Rightly Dividing?: The Second "Season" of Our Father's Evangelical Church

By Brad Brown

Oftentimes the Good Book comes out swinging. It cannot help itself-being sharper than any two-edged sword. But use caution! It pierces and penetrates no matter who does the wielding-whether righteous or reckless. Consequently, there are times in church life when soul and spirit, joints and marrow, thoughts and attitudes are strewn all over the f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brad A. Brown
• Release date: Mar 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798987046159

Brad Brown

Brad Brown graduated with high honors with a Master's degree in Theology from Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He also graduated cum laude from Biola University with a degree in Speech Communication and a minor degree in Biblical Studies and Theology. He was voted the Most Outstanding Student of the Speech Communication Department for 1981-1982. Rightly Dividing? is the sequel to This Is The Church . . . , and is followed by Upon This Rock., and Raised!-the completed four "seasons" of Our Father's Evangelical Church.Brad lives with his wife Cindy in Franktown, Colorado.

Book preview

PART ONE

". . . Father, protect them

by the power of your name—"

JOHN 17:11

INTRODUCTION

The Call

THE CALL

Ian?

Yes?

Patrick.

Hi.

"I just wanted to let you know that we just finished the tally and, well, he was called home—here, I mean."

Oh.

Something deep within the recesses of my soul groaned. An almost imperceptible angst that perhaps was akin to the presentiment the flowers and trees in Romans Eight experience as they crane their necks toward eternity.

Thanks for telling me, Patrick.

You’re welcome. Ian, I know what you said earlier about his—

I’ll talk to you tomorrow at breakfast. O.K., Patrick?

Uh, O.K. Sure, Ian. Bye.

Patrick was taken aback at my quick dismissal, but I did not want the conversation to cascade down to a more complicated level just then. Especially with the two extra pairs of female ears cocked in my direction.

Bye, Patrick. Groan.

I put down the receiver and looked up to see Maria and Esmeralda Barrington staring at me, their eyes boring into me over the rims of their steaming cups of coffee.

Well, that’s that! Esmeralda stated with resigned finality, simultaneously clinking her cup down and kicking up coffee sparks from the previously spilled pool already sitting in the saucer.

What’s that supposed to mean? answered Maria. Are you as nervous about this man as my husband is?

Esmeralda sighed while she formulated a response. "Not nervous, Honey, as much as . . . well . . . I have misgivings. That sermon he gave during his candidating gave me the willies. I’m not sure why. Sound doctrine all right, but heartless." She looked up at the stacked dishes and cooking utensils from the evening’s dinner now drying by the kitchen sink, and it gave her an inspired analogy.

It was all stainless steel, and no Teflon.

Cute. Very cute, I said. She reminded me of my father sometimes and his far-reaching word pictures.

Maria turned to me while I was still standing by the phone, leaning against the tile kitchen counter. How did Patrick sound, Ian?

Concerned, I think.

"You think? Did he ever express those concerns? Did he ever ask questions of this man?"

Sure! It’s just that Meece had an airtight answer for everything. There was nothing Patrick could hang his hat on that would give him any reason for alarm.

Alert. Alert! Alert? It wasn’t really time to sound any alarm now, was it? After all, I was still only in the premonition stages. I wondered if this sort of after-dinner conversation was playing itself out around other kitchen tables within the circumference of the O.F.E. membership?

Tony Meece. The new Senior Pastor of Our Father’s Evangelical Church. The Milton Derringer replacement from deep in the heart of Texas—San Antonio, to be exact.

Unlike Wesley Zimmerman of some 70 years before, Pastor Meece was actually voted in by an overwhelming percentage of the O.F.E. congregation. He wasn’t called, he was shouted!

O.K., flowers and trees, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three . . .

Groan.

CHAPTER ONE

THE WELCOME PARTY

Another day was dawning in Monument, California—that alpine gem amid the civic jigsaw-puzzle pieces of Southern California.

As I stepped onto the warming pavement of The Rush More Coffee House parking lot on Mountain View Drive, I had a renewed burst of purpose as a third-generation native born in this fine, small town tucked into the San Gabriel foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

My grandfather, the late Colby Block, and my father, Seth Block, would have had many of the same kinds of conversations I was about to engage in, both having been long-standing deacons at Our Father’s Evangelical Church, perched up there on the hill, the only home for God built within the borders of our town. Even though I had not been a deacon for a few years, having opted to become a fifth-grade Sunday school teacher instead, the heritage and resultant sense of church-leadership responsibility bore down upon me as I opened the glass doors of Monument’s most popular waterin’ hole. The restaurant seemed more crowded than usual for that time of morning as Patrick Hamilton and I met for breakfast to discuss the new arrival at Our Father’s Evangelical Church.

On my way to our table, I said hello to Peter Grant, who was having breakfast with his wife, Barbara. I always credit Peter for emancipating my testimony that Thanksgiving Eve service so many years ago, when he so matter-of-factly validated a God-fearing life lived bereft of dramatic scrapes from sensational sins.

Patrick and I safely engaged in classic small talk until our waitress had poured the coffee. Complicated conversations at this hour needed to be fueled by the Christian-sanctioned stimulant, caffeine. So we news, weather, and sports’d each other while we waited until our bloodstreams were pulsating with the stuff, giving our chemically addicted brains a much-needed java bath and our loosened tongues their usual morning jolt.

So . . . Tony Meece? offered Patrick after we had ordered our breakfasts.

What do you think, Pat? After all, you were there for the whole process.

Patrick jumped right in. I feel like we made a decision solely based on the discomfort and insecurities of the congregation. They got tired of waiting for a permanent pastor, so we gave them what they were clamoring for.

But it’s only been a year since Milton left.

I know, I know. But look at all that has happened to the congregation up to this point. Joshua and Brenda’s baby, and then . . . David.

Patrick was referring to the one-two punch that Milton Derringer had heretofore received during his pastoring tenure at Our Father’s Evangelical Church. His oldest boy, Joshua, had been dating the very pretty Brenda Todd for nearly a year. Brenda and her family had been strong members of O.F.E. for quite a few years, so the coupling had occurred in a fish bowl of celebrity, as the distorted faces of the flock outside peeked through the curvature of the glass to observe and comment on every move the swimming young couple made. It was cute and flattering for a while. But Joshua had lived awash in the limelight all his life as a pastor’s kid and saw no other means of retreating into the shadows of normalcy but by shocking and stunning the meddlesome congregation. Once disappointed, the congregants might release their distorted faces, pressed up against the glass of the fishbowl, and move down the aisle to one of Joshua’s three younger brothers. Or perhaps to some other noteworthy O.F.E. celebrity, by running up and falling in step with his or her brisk walk with God, staring intrusively at their profile and breaking the sound of their rhythmic breathing with baiting questions, the answers to which would be quickly dispatched through the invisible tangle of telegraph wires strung hither and yon throughout the church campus connecting O.F.E. busybodies to one another.

Over the years, particularly as adolescence loomed, Joshua, by a variety of methods, had tried to leap out of the fish bowl, risking (the rumored certain death of) a dried-up existence outside of the transparent P.K. waters. His first aquatic fin kick to the surface was aloofness. He grew more and more standoffish to the flock at Valentino and Ridgeway Avenues. He would barely respond to the plaudits about his famous father. Or how handsome he himself was becoming—how they had known him since he was just this high (while they stooped down, placing the flat of their hand about three feet above the sidewalk). How they remember what a cute shepherd he had made in the Christmas play (although he was the oldest and tallest member of the Stage Right! drama team and stood higher than the illuminated cardboard star during the final scene of the Nativity). Or the season in his childhood when he wore the exact same outfit to church every Sunday: blue slacks, yellow shirt, a blue striped tie, and a gold tie clasp with a glass cat’s eye in the center. He tried to avoid being sideswiped by certain key noses in the congregation, who seemed to smell his whereabouts from great distances and corner him. As he grew older, his talent for invisibility became supreme. He would show up late to Sunday services or other church-family gatherings, sit in the back, and leave early. He could also expertly calculate an upcoming event that would no doubt weary him with fellowship and plan a school activity or party that would coincidentally conflict.

When his spotty appearances were not enough to disengage him from heaven’s headlines, he turned to his appearance as a weapon. His seeds of rebellion costume would certainly stretch out and become the nautical trampoline by which he could high jump over the scalloped edge of the glass oval that formed the confining rim of the Derringer aquarium.

First, the hair. He combed it differently. He gelled it differently. Then colored it . . . slowly. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And let it grow, and grow, and grow (an act of shear insubordination against the nature of 1st Corinthians 11:14). His parents decreed his limit-pushing hairstyle not a hill they wanted to die on. They were far more interested in his cardiac condition, spiritually speaking. His hair bristled out in all directions, looking like a colorful spiky sea plant clinging to a coral reef that one finds while snorkeling in some tropical lagoon. Then his clothes became more and more worldly. The alarming patterns, disheveled gangbanger styles, hanging-on-for-dear-life waistlines, criminally high-priced shoes (with and without socks), and the degree of barely presentable wear and tear (rips, frays, and patches), grew more and more pronounced as Joshua’s wineskin-bursting wardrobe was cloth-cut and enforced by his own secular world’s fashion police. He topped it off with a diamond-studded earring and a tattoo of a mongoose above his right shoulder blade. The whole metamorphosis vaguely recalled to mind that narcissist Nebuchadnezzar, when his kingly dreams really came true and ole Bird Claws got to live on the wild side, rain or shine, till the cows came home—the great outdoors never once ruffling the feathers of his trendy new eagle’s nest wig.

(In one of the church Christmas plays that I wrote and directed, the script called for a long-haired, rebellious teenage character. On the night of the performance, the young, long-haired actor playing the part of the teenager did not have time to punctually get into costume at the church before the curtain went up, so he came already dressed in his long-haired, rebellious teenager outfit: holy jeans, tie-dyed shirt, and beat-up tennis shoes. An O.F.E. usher greeted the actor at the door of the church and said, You can’t come into the church dressed like that. So much for coming just as you are.)

It was no wonder that the relieved busybodies of Our Father’s Evangelical Church swooned at the delicious news coming down the wire that Joshua Derringer was now dating the very-plain (by comparison) and conservatively forthright Brenda Todd!

The Todds thought the pairing would mean an in to the Senior Pastor’s rather reclusive world of limited intimate relationships, and were willing to risk whatever was visually going on with the Derringers’ oldest son in order to display an ingratiating, official closeness to the pastor and his family—singularly bestowed upon the Todds—for all of the gawking O.F.E. membership to enviously look upon. On the other hand, the Derringers, although never doubting their son’s heart (having trained him up in the way that he should go), breathed a sigh of relief that Joshua was finally actually attracted to such a nice, biblically grounded, church girl, after so many dubious Samaritan relationships with females starkly disqualified to become future daughters-in-law.

There was even a rubbing off phenomenon that was observable after many months of their dating, as Joshua began shedding his I want no part of your Christian world appearance and transformed himself (gladly, it seemed) back into an appropriate P.K. with dress code to match. Soon it was taken for granted that the innocent young couple would one day announce their matrimonial plans, much to the unanimous jubilation of parents, future in-laws, and not-so-innocent bystanders alike. But the I know it’s none of my business wires that buzzed shortly thereafter, from whispers in the church pews to peep-show prayer requests, were not with news of pending wedding bells, but of out-of-wedlock baby showers!

How could this have happened?

They should have known better!

His poor father—it’s against all he stands for!

They’re too young and immature to be parents!

No matter how you cut it, whether with elastic law or scandalous grace, there was an adorable, extra groomsman at the Band-Aid wedding of Joshua and Brenda Derringer sporting a tiny black Tom Thumb tuxedo! Milton’s officiating the wedding of his first son was painful to watch. We had seen him on so many previous occasions allowing his winsome personality and panache to virtually infuse every ceremony over which he presided. His tasteful, humorous vignettes provided such a personal touch for each couple, and his marriage charge, no matter from what angle, was profoundly placed upon the threshold of every new household that he christened. What should have been the coup de grace of wedding ceremonies—Pastor-father marrying his firstborn son and gaining his first new daughter-in-law—plodded along underneath a cart before the horse cloud of impurity that would not dissipate no matter how hard both wedding party and honored guests tried to focus on the forgiveness.

The new couple, by their own choosing, from a moment of passion, would travel down a road fraught with deeper potholes and sharper curves than usually befalls newlyweds. They had set in motion the engines of biblical consequences that cannot be thwarted or shaken off with any amount of graceful platitudes or the exchanging of lenses previously focused on Scripture for rose-colored glasses. Milton’s defense mechanism was to downplay the role of father, in spite of the distracting cooing and gurgling of his new grandson. He plowed right through the wedding ceremony with the distance and detachment usually associated with a Justice of the Peace hired to hitch an eloping couple who have escaped ceremony-expectant family and friends during the night and driven to Las Vegas, Nevada.

After having known Milton for so many years, even from where I was sitting, I could detect the invisible weight bearing down upon his shoulders—the heaviness in his eyes, the flat delivery of his mechanical, deflated words. On that day he would have been more comfortable hiding in a closet behind the Worship Center, rather than standing in front of his flock as their under-shepherd, his staff snapped in two.

And he was about to receive a second blow from another closet, as his second son, David, decided it was time to come out of his!

David Derringer grew up in the wake of his strapping older brother. He was quieter and gangly by comparison. Joshua was the life of the party before implementing his strategy to remove himself from the P.K. limelight. David exhibited none of the stereotypical qualities that one would narrow-mindedly label as disturbing, telltale signs (the lisping, leotard-leaping, limp-wristed label-slapping) of a skewed, emasculated sexual orientation. There was no Sodomite branded on David’s hand or forehead that would mark his newfound identity with those whose expression of physical attraction and companionship had been rerouted to their own kind. True, he had no girlfriends to speak of as he grew up before the eyes of the church, but that was quickly, cruelly attributed to fact that David was not the hunk that Joshua was. Some nice girl would most certainly come along, snatching David from the licking fires of Gomorrah, and, in due time, a normal love life for him would commence.

When it became obvious that something was amiss, David’s father sought to protect his son by keeping him out of the judgmental, derisive fray. He did not call undue attention to his family’s plight with polemics from the pulpit. But this was the explicit abhorrence the very One who had manufactured the first male and female from dust and ribs penned on numerous occasions in His Book. Whole cities had been leveled because of it; world-dominating civilizations had imploded. Vast crowds of people would lose their kingdom status, and perhaps even life-threatening diseases would be singled out just for them!

Nor did he blame David’s masculinity predicament on any parental-upbringing causes, and he did not pander to those who might use the situation as proof of God’s bungling of David’s genetic code. Pastor Derringer would go down none of these spurious paths in order to quell the rippling rumors regarding his second son. He loved his boy unconditionally, and that was that. He excised him from the family roster for his own protection. As far as any newcomer could tell, Milton and Amber Derringer had only three sons subject to any public scrutiny.

Six months after the O.F.E. Network News began humming with headlines like Senior Pastor Copes with Homosexuality, and the database at Valentino and Ridgeway Avenues was overloaded with sightings of David and his so-called partner, Milton Derringer, after many years of pastoring Our Father’s Evangelical Church of Monument, California, tendered his resignation and soon moved his family back to the state of Washington.

Joshua, Brenda, and little Tyler also took the opportunity to move back to Washington, as Joshua was having trouble finding a decent-paying job. He was admirably trying to support his young family after being abruptly extracted from any further schooling possibilities, but this sudden educational halt served as a ball and chain to his otherwise attractive resume.

David stayed in Southern California, moving to a suburb of West Hollywood along with his partner, who was rumored to be much older than him. This ghastly age difference made the suspiciously happy couple look more like a horrendously deceptive short-term fling—not the long-term, same-sex commitment that the two of them touted it to be.

I kept in touch with Milton and his family via email and letters for quite a few months after his departure from Monument, but our communication tapered off as I grew more and more uncomfortable at relaying the latest news from his last job post. I felt the updates would be increasingly tedious and tiresome for someone who had moved on. He had decided on a dramatic career change and became a life-insurance salesman for a very large company based in Tacoma. His first and only pastorate would be his fruitful years at Our Father’s Evangelical Church. How could this have happened? Milton had come fresh out of seminary with such a promising church career. He was nothing but beneficial to virtually every member of the O.F.E. congregation. Yet while his godly example had been infectious, his spiritual energy was being sapped. But this departure, statistically, was far too soon even by normal Senior Pastor standards. Perhaps he was one of the unlucky ones who had discovered that he could not stand the heat and had to get out of the kitchen. Or maybe this was a diabolical plot by C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape and Wormwood to put Milton permanently in the penalty box. Well, perhaps the Father can use His willing servant’s present burn-out for a greater on-fire purpose in the future . . .

. . . the people are just ready for some stability, I guess. They want consistency without any more upheaval. They reacted to the very first prospect that looked promising and safe. To you and me, it seems too abrupt, but . . .

Patrick thought for a moment and then resumed, "It’s kind of like the bedside husband who nurses his wife through many years of battling some fatal disease—like cancer or something—and when she finally passes away, he is re-married within months, before some perceive that his previous wife would have ever given him her graveside permission. The people are shocked, but the husband would say in his defense that he has been grieving for months, years even, so the new bride to him is appropriate and timely."

I had just returned from my reveries on Patrick’s explanation for the quick hiring of Tony Meece. I had understood the gist of his comments enough to respond,

"So the congregation would say they have been grieving since the Joshua Derringer-Brenda Todd-baby days, and are justified in thinking Tony Meece is what they need now."

Precisely, Patrick said somewhat garbled after he had sufficiently advanced in chewing a large bite of his Denver omelet.

"What they want and what they need might be two very different things," I said.

"To the degree that it is different might be heaven or