A Tale Of Two Cities Part II (originally sent May07)

On Saturday morning, the three day For Men Only conference hosted by TD Jakes was over, and we had a day and a half to finally leave the resort in Grapevine and experience downtown Dallas. Luckily for us, we had a friend drive up from Austin and another who flew in from Pheonix to keep us company these last couple of days of our time in Texas. And on Saturday it was all about shopping! Well, it was after we had stuffed ourselves silly at the Cheesecake Factory. I am usually a twice-a-year only-out-of-necessity shopper, but recently, I’ve discovered why our female counterparts absolutely adore this exercise that I had only once considered as a rigorous chore (unpleasant memories of spending hours wandering around stores on Oxford Street as a child while my mum shopped spring to mind). I had gone shopping and enlisted the help of a lady friend in making some good picks, and I was intrigued to find that her impatience grew the more I shopped and the longer I lingered in each shop as I worked my way through the mall. When it finally hit me, it was an epiphany – ladies love shopping so much because its always for themselves! But the moment you flip the script, they start to exhibit men-like tendencies – irritability, impatience and disinterest….I also discovered that shopping can be therapeutic – I’m sure I’ve heard ladies say this for the longest time without ever truly appreciating what they meant. Anyway, I digress. Luckily, being on holiday in Dallas, our friends were more than happy for the shopping to be all about us. Unfortunately, on the only full day we had to catch the stores in Dallas, someone had to insist on getting an American fade before they left the US! Anyway, after a “brief” two hour or so interlude at “The Fade Shop”, we returned to the mall and crammed in as much last minute shopping as we could before they closed.

After the mall shut, we went back to our hotel room to get ready for a night out on the town! This was truly the highlight of our trip…After being recommended several joints by our friends and also getting lost for a while, we eventually ended up at a Latino club call Blue. We only managed to get there fifteen minutes from the end and judging by what we met when we got in there, we might as well have not bothered at all. Even when I used to go clubbing, you would never have found me in a place like that. Grimy, slimy, “durrty south” are some adjectives that readily spring to mind. Women dancing on tabletops akin to strip clubs you’d see in the movies - being in that environment reminded me exactly what I don’t like about the clubbing scene; the smoke, the lasciviousness, half the club downing themselves into a drunken stupor, and the other half (not mutually exclusive) seemingly in a trance as they bump their heads hypnotically to a “phat beat” that admittedly many times I would describe as infectious. In Club Blue’s case, the music had a monotonous “dirty south rap” backdrop (connoisseurs of hip hop music will know what I mean) that left you begging for the exit after just about ten minutes. And we were heading for the exit soon enough. There was however enough time for one of our friends to be approached by a dodgy looking guy (heck they all looked dodgy). As he opened his mouth to speak, you could see his teeth fitted with pale metal which looked anything but precious, and you could also tell that whatever he was saying to her would be nothing but crude. After a few moments of his advances being entirely ignored, he turns to me with a drunken stench in his breath and asks, “yo, is that your girl?” I respond affirmatively to his question to get rid of him, and although I didn’t quite catch his response as he walked off, it sounded something like, “well all the girls here are fair game, but if you say she’s yours, man whatever, I’ll leave her alone!”

It’s fair to say that on leaving Club Blue, we headed straight for the car and sped off, thanking God that we weren’t robbed, stabbed or shot at. The experience did make me marvel at why people (especially women) would subject themselves to the meat-market type treatment that is the meted out in such clubs. I was also grateful to God for the grace to be able to see beyond the lie that clubbing for a young person was a necessity when in reality it creates shackles of bondage that we unwittingly impose on ourselves by the seemingly harmless act of frequenting night clubs every Friday and Saturday night. Also, when people go on holiday it’s not unusual for them to want to have a taste of the night life in the city they visit, however recently I’ve been more interested in what the church life is like in the cities I visit. It’s fair to say that there was no way we were going to be in Dallas without paying a visit to the Potter’s House, Bishop T.D. Jakes’ 28,000 member church. And that’s exactly what we did on Sunday morning before catching our flight back to the UK later that day. We got there for the first service at 8.30am, to give ourselves enough time to do some last minute shopping before heading for the airport. As you approach on the highway, the monumental structure of the Potter’s House is the only building that can be seen in its vicinity – its presence as part of the scenery is unmistakeable. With acres and acres of land surrounding the church dedicated to the dozens of parking lots servicing church members, and bearing in mind that hardly anything in America is accessible by public transport, we’re talking about tens of thousands of parking spaces. In fact after parking, we still needed a ten minute walk to get into the building! As you can imagine a set up this massive requires an equally impressive team of traffic wardens to regulate the flow of traffic and that is exactly what they had. And if you think that Jesus House has a traffic problem then picture this – on leaving at the end of the first service, the traffic pile up to get into what I’d imagine is a more heavily attended second service (just like in JH) at 11am was overwhelming to say the least. A queue on the interstate highway stretching back for at least 45 minutes was an incredible sight which could leave no observer in doubt as to the indelible footprint this church has left on the landscape.

Okay, enough about architecture and geography, I suppose you want to hear about the Word, the message, the sermon?? As we came into the building, I tried to use the “I’m from London” card which had already worked so many times on my trip to get us front row seats, but unfortunately we hadn’t arrived early enough so these seats had already been taken by the score of men who had also been in town for the just concluded men’s conference. As we were ushered to our front row seats on the upper balcony (great view, I must say), Bishop Joseph Garlington, the Senior Pastor of Covenant Church in Pittsburgh, was taking the pulpit to deliver the message for the day. Any initial disappointment that may have stemmed from the realisation that Bishop Jakes wasn’t about to deliver another heavy, inspiring message was alleviated as Bishop Garlington instantly captured the hearts of the crowd, breaking into a series of breathtaking worship songs which the likes of Byron Cage and Donnie McClurkin would have been proud of. After about five minutes of this, I was thinking that this guy just needed to sing the whole sermon and we would go home happy. His theme melody for the day was short and catchy, it went “Tomorrow, about this time, things are gonna change” – then he went on to explain what was keeping us from getting to our brighter, better tomorrows. Using Job 22:28-30 in several different versions (KJV,The Message, NLT) for emphasis, he explained how nothing happens in the Kingdom of God until something is said. If we have the power to make a decree, then it’s time to say something. Many times, we’re waiting for God to say something, when He is waiting for us to say something. From verse 28, we can see that although we have to do the decreeing, it is God that does the establishing, and then light shines. When we make a final decision on a matter, then God will stand with us in that decision as long as it is in line with His word. In verses 29 and 30 we see that we have the power to decree things in the lives of others who don’t understand what it means to receive things. God didn’t just save us so that we could be blessed, He saved us so that we could also bless others, and there ought to be something within us that gives us the desire to help someone else. He gives us a perfect illustration of this using the story of the Shunammite woman who Elisha decreed would have a son within a year (2 Kings 4:8-17) and then later restored the same son to life after he had died (verses 18-37).

I could go on an on about this message but mere words would not really be able to articulate or capture the uniqueness of this experience. How Bishop Garlington seemed to burst into a catchy melody to drive home every point he made lit up the atmosphere in a special way – you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a show on Broadway. I’d recommend getting hold of the CD or DVD to really get a taste of what I mean. At the end of the service, as people poured out of the church into the parking lots, you could sense the blissfulness in the air. The community and family feel was undeniable with everyone making wisecracks about the humorous yet truly inspiring and uplifting message. Even the marshals sang along to the tune of “tomorrow, you’re only a day away!” as we walked towards the car to make our way to the airport via some more last minute shopping. There’s a movie called “Stranger than Fiction” I saw on the plane to Dallas in which Will Ferrell pays a man who begins to hear a narration of his everyday life in his head and soon realises that he is merely a character in a book being written about his life. He soon has to figure out what type of story he is in – a tragedy (in which he meets his untimely imminent demise) or a comedy (where he finds love and lives happily ever after). Well, as we left the Potter’s House, I couldn’t help but feel that we were in a musical with all singing and all dancing characters that were permanently in a state of euphoria. It was what you could describe as a “kodak moment”, a moment in time you just wanted to take home and frame so you could walk into your living room and behold the sight each day. The Potter’s House experience was truly an icing on the cake on a truly memorable time in Texas, including a few days in Houston and three days at the For Men Only conference in Dallas. Not the most popular tourist destination, a few people have told me they would never have thought of visiting Texas, but it turned out to be a fantastic choice!