5:40 am on a Sunday morning, and the alarm on Sly’s phone went off.

Lying on his bed, eyes wide open, Sly sighed.

Another Sunday. Another day of fellowship with the saints.

Oh, how Sunday used to be that time of the week when he woke up with a song of joy in his heart and gladness on his tongue! Gone were the days when he could easily identify with King David’s famous statement that he was glad when they said unto him, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’

Now it was only anxiety, tension and worry that filled him whenever the day came around. But this Sunday in particular was one he was not looking forward to at all.

The dread and fear of what would happen that day had had him in a chokehold since around 2:00 am, and it was still holding on strongly.

Since the Wednesday service, he had been wondering how true the rumour was about his dear Oscar guy. A conversation with Benjamin the next day confirmed it all.

Indeed, Oscar had been released from the choir, and the whole ‘marry only from the church’ sermon had been inspired by him. According to his friend, the leadership was aware that the young man was dating a lady from another branch of the House of Mekadesh, and had ordered him to break up with the girl, as she was not part of them, and they had someone from the Youth church in mind for him. Oscar had not been very open to the idea and expressed his reservations, insisting he and the lady’s parents had prayed about the relationship and had received confirmation from God that this was His will for their lives.

That did not go down well with Rev. Randy, who absolutely blasted him for suggesting that he and his parents knew God’s will better than they, his superior spiritual leaders, did, and had him stripped of his responsibilities with the choir.

Aside that, the previous night, Benjamin called him again in a state of fright.

As expected, it had to do with the head pastor’s unhappiness with the numbers at cell meetings.

Once again, he stated that he resisted the urge to cook up numbers just to find favour with the leadership, so his numbers were still pretty low. And so were a few others. Apparently, the word was that Rev. Randy was expecting them to totally up their game and bring in not less than double their usual numbers. Upon receiving the stats that evening, however, the head pastor was enraged, and stated passionately, “There’s gonna be fireworks tomorrow!”

Benjamin’s fear was so thick, Sly could literally feel it through the phone. His attempts to get his friend to calm down were admirable, but nicely hid the fact that the terror in his friend’s heart had been transferred to him.

Rev. Randy certainly was not the kind of person you’d want to be around when he was angry with you. In addition to his stout physique, he had this very intimidating aura about him which could even make older people nervous when speaking to him. Add to that, the fact that his two trusted associate pastors would instantly pull up by his side and go into attack dog mode, ready to rip apart anyone who was infuriating their boss, and the prospect of being in church that Sunday was anything but appealing.

Sly swallowed hard as those matters came to mind. He had never been scared of stepping into church before. This was a first, and he hated every minute of it. Oh, how he’d love to just pull the covers over his head and pretend that it was just a holiday and not a Sunday!

Yet, he couldn’t. All pastors-in-training were expected to be present at every Sunday service. Absence was not acceptable, unless you had indicated to Pastor Kojo before the start of the weekend that you would not be available. Go absent without any explanation, and the query that would follow would be savage.

Sly groaned as this came to mind. He begrudgingly threw the covers off, and got on his feet. “Fine. Fine. I’ll go now. Lord, I am so not looking forward to this service…”

***

“Everybody lift your hands, sing with me! Son of Man, Son of righteousness/King of the earth, for sinners slain…”

One of the ladies in the choir was leading the ministration for the day, and was doing her best to fill the void that had been left by Oscar’s departure.

Sly, seated in his usual spot, was trying his best to get in tune with the flow of the song as it started up. This was his favourite part of the service, after all, and the best time he had to connect with the Lover of his soul.

The panic in his chest, unfortunately, had too much overriding power to permit him to freely worship. Every time he looked around, he anticipated the arrival of the head pastor. Only Pastor Kojo was around, meaning Pastor Henry would appear with Rev. Randy any time from now.

And it would not be pleasant.

He mumbled along to the song as he continued to look around the hall, anxious at what was about to happen. At one point, his eyes met with Benjamin’s, who sat a few rows away from him, and the fear in his friend’s eyes could not be ignored.

Lord, please help us. Please help us…

Ten minutes in, and as the choir were ending the song, the moment of truth arrived.

From the back, everyone rose to their feet. Sly looked back, and sure enough, Rev. Randy was in the building. And he was moving quickly to the pulpit.

The rest of the church rose up, and he made his way to the pulpit. As Pastor Henry gestured to the congregation to sit down, the palpitations in Sly’s chest tripled.

The look on Rev. Randy’s face was anything but pleasant. The man looked very displeased.

He immediately lifted the microphone on the pulpit to his lips and bellowed.

“ALL CELL FELLOWSHIP LEADERS, ON YOUR FEET!”

All the said leaders rose to their feet quickly, as the atmosphere in the church totally changed. Everyone looked frightened by this outburst from their head pastor, wondering what was going on.

“You see these people? If this church does not grow as exponentially as it should over the next three months, just know that they are the ones to be blamed! You remember when we started this cell fellowship thing? What did we say? That this was going to turn into a mega-church within six months, because we were going to fill up this hall and even have an overflow, did I not say that?”

Along with the rest of the congregation, Sly answered cautiously, then he quickly looked back at the leaders on their feet. They all looked pretty humiliated, especially Benjamin.

“We’re trying to build a correct Youth Church for Bishop Ario to take over, and you people are just joking around. Joking around! I’m not happy. At all! The way you people are running this cell fellowship, Bishop Ario will come and be preaching to empty plastic chairs! Is that worthy of a man as great as him? Huh?”

He couldn’t help but feel very irritated by the sound of Jubilee loudly responding, “No, Daddy, no! It’s an error!”

This certainly was not the time for all those sycophantic parrot chants, in his opinion.

“Listen, this church is a church of discipline and order. The Bible says that better is open rebuke than secret love. And that is why I’m doing this. Because this is Kingdom work! We’re trying to depopulate hell and fill up heaven with souls! But will we get there when the labourers are sleeping in the field? No, we’ll not! Listen, this is our church! It belongs to us, and if it takes this sort of rebuke to get you people to do what God expects you to do, we will do it! We won’t let you people sleep on your mandate; we’ll do whatever is needed to get you working!”

His heart pounding against his chest, the tension in Sly’s bosom did not show any signs of reducing at any time. And unless you were one of the few ‘hard followers’ in the room, it was likely that was the feeling of everyone else.

And if that last statement was anything to go by, it looked like the church was going to have to witness a lot of this until the numbers increased at a crazy rate.

This was not good at all.

“Sit down. Sit down. Let me begin my message for the day.”

The sound of moving chairs filled Sly’s ears, as the cell leaders took their seats.

The silence in the hall was deafening. Everyone was clearly shaken by this. For those who knew it was coming, and those who had no idea their head pastor was about to set off some fireworks before the sermon, this was scarring.

I knew it. I knew this was not gonna be a comfortable service, Sly thought to himself, trying his best to block out the open, and rather irritating, mumblings of Jubilee for the need to repent and get serious about the church. Chale, things aren’t getting any better, they just seem to be going downhill. I really need to start evaluating my stay here. I need someone mature in the faith I can talk to about this.

Someone I can trust to give me good counsel…

Yeah, he most certainly needs to get some proper counsel from someone he can trust. Because he needs it. And dear oh dear, that did not make for a comfortable start to service at all…