Judas Church

Episode 7

Chapter 19

After talking with my dad at the office, I went home and since I didn't have anything better to do I started reviewing the marketing plan our team had put together for Glinton Sanford. I turned the TV on, but put it on mute as I worked in the living room. Learning about my father's past and personal connection to Sanford as well as how he really felt about the church and religion in general had been eye-opening. Before I left the office, he had made it clear that he didn't want me to, in his words, "get too deep into this religious stuff." Keep your head on straight, he had said. Keep your eye on the prize.

If Dad's prize was money and success in business, I wasn't too sure he was unlike the prosperity gospel preacher he said could have ruined his life.

The phone rang and I picked it up.

"Hi," Abigail said. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"I signed you up as a volunteer planner for City of Fellowship's Nations Sunday."

"What is that? Why'd you sign me up for it?" I said.

"Nations Sunday is the annual church event where the entire church focuses on missionary activity and what we can do to spread the Gospel around the world. It kicks off our Missions Focus Week," Abigail said. "We're going to receive reports from the missionaries who have been sent and look at new ways to expand our outreach. It's really fun."

"Why did you volunteer me?" I asked.

"Because you need to get more involved in church work," she said like it was obvious.

"Right. Well, you might want to tell me something ahead of time next time," I said.

"Hey, we needed one more person for the planning committee and I thought your background in marketing could be useful, so I put your name down. Between asking permission and asking forgiveness, I lean firmly to the latter."

"Okay, no sweat," I said. "What am I expected to do?"

"That's what you'll find out," she said. "We're having the first planning meeting this Saturday at two p.m. You in?"

"Doesn't look like I have a choice. I'll be there."

After I hung up, a familiar face flashed across the television screen. I turned the volume up.

A video of Johnny Dunmore speaking was being played as a voiceover introduced Life After God — the new "reality show" Abigail was telling me and her brother about the night Dunmore made his big announcement at the church. The show was featuring four people who had for one reason or another abandoned their faith. Besides Dunmore, who said he no longer believed in God, there was a Florida college student, Tamela Walbrind, who abandoned her faith after her college studies led her to question her beliefs; a millionaire Wall Street broker, Jacob Lehman, who left his Amish community to pursue worldly success; and Georgia school teacher, Sharmon Sharpe, who was branded an apostate by his imam and barred from attending his mosque after undergoing a sex change operation.

As I watched the show, I couldn't help but think of my own father who had left the church as a young man and had never looked back.

Chapter 20

Pastor Taylor was mortified by the person he saw on the show, Life After God.

He saw himself — in a jittery, black-and-white video that had apparently been secretly-recorded by Johnny Dunmore during the private meeting they had held after he made his surprise announcement at the church. Johnny hadn't just been wearing a new pair of glasses. He had been wired.