The First Business Meeting
A short story
Joel Sherman’s friends had all told him that life would be very different when he left his position as the youth minister of a megachurch in Mobile, Alabama to become the pastor of First Baptist Church of Stuart near the Georgia coast. He had assumed they meant there would be some culture shock moving from a church with 15,000 members to a town with fewer than 3,000 residents. He was soon to learn that this would be the easy part.
He had arrived late on a Monday so that he would have a week to settle in before his first Sunday service, and he spent Tuesday morning unpacking and arranging the parsonage. He was happy to find that the house had a small guest bedroom that was set up as a study; trying to prepare sermons in his office in the church would likely be impossible given the inevitable interruptions. His cat, Barnabas, had already claimed an overstuffed chair in the living room as his new domain, so even he would leave Joel in peace, at least most of the time.
He had just put the last commentary on the bookshelf when there was a knock at the door. He opened it to find two of his deacons, Ray Johnston and Matt Skaggs, standing on the front porch.
“We’re here to take you to lunch,” Ray said. “I figure you haven’t had time to get groceries yet — assuming you cook much — and there’s a Mexican…
