Pastor Jeff and the Tornado

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!

A few weeks ago, we did a service project at work and, as the previous post revealed, I did tornado clean up in Bridgeton, Missouri. I wasn't quite sure what we were in for when the five of us arrived at Grace Church and then I saw Pastor Jeff.

You know Pastor Jeff. He's the guy with the goatee and long hair in the 15-second spots on TV that tells you "God Loves You" and all that Jesusey stuff. His church was the one Kurt Warner attended when he was with the Rams. Well, Pastor Jeff was just standing there, not 20 feet away. I figured that he was begging to be in a photo with me, so like the many mascot photos I've had taken before, Pastor Jeff was today's mascot, so to speak. Unlike previous mascots, except for the random chicken roaming the stands for the Princeton (WV) Rays (yeah, I don't understand it either) or the bee in Binghamton, NY, I chose to converse with this one.

See, I'm not the most Jesusey guy in the world and, honestly, most "Christians" frighten me. Watching televangelists such as Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, etc., in the past made me extremely weary of such folks. I don't mind if people want to be religious and worship the god of their choosing, but history seems to be filled with wars, battles, skirmishes, inquisitions and prejudice all in the name of religion. Does God really hate fags and does he even refer to them as fags in the first place? Is it really pro-life to bomb a clinic with the goal of killing a doctor who performs abortions? I'd sure like to hope not.

However, I struggle with these and other questions like the whole Noah/Ark thing. Really? So you're telling me that this big old boat, X cubits long by X cubits wide, held two by two of every animal on the planet? Every animal on the planet? And how, pray, did Noah gather all of these animals, like say, the polar bear - indigenous to Arctic regions - and the camel who would never, in a million years, travel north to Coldfoot? Speaking of a million years, there's another problem - I've had a family member tell me that the bible says the earth is 6,000 years old at most, dinosaurs never roamed the planet and that the 200 million year-old piece of petrified wood I saw in DC is a lie. Maybe I'm wrong and science is wrong and life is one giant X-File only discernible by King James. So, again, I'm not the most Jesusey guy in the world.

But I'd like to think I'm a pretty good judge of character and can read people right away, so I decided to test my skills on Pastor Jeff. The aforementioned televangelists had two things in common: 1) they are "Christians" and 2) they were on TV. Pastor Jeff also shares these traits, so it was easy to put him in that category since I'm not all that Jesusey (not sure if I mentioned that).

But there he was at Grace Church on April 29th in his fitted white shirt and tie looking just like the guy in the commercials. I was ready to get my mascot photo as proof, but something else happened. Pastor Jeff made a believer out of me that day. No, I'm not any more Jesusey than I was on April 28th and I'm still convinced that lightning will strike any church I enter...twice.

Pastor Jeff made me believe in him.

Most of the interactions I've had with the "Christian" set in my life included them trying to convince me of something and dancing around like whirling dervishes shouting "praise Jesus" even ten seconds. I need to immediately accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior or I'm going to hell...I need to throw away all of my Prince CDs because of the evil emanating from them...blah...blah...blah. I didn't get that vibe from Pastor Jeff.

When I approached, the first thing he did was welcome me, shake my hand and ask my name. He was, in a nutshell, a genuinely kind man, which almost makes me a little ill to write, but there you have it. Either he's an Oscar-quality actor or, as I believe him to be, one sincere dude and I respected him for that. He wasn't pushy or thumping the pages of his Gideon warning me of the Prince-related hell fires. He was just cool. He told me about how he opened his church in Chesterfield Valley in 1993 only to have it under nine feet of water a few months later. During that awful time, he saw an outpouring from people who just wanted to help.

He not only talked to me, but he listened. I told him where I was from and why I was there and he thanked me for taking the time to volunteer. And when I asked to get a photo with him, he was all over it. After spending five minutes with the guy, it was no longer just the novelty of getting my mascot pic with Kurt Warner's pastor...it was something I wanted to do.

Then, thinking my five minutes with the pastor were over and done with, I walked over to my group to wait for the bus to take us to the tornado clean up zone. But who walks over to our group? Pastor Jeff. And what does he say? "I was just talking with Dave, here, and I wanted to thank you all for coming today." Seriously? Pastor Jeff took the time to remember my name and where I was from and then came over to talk to our group? I gotta admit it, the man kinda blew me away with that one. He stayed with us for another ten minutes or so until our bus arrived to transport us to the debris field that was once a neighborhood.

He reminded me a lot of our friends, the Christians, in many ways - just really awesome people who also happen to love their Jesus, but don't force-feed me Ecclesiastes when I cross the threshold. They are genuine, sincere people that I am proud to call my friends. And they even know about my issues with Noah and are still okay with me. They haven't gone to see Prince yet with me though. I wonder what that's about.

What does all of that mean, you ask? Am I quoting scripture and sitting in the front of church on Sunday now? Not so much. I know about manna from heaven, Austin 3:16 and the seven signs, but I still sleep in on Sundays. But I won't be fast-forwarding through Pastor Jeff commercials anymore and I'll encourage everyone I know to volunteer for Service International when he puts out the call. Other than that, I'm still the same evil Dave I was on April 28th. And no, I didn't mention the Christians only because they read my blog.

I almost forgot, click HERE to see the rest of the photos from tornado clean up day.