The Preacher's Face

I loved that church. I want to say that first, because what comes next is true at the same time, not instead.

I was the studious one. I'd read big parts of the Bible properly, not just the verses people throw around. And I believed the whole point of us being there to reach people and save them. I believed it with everything I had. So when there was work to do, I did it. I made the evangelism flyers. I printed them. I cared about them more than anyone, because to me they weren't just flyers. They were how a stranger might first meet the thing that had changed my life.

We were a Ugandan church in London. In Uganda, you put the preacher's face on the flyer. That's not about ego. It's just how trust works there. You follow a person. You show up because you know who's leading, or you know someone who does. The face is the invite.

In my opinion, in London it made no sense. The stranger on the street had never seen this man and had no reason to care what he looked like. In my opinion, the face on the flier was wasted space, it was used up on a question nobody walking past was even asking. I believed that what they needed was the message. One clear, simple line about the gospel, the actual thing we were offering them. I was sure about this. Not in a proud way. In a practical way. I was just right.

So I said so. And I was told, very kindly, that the face would stay.

The leader was a generous woman. I only have good memories of her. She gave far more to that church than I ever did, her money, her years, she made sacrifices I never had to make. She wasn't unkind to me for a second. She just wasn't going to change the flyer. And slowly I understood something: there had never been an argument to win. I'd brought reasons to a thing that didn't run on reasons. The face stayed because of who wanted it there. Not because of anything anyone could actually say about it.

The church had taught me to think. It made me sharp, it used that sharpness, it gave me real work because I was good at it. Right up to a line. And the line wasn't where I expected. It wasn't at God, or doctrine, or any of the things you're told not to question. It was at a flyer. A small piece of paper. If the line was there, it was everywhere, I'd just never hit it before, because I'd never been right about something the people above me had already decided.

I wasn't a rebel. That's the part I can't get over. I was the opposite. I was the loyal one, the one who cared enough about the work to want it done well. And it turns out that person is harder for a church to handle than someone who doubts. You can pray for a doubter. But someone who believes the whole thing and just thinks you're wrong about the flyer, there's no prayer for that. There's only rank.

I still don't know what to do with the fact that I worked all this out over the preacher's face. It feels too small to mean what it meant. But that was the door. I didn't pick it, and I can't make it any bigger or smaller than it was.