse. The close crowd robbed her of the cooling breeze that ruffled leaves on the sycamore trees lining the sidewalk in front of the huge edifice. She recognized a few faces from her church and noted the large number of strangers as well. She saw Jonathan Opare, but not his wife, edging forward with the crowd, his head prominent above the shorter people around him.
Jonathan glanced at the crowd but exercised no interest in assessing the audience, pondering, instead, why so many would come to such a meeting, assuming that they knew what this was about. But then, did he really know what it was about? Turning his eyes toward the ushers standing by the doors in front of him, Jonathan wondered where Darryl was, whether he was already inside, back stage, or merely mixed in with the general populace.
Darryl had found a seat in the front row, near Kristen and her two children, having entered the church an hour before the meeting. He had wandered in and out of rooms full of a choir preparing to sing, ushers receiving instructions, nursery workers acquainting themselves with unfamiliar facilities, and pastors shaking hands and patting backs. Yet he had felt most drawn to the empty or sparsely populated rooms, as was the auditorium before the doors opened. Darryl sat alone. His wife Karen would be in the cry room with their nine-month-old for the duration of the evening, her turn to miss the main festivities.
A few minutes later, when the choir filed out and up the carpeted risers in the back and center of the stage, Bishop Jefferson and Pastor Claiborne followed them, along with six other church leaders. There was no one among them tonight that needed, or deserved, a big entrance. These were the faithful shepherds of local churches, not marquee speakers or musicians. They would take their seats on the stage and preside over a solemn meeting, a gathering for the defense of their collective flock, defense against deceivers who would lure away the weak and ignorant, to devour their souls without regret.
Raising the Flag
A sixty-voice choir singing God Bless America, accompanied by piano, organ and a small symphonic orchestra, launched the meeting of the coalesced churches and assorted media representatives. Following that rousing anthem, Bishop Jefferson lead in an unscripted prayer of nearly three minutes in length. Kyle timed it in the booth, shaking his head for every second over the two minutes he had allotted the opening prayer.
During the second choir number, Holy, Holy, Holy, Claire started to feel like it was a worship service, the prayer and hymn granting some recovery from the patriotic opener. Two thousand voices joined in the last two verses and the building swelled with the sound.
This launched Rev. Luis Cruz into his prayer, which seemed somewhat less spontaneous than Bishop Jefferson’s, but still raised the hairs on the back of Darryl’s neck, inspired particularly by the phrase, “we gather here as one people, your people, devoted together to the glory of your name alone, O Lord.” That was something Darryl could get behind. A united body of Christians stirred him as much as anything could.
Dixon Claiborne stood and glanced at his family in the front row to his left, when Pastor Cruz surrendered the podium (now two minutes behind schedule according to Kyle’s digital stopwatch). As the two pastors crossed paths, they shook hands vigorously, Dixon looming six inches taller than Pastor Cruz. Cameras flashed at the image of unity there mid-stage. Darryl loved it. Kyle counted it against his clock.
Sitting up straight in the plush theater seat, Kristen smiled strenuously at her husband as he took the podium. She had never seen him in front of so many people, and the main speaker at that. Sara could sense her mother’s pride, or perhaps just
her nerves, in the depth of her breathing and the intensity of that painful smile. Anyone focused on Sara at the time would have thought she was about to dial 911. Brett just took it all in, like a boy at a football game, such as the college and pro games to which his father had taken him numerous times.
“We welcome you, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends, as well as media representatives,” Dixon said, with a grand smile. “Let me thank the Evangelical Ministerial Association for sponsoring this event, an organization represented by these distinguished gentlemen to my right.” He gestured behind him, his right hand swinging toward the row of solemn looking pastors and then coming back to rest on the podium.
“For those of you who have speculated about the purpose of this meeting, I want to deny categorically that I am running for President.” He guffawed with the chittering response from the crowd. “Although, I must admit, most presidential candidates start their campaigns with exactly that same denial. In my case, it’s a safe bet that I’m not one of them.” And again he grinned to punctuate his attempt at humor.
Sara scowled, feeling confused by this joke, given her earlier speculation. She glanced at Brett to see what he was thinking. His gaping spectator posture told her nothing. Her mother’s rapid blinking told Sara what she already knew, the woman was as nervous as a drug smuggler at a border checkpoint.
“Seriously,” Dixon said. “We are gathered here, as fellow Christians and as fellow Californians, with a common concern, a concern that stretches beyond our fair state. As pastors, we gather united in protection of our church families, in protection of the integrity of the whole church as a body. We have called you here to issue a warning to our people, and to call for action from other leaders who claim the name ‘Christian,’ bearing their own responsibility for the integrity of God’s holy church.”
If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) Page 2
