Blessed Trinity. Vanessa Davis Griggs
was even in the process of being sold when she accepted the job. Her beloved great-grandmother had just died, and this job was a great opportunity for her. She sure didn’t know she had met the potential buyer when Pastor Landris visited her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, earlier that year.
For Pastor Landris, everything seemed to be falling into place. Surely God was directing this move. But he would soon learn that things aren’t always as they seem. What appears to be God’s will one moment can end up looking totally different once things begin to unfold.
Pastor Landris would come to understand how Joseph the dreamer in the Bible must have felt. Joseph’s father Jacob, later called Israel, loved him so much more than his other children that he made his beloved son the infamous coat of many colors. Joseph dreamed his family would end up bowing to him. He shared this dream with them—an announcement that didn’t go over well with his brothers (or his father at first, for that matter).
“Shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?” Joseph’s brothers and father wanted to know. Of course, they hated Joseph even more for his dreams and for daring to speak those dreams out loud.
Pastor George Edward Landris could definitely relate.
When Pastor Landris needed spiritual encouragement to get through the rough times—as he wrestled with feelings of rejection, being lied to and about—he would find comfort reading Genesis, chapters 37–50, to help him go on.
As with Joseph, Pastor Landris believed God had given him a dream. Somewhere Joseph must have believed God would bring it to pass or else he would have just quit. When Pastor Landris needed a Word to help him, he would think about all Joseph endured before his blessings finally came to pass. He reflected on how Joseph was put in a pit by his own brothers, who had originally planned to kill him. And had it not been for his other brothers, Reuben and Judah, Joseph and his dreams might well have perished.
But God had His hands of protection on Joseph, and Pastor Landris knew God’s hand was also on him. Pastor Landris’s own “preach-brothers” in the ministry were not so happy to see him come to their city. They pretended they were whenever he was around, even as they plotted to get rid of him.
Not to physically kill him, although Pastor Landris wasn’t one hundred percent certain about that at times. But he did realize they wanted to assassinate him—and his dreams—in a spiritual sense.
No one had called Pastor Landris to come to Birmingham. Who could say if he would ever have a congregation again? That paralleled Joseph being thrown in prison. On the plus side, Pastor Landris did have his new family: a wonderful wife in Johnnie Mae, along with her three-year-old daughter, Princess Rose. And there was Thomas and Sapphire, who had followed him to Alabama to lend their assistance.
Things would surely have to get better.
However, Pastor Landris—as did Joseph—would quickly discover that that’s not always the case.
Faith Alexandria Morrell didn’t care about church anymore. She’d had more than her fill of “church folks.” One thing she could never understand was how the church pastor, who constantly hammered other folk about what they should and shouldn’t do, could end up doing that same wrong thing, get caught, and the church would just forgive him and keep him on. It made no sense to her.
“They’re all only human. He’s just a man,” her friend Dominique told her. Faith was still living in New Orleans then. She had questioned why the congregation hadn’t kicked their pastor out on his holier-than-thou, self-righteous tailbone after they caught him messing around with all those women in the church. “Who are we to judge?” Dominique said. “Only God can do that.”
Faith still didn’t get it. She had witnessed him deliver a few sermons from the pulpit, getting the church all emotional as he began to sing and moan. The next thing she knew, hats and shoes were flying all over the place; people’s glasses were landing on the floor or in the pews behind them; men were yanking off suit coats, ties, and jackets and running around, shouting. The women were dancing, unconcerned whether things she didn’t care to see or mention were showing as they jumped or fell down, their dresses, blouses, skirts in disarray. Faith wondered—how holy could this be?
Those who weren’t shouting were running up to the pastor and laying paper money at his feet, which only seemed to make him whoop and holler more.
Faith just did…not…get it. People claimed it was the Holy Spirit that had caused them to act that way, but she knew from scripture that the spirit was subject unto the prophet. She wasn’t a Bible scholar, but that much she did know. This was emotionalism, pure and simple. It was the way they chose to react or express the way they were feeling, which was fine as far as Faith was concerned. She just wished folk would call it what it was and quit acting like they were being uncontrollably possessed or something.
Then this same pastor was caught having affairs with not one, not two, but three ladies in his congregation at the same time. What was worse, his wife was the one who finally caught him on tape. When she brought her audio evidence before the congregation during one Sunday morning’s service, proving he was with this one woman, that caused two other women to pop up mad and argue there was no way this could possibly be true, seeing as he was with “her” exclusively. Talk about angry. They didn’t seem to mind that he was cheating on his wife, but it was a whole other matter when they learned he wasn’t being so faithful to them, either.
The pastor confessed to his loyal congregation a week later. Faith happened to be there that Sunday by special invitation from Dominique. They had front-row seats. He delivered a passionate, tearful plea, begging for forgiveness. He claimed Satan had him bound, using his godly gift of loving others against him. Apparently, he loved all the people in his congregation so much, he couldn’t bear to see any of them in pain.
The pastor claimed he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, especially his lovely wife, who, incidentally, was driving a brand, spanking-new Mercedes-Benz and sporting a three-carat diamond ring. But he was only a man and not God, he said, and he was not perfect, nor, coincidentally, was any of them sitting there. A few people behind Faith were whispering that one or two of those women just might have put some type of voodoo on him to cause him to behave that way. Faith didn’t believe in voodoo.
Then the pastor closed with a classic line: “He who is among you without sin, let him cast the first stone.” As he looked over the audience, he knew there wasn’t a person there who hadn’t done something wrong. Maybe not that week, and maybe not to the extent that he’d done, but they were all guilty of something. “And a sin is a sin is a sin. There are no big or little sins in God’s sight,” he said, looking repentant, then upward toward heaven.
His closing defense was: “God uses imperfect people to do His work.” Yes, he had fallen, but no one had a right to judge him when everybody there was guilty of something themselves. “Amen?” he said, jumping up as he got more “in the spirit.”
Faith was a visitor and all the visitors had been asked to wait outside the sanctuary during the vote. Faith couldn’t believe the congregation actually bought into what he had said and overwhelmingly voted to allow him to stay on.
“I just don’t understand,” Faith said to Dominique as they walked toward the parking lot. “Why in heaven’s name would y’all vote to keep a scumbag like him as your pastor?”
Dominique had only said, “But girl, the man can preach! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a real man…I’m talking about a real man who can preach and sing? Honey, hush! We’re not letting the devil come in and mess up our good thing. Now, he came forward and asked for forgiveness. The Bible clearly admonishes us to forgive. How often? Seventy times seven. The pastor has been talked to about his behavior. He understands he can’t do things like that anymore. So what more do people want?” She smiled, then popped her chewing gum three times.
And that was that.
Okay, so the man could preach and he could sing, Faith thought. But she couldn’t help but believe these people needed a good reality check. Dominique insisted Faith was the one who was wrong, and the least she could do