Landris and Johnnie Mae arrived home. It had been an enjoyable but long evening. Johnnie Mae had gone upstairs to step out of her evening gown—she loved Prussian blue and hoped to find a daytime dress in that color. Everyone had been so wonderful at the banquet tonight, the congregation having given them a lovely third wedding anniversary celebration. It had indeed been a glorious night, but she was exhausted. Tomorrow was Sunday and the start of yet another long day.
As she briefly closed her eyes, she couldn’t help but reflect on all that had happened over the past few years that had brought them to this place…
Chapter 2
And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.
(Genesis 37:19)
A few years earlier, Pastor Landris had been relieved of his duties as the pastor of Wings of Grace Faith Ministry Church in Atlanta, Georgia, a congregation that grew from some 37 members to over 4,000 under his leadership. Prior to his dismissal, he was asked to tone down his support of women in ministry. He didn’t.
Pastor Landris and Johnnie Mae had just gotten married on September 8 of that year.
Johnnie Mae didn’t immediately relocate to Atlanta, and as it turned out, she never had to. God spoke to Pastor Landris and instructed him to move to Johnnie Mae’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, to start anew.
Thomas Landris, Pastor Landris’s older brother, had made a mess of some investments he’d been in charge of on behalf of his brother. Fifteen years earlier, Thomas had invested money in Microsoft stock for both him and his brother. Thomas took his out early; Pastor Landris left his to grow.
And grow it did.
Pastor Landris became a multimillionaire, but when the IRS started looking for its share, he discovered his brother had cashed out the stocks, as Pastor Landris had instructed him to, but invested the money elsewhere without his knowledge or approval.
Thomas did end up recouping some of the lost money, and before Pastor Landris knew it, he was to be the owner of an FM radio station in Birmingham. Pastor Landris received this as further confirmation that he was indeed being led to relocate to the Magic City.
In December, Pastor Landris sold his house, packed his belongings, and moved to Birmingham.
He left without a church requesting him to come as pastor, to a home technically belonging to his wife, along with his brother and a few others who had also made the decision to relocate.
Thomas was to become the general manager of the radio station his brother was in the process of buying. Sapphire Drummond, a therapist, came along from Atlanta because she was dating Thomas, and she wanted a change of scenery. Sapphire and Theresa Jordan, Pastor Landris’s ex-fiancée, had been best friends. Angela Gabriel, who preferred being called Angel, had been hired by the original owners of the radio station previous to the sale. In fact, she had no idea the station was even in the process of being sold when she accepted the job. Her beloved great-grandmother had just died, and this job was a great opportunity for her. She sure didn’t know she had met the potential buyer when Pastor Landris visited her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, earlier that year.
For Pastor Landris, everything seemed to be falling into place. Surely God was directing this move. But he would soon learn that things aren’t always as they seem. What appears to be God’s will one moment can end up looking totally different once things begin to unfold.
Pastor Landris would come to understand how Joseph the dreamer in the Bible must have felt. Joseph’s father Jacob, later called Israel, loved him so much more than his other children that he made his beloved son the infamous coat of many colors. Joseph dreamed his family would end up bowing to him. He shared this dream with them—an announcement that didn’t go over well with his brothers (or his father at first, for that matter).
“Shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?” Joseph’s brothers and father wanted to know. Of course, they hated Joseph even more for his dreams and for daring to speak those dreams out loud.
Pastor George Edward Landris could definitely relate.
When Pastor Landris needed spiritual encouragement to get through the rough times—as he wrestled with feelings of rejection, being lied to and about—he would find comfort reading Genesis, chapters 37–50, to help him go on.
As with Joseph, Pastor Landris believed God had given him a dream. Somewhere Joseph must have believed God would bring it to pass or else he would have just quit. When Pastor Landris needed a Word to help him, he would think about all Joseph endured before his blessings finally came to pass. He reflected on how Joseph was put in a pit by his own brothers, who had originally planned to kill him. And had it not been for his other brothers, Reuben and Judah, Joseph and his dreams might well have perished.
But God had His hands of protection on Joseph, and Pastor Landris knew God’s hand was also on him. Pastor Landris’s own “preach-brothers” in the ministry were not so happy to see him come to their city. They pretended they were whenever he was around, even as they plotted to get rid of him.
Not to physically kill him, although Pastor Landris wasn’t one hundred percent certain about that at times. But he did realize they wanted to assassinate him—and his dreams—in a spiritual sense.
No one had called Pastor Landris to come to Birmingham. Who could say if he would ever have a congregation again? That paralleled Joseph being thrown in prison. On the plus side, Pastor Landris did have his new family: a wonderful wife in Johnnie Mae, along with her three-year-old daughter, Princess Rose. And there was Thomas and Sapphire, who had followed him to Alabama to lend their assistance.
Things would surely have to get better.
However, Pastor Landris—as did Joseph—would quickly discover that that’s not always the case.
Faith Alexandria Morrell didn’t care about church anymore. She’d had more than her fill of “church folks.” One thing she could never understand was how the church pastor, who constantly hammered other folk about what they should and shouldn’t do, could end up doing that same wrong thing, get caught, and the church would just forgive him and keep him on. It made no sense to her.
“They’re all only human. He’s just a man,” her friend Dominique told her. Faith was still living in New Orleans then. She had questioned why the congregation hadn’t kicked their pastor out on his holier-than-thou, self-righteous tailbone after they caught him messing around with all those women in the church. “Who are we to judge?” Dominique said. “Only God can do that.”
Faith still didn’t get it. She had witnessed him deliver a few sermons from the pulpit, getting the church all emotional as he began to sing and moan. The next thing she knew, hats and shoes were flying all over the place; people’s glasses were landing on the floor or in the pews behind them; men were yanking off suit coats, ties, and jackets and running around, shouting. The women were dancing, unconcerned whether things she didn’t care to see or mention were showing as they jumped or fell down, their dresses, blouses, skirts in disarray. Faith wondered—how holy could this be?
Those who weren’t shouting were running up to the pastor and laying paper money at his feet, which only seemed to make him whoop and holler more.
Faith just did…not…get it. People claimed it was the Holy Spirit that had caused them to act that way, but she knew from scripture that the spirit was subject
