Part 3 — Line Fourteen Struck
Deacon Earl set his old Bible on the lectern and looked at Pastor Kyle over the top of his glasses. “Ms. Pearl is the treasurer at the church in Atlanta,” he said. “She told me Pastor Kyle resigned there two weeks before an audit found $112,000 of building fund money spent on personal expenses.”
A murmur rolled through the folding chairs. Pastor Kyle opened his mouth, but Earl raised one shaking hand. “She also told me he repaid part of it and signed an agreement. That agreement said any new congregation must be told. Nobody here was told, because nobody here was ever allowed to ask.”
I stood up from the fourth pew. “As church clerk, I have the bylaws and the call committee minutes,” I said. “The committee never received a reference from Atlanta. The letter in our file was typed, unsigned, and dated the week Pastor Kyle arrived.”
Mr. Lyle Tubbs, our youngest deacon, moved that line 14 be struck from the budget until the members could vote on it. The second came from three rows at once. The vote was 61 to 4, and the $38,000 housing upgrade was gone before the coffee went cold.
Then Earl asked for one more motion. The bylaws also say that money collected for a named purpose may only be spent on that purpose. The Christmas fund had to go back to the choir. Brittany walked to the back office and returned with an envelope. Twelve hundred dollars, counted twice in front of everyone.
Money given in love for one purpose belongs to that purpose, and no title in the world can change that.
The regional office of the denomination reviewed the file that same week. Pastor Kyle was placed on leave while a lawful audit of our accounts was completed. Every dollar of ours was accounted for. Nothing had been lost here, because he had only just begun to ask for it.
Pastor Kyle resigned on Friday. He and Brittany moved back to Atlanta to meet the terms of his old agreement, and the regional office sent a kind interim pastor from Memphis.
Before they left, Brittany handed me the keys herself. “I was wrong to take them, Dorothy,” she said. It cost her something to say it, and I thanked her for saying it.
The sound system money was redirected into a fund to repair the old organ. A band can play on Sunday evenings if the young families want one. The choir keeps the morning.
The next Sunday I walked up to my bench for the first time in two months. Eleven children stood in two rows in brand new robes, bought with bake-sale money that never left the church.
Deacon Earl sat in the front pew with his oxygen tube and his old Bible, humming along. I played the first hymn he ever requested, and there was not a dry eye in that sanctuary.