Getting the Call (For Mandy)

Dr. Guy Gaines Sayles, Jr.is the pastor of the Baptist Church in Ashville, N.C. He is also the person largely responsible for me becoming a minister in the first place.

Our friendship is also the reason Guy has moved so much throughout his ministry. As soon as people discover that he was the person who first suggested that I attend seminary, they partially blame him for everything that I have done as a clergyman. After a while, he can’t take it anymore and God calls him to a new church.

To set the record straight, I was completing my college career, having crammed four years into five, learned about birth control with the birth of Jeremy, and had finally conceded that the band that I was in would not replace the Beatles.

The telephone rang. Upon answering, I learned that it was Guy, who had graduated on time and was now in his first year at the seminary in Louisville.

“Mike, I’m just calling to ask you a question,” he began. “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

It was a good question. I had absolutely no idea. College was finishing with me more than I was finishing school. In the past couple of years, my education had finally become important to me (a new born son is a great motivator) and I was determined to learn everything that I had previously missed in life. Because I was raised in the church and cared about my religion, I began taking classes in the area and soon met the seminary bound, already called, Guy.

“I have no idea,” I answered.

“Well, why don’t you come to seminary.”

After thinking about it for a few seconds, I said that this sounded like a good idea, thanked him for the suggestion and hung up the phone. This is how God called me to attend seminary. This is as close to a direct call from God as I have ever received.

During seminary, I became the pastor of the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel in the inner city of Louisville, and Guy was pastor to a country church in Tunnel Hill, Indiana. We were together often and shared a great deal of our experiences as “professional Christians” with one another. A professional Christian is someone who is paid to follow in the footsteps of Jesus while everyone else has to volunteer.

Our churches were as different from one another as they could possibly be. Guy’s was pretty much a traditional church with trustees, deacons, budgets, an organized and functional Sunday School, excellent music and a lot of neat stuff for the kids to do.

Jeff Street, as it was called, had no deacons, no budget, only one Sunday School class, no music and nothing for neighborhood kids to do except try to break into the normally empty church. In fact, the congregation at Jeff Street actually consisted of only five old ladies who apparently never bothered to learn that a man had to be involved for a church to be in good standing with the Southern Baptist Convention. I suppose that this is why they hired me.

Under Guy’s leadership, his church grew in every area. They even paved a new parking lot while he was there to accommodate all of the people who came to listen to him preach. Guy is one of the best preachers that I have ever heard and probably the smartest person I know.

At Jeff Street, I had to get up early on Sunday mornings and drive around trying to convince barely sober homeless people and prostitutes to attend and listen to me deliver a sermon. No one in the inner city could drive and they certainly wouldn’t walk to church, so if I wanted a congregation on Sunday mornings, I had to do round them up. Having never preached a sermon in my life, I developed an alternative style of preaching. This occurred because those who did congregate with me normally slept through my sermons. I tried to develop a delivery that was both interesting and kept Ms. Wynn from snoring.

While Guy continued to grow as a preacher, I developed a sense of showmanship. For example, I looked for ways to speak God’s message without preaching.

At Jeff Street, we were every bit as likely to have alternative worship rather than a traditional service. For example, one Christmas Sunday we held a trial instead of a sermon. Instead of having a choir sit in the choir loft, we chose twelve persons in attendance to sit on a jury in their place. Because I had a robe that came with the church, I served as the judge. Two other members of the church served as the attorneys.

On trial was none other than Santa Claus. His charge was selling out and making Christmas too commercial. (On the previous Sunday, we had watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and everyone agreed with Lucy’s assessment that Christmas is a big commercial racket sponsored by the Syndicate.) Santa Claus himself entered the sanctuary turned into a courtroom, dressed in his red suit with long flowing white beard and was seated across from the jurors in the choir loft. Everyone in the church was wide awake and gave their utmost attention to the trial.

This was Santa Claus, after all, and no one wanted to make him mad lest he not show up at their house on Christmas Eve. Compelling arguments were given by the would-be attorneys, but in the end, he was acquitted by the jury.

As judge, I should have thrown the case out anyway as I observed two members of the jury slide their Christmas lists to the defendant during the closing arguments. This was typical of the Jeff Street approach to formal worship services.

As the years passed, Guy eventually graduated from seminary on time and decided to distance himself from me by being called to another church. At his new church, Guy made friends with a black minister and called me one night to inform me that the people of his town thought so much of his idea to invite this new friend to preach at the revival he was hosting that they were burning a cross in his yard to show their appreciation. Soon afterwards, Guy was called to another church in the more northern part of the state.

It took me several more years to graduate from seminary as I crammed three years worth of education into six. A couple of years later, I resigned my life as professional Christian and began working with homeless people on a full-time basis. Guy has since been called by God to pastor a half-dozen churches and I have now worked with the fragile people for all of these years. He now avoids me at all cost but has become incredibly successful.

I, on the other hand, am having fun.