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yourself? You’re the
interim
. You have no guarantee you’ll be called as pastor. God might want us to take a church in downtown Harlem or Timbuktu—”
    “But honey, you’re not listening. I
do
think this is the Lord. The plan just flowed—” This caused Manipulation and Pride to burst into wicked laughter. “He can’t tell the difference between our voices and God’s?” Deception broke into a fangy grin, “I’ve outdone myself!”
    “—all the information I learned in my church planting class was so applicable. See, my first goal,” he said, flipping past the multicolored, multifonted title page, “is to start a prayer meeting, once a week. We have to ask the Lord to bless all this or it will fall flat on its face. I’m going to announce a prayer meeting. It’s time to open the building on Wednesday nights. We can’t just do Sunday morning and Sunday evening; we’ve got to stir the pot. This town needs to be saturated with the Gospel. Then after the prayer ministry is established, six months from now, we’ll start a visitation program every Thursday night. We’ll go out into the community in pairs and knock on every door.” He flipped to the next page. “See, I’ve got the whole town marked in sections. We’ll hit them one by one each Thursday night and keep going until every home in the community has had a visit from Victory Church of Bradbury.”
    “But honey—”
    “In seminary I learned that on average, for every 11 houses you go to, one family will visit the church. Out of every five that visit, I think we should be able to maintain one. It’s so simple. For every 55 homes we visit, we will gain a new family for the church. If you divide the number of households in our community by 55 I can predict—”
    Paul’s face was suddenly invaded by a lovingly worn, one-eared Winnie the Pooh with a small rip by its grinning mouth. “Daddy, sing to Pooh.”
    “Daddy’s busy right now, sweetie. I’ll sing to Pooh at bedtime.”
    “Sing now—for Pooh!”
    “No, Daddy’s busy I’ll sing later. I promise. Go play.”
    Paul was too busy looking at his graph, showing the predicted attendance at the Victory Church of Bradbury, to notice the disappointed look on Jordan’s face as he shuffled back to the living room, dragging Pooh behind him. To Kathy, the disappointment was glaring. She glanced at Paul, still absorbed in his charts, and excused herself to the living room where she snuck up on Jordan and grabbed Pooh.
    “My Pooh,” she said cuddling the well-loved, tattered bear close, as she sat cross legged on the floor. Jordan laughed.
    “My Pooh,” he said reaching his chubby arms to grab Pooh’s one remaining ear. Kathy released her grasp. As Jordan snuggled on her lap, hugging Pooh, she put her arms around them both and rocked back and forth as she sang, “I love ice cream, I love candy, I love Tiggers aren’t they dandy? I love Piglet, I love Pooh. But most of all, I looovvve YOU!” She ended the song with a rousing tummy poking, which sent Jordan into gales of laughter.
    “Come on sport. I think it’s Pooh’s bedtime. Let’s get ready and daddy will be in to sing….” She finished the thought in her mind…. Or I’ll
flog him within an inch of his life with his stupid graphs
.

C HAPTER 8

     
    “I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves—one above the other—and the taller we grow, the easier we can reach them. Now I find that God’s gifts are on shelves—and the lower we stoop, the more we get.”
F.B. Meyer 1
     
    “‘Become nothing if you would become something.’ In His rules of success, you must stoop to rise, go down to get up. And shrink to grow.”
Unknown
     
     
    The type for the headline on the
Bradbury Gazette
was bigger than it had ever been. The owner and editor, Clarence Harvey, had never felt the need to go bigger than a 63 font and had only used that once, when the robbery ring had been broken wide open by the sheriff. He only used it