Chuckling, Bert leaned back in his chair. “Church folks hate a scandal. They’d fire you and pay me just to keep me quiet.” He leaned forward again. “Look, I’m not here to ruin your gig. I just want my money.”
“And I’ve told you, you’ll get it.”
“When?” Bert demanded.
“Give me a couple more weeks. I have something in the works, but it’ll take a couple of weeks.”
Bert stood, flicked the toothpick on Andrew’s desk. “I’m not a bank,” he said. “But I am going to have to charge you interest. I’d say two weeks is worth an additional hundred thousand.”
Andrew jumped out of his chair. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Bert said. “You pay me in two weeks or I take this to your church. If the church isn’t interested, I bet that little wife of yours will be. It’s that simple. We clear?”
Andrew nodded. What else could he do? He couldn’t let Bert go to Sandra. He’d get the money, even if he had to dip into church funds again.
“Good,” Bert said. And then he turned and left the office.
When the door closed, Andrew dropped down in his chair. He would need a miracle to get the money he needed in the next two weeks. All wasn’t completely lost. He’d gotten a miracle before. He began to pray.
Chapter 15
Andrew stood in the fellowship hall after service chatting with T. I., the latest celebrity member of Showers of Blessings, about a fund-raiser he’d volunteered to host for the homeless. “We need to sit down and finalize everything next week,” he said to T. I. “God’s going to bless you for volunteering this way.”
“I’m already blessed, man,” T. I. said, giving him a twofisted shake. “I’ll hollar at you next week and we’ll do this thang.”
Andrew smiled as T. I. and his entourage made their way to the door, giving brief greetings to the parishioners they passed. Unlike some churches that had a special up-front section roped off for their celebrity members, Showers of Blessings had no such designated seating. All members were treated equally. Of course, folks like T. I. came with their entourage so they effectively roped themselves off. The rest of the congregation respected the privacy of the celebrities and didn’t hound them for autographs. The notice in the weekly bulletin reminding them not to do so helped a lot, he imagined.
He was more than pleased with the way the membership was shaping up. Not only was Showers of Blessings drawing from folks already in church, they were also drawing the unchurched. And while their rolls had a high percentage of lower-income people, there was a healthy percentage of upper-income folks along with quite a few celebrities like T. I. Andrew took that diversity as a sign of the power of the ministry. The church had gone from the roughly six hundred attendees that first Sunday to more than three thousand, exceeding the capacity of the sanctuary. They had gone to two services a Sunday, but Andrew didn’t think that was enough. He was eager to talk to his leadership team about expansion to meet their continued growth.
He wanted that growth for spiritual and personal reasons. Personally, an increase in membership would justify his next request for a salary increase, an increase he needed to meet his growing obligations. His luck had turned, but not enough and not fast enough. He was keeping his head above water, but barely. He saw Sandra across the room and smiled at her, relieved that she was unaware of his financial situation. He moved in her direction but stopped when Luther and Carrie Williams greeted him.
“Great sermon, Pastor,” Carrie said. “You hit it just right every Sunday. It’s as though you know exactly what we need, and you give it to us.”
Andrew forced a smile. “That’s the Holy Spirit.”
“I have to tell you that we’ve been blessed here at Showers of Blessings more than we’ve been blessed at any church. And you putting Luther on staff here at the church has helped our family beyond means. I don’t know how long we could have gone without him having a job.”
Andrew clapped Luther on the shoulder. “We had a need and he was the right man for the job,” he said. After running into the man at the dog track, Andrew had figured the best way to keep him from asking for a handout every week was to give him a job. While he was sure Luther was paid more than any other janitor-slash-groundskeeper in the Atlanta area, the cost was more than worth it. Luther did a good job keeping the church and the grounds maintained, and the begging had stopped. Apparently, Luther knew a good thing when he stepped in it. “Luther’s doing a great job. He’s an important member of the Showers of Blessings family.”
Luther actually stood taller at Andrew’s words. Amazing, Andrew thought. Luther had gotten the job through blackmail, yet he still valued Andrew’s praise. He’d never understand people. Not really. He was about to say more when Sandra walked up and joined them. “How are you two today?” she asked Luther and Carrie.
“Couldn’t be better, First Lady,” Carrie said. “We were just telling the pastor how much we like it here.”
“No more than we like having you here in the Showers family,” she said, embracing them with her smile. “I hate to do this,” she added, “but I need to steal the pastor for a few minutes.”
“We were going anyway,” Luther said. “You folks have a nice night.”
“Nice couple,” Sandra said as they walked away. Then she turned to her husband. “The leadership team is waiting for you. You called the meeting so I think you need to be there. Everybody’s tired, and I promised you wouldn’t keep them long so we’d better get started.”
Andrew followed his wife out of the fellowship hall and to the conference room across from his office. As Sandra had said, everybody was waiting for him. He guessed they’d gotten used to his tardiness by now. He was typically the last one to arrive at a leadership meeting. “I apologize for being late,” he told his team while he waited for Sandra to take her seat to his immediate left. After she was seated, he took his place at the head of the conference table.
“It’s time we start looking for a bigger building,” Andrew said without preamble. “The second service helps but doesn’t totally address our space problems. We are crowding Sunday School classrooms, and the fellowship hall doesn’t accommodate all of us.”
“We are at capacity with our children’s church as well,” Sandra added. “We need more space if we’re going to serve people the way they should be served.”
“Our membership is up, true,” Jacob Wilson said, “but so are our expenses. We’re barely staying ahead of the curve. I’d hate to see us incur more debt until we build up our reserves.”
“Especially if we’re going to continue providing social services for our members,” George Salley added. “We’ve paid mortgages, credit card debt, and auto loans. All total, we’ve spent a little more than two million dollars on these services.”
“That’s not a lot of money considering the record growth we’ve experienced in return. And we’re going to keep growing so we need to be prepared for that growth. Sandra and I have been looking at buildings. New Birth is getting ready to move to a larger facility, and we should consider taking over their existing complex,” Andrew said.
“But that New Birth complex seats twenty thousand people,” Rob Moore said. “We’re nowhere near that number.”
“Not today,” Andrew said, “but we’ll be close within the next year. If we had a complex that large, we could host events like the T. I. benefit on our property and not have to pay site fees. I’m pretty confident the complex would pay for itself over time.” He paused and then took a moment to meet the eyes of each leadership team member. “I’m asking you to take a leap of faith with me, much like the leap of faith you took to join Showers of Blessings in the first place. God didn’t let