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utilities bills. He set them aside, and sifted through the junk mail from various charities pleading for money, and then flipped through the CBD pastors’ catalog.
    “Paul,” Dean Whittier said, “sorry to keep you waiting.” They exchanged greetings and pleasantries. “I talked to Pastor Riley the other day. He gave me a glowing report on your progress. He said your classes are always full and have waiting lists.”
    Paul felt uncomfortable beneath the praise. “There are a lot of people hungry for the Word.”
    “And areas that are dying for lack of good teaching. Which brings me to the reason for my call. An elder from a small church in Centerville, California, called me this morning. Their pastor’s an old friend of mine. He had a heart attack and isn’t up to coming back. The elder said the church will fold without someone in the pulpit. The congregation is down to about fifty members, most over sixty-five. They have some assets. They own a hun-dred-year-old sanctuary, a fellowship hall built in the sixties, and a small parsonage where the pastor can live rent-free. The Lord immediately put you on my mind.”
    Paul didn’t know what to say.
    “The town is somewhere in the Central Valley between Sacramento and Bakersfield. You’d be closer to your parents.”
    The Central Valley. Paul was familiar with the area. He’d been reared in Southern California. Every summer, his mother had driven him north to visit his aunt and uncle in Modesto. Some of his best memories from child-hood involved those weeks with his cousins. His father had never come along, always claiming work at the church that demanded his attention. When Paul had gotten up the courage to ask him why he avoided his aunt and uncle, his father had said, “They’re nice people, Paul, if all you want to do is play. But I don’t have time for people who have no interest in building up the kingdom.”
    The summer after that, Paul’s mother had headed north without him, and Paul had gone to a Christian camp on Catalina Island instead.
    Sometimes Paul wondered about those cousins who had long since grown up and moved away. They were the few relatives he had on his mother’s side. His father was an only child. Grandma Hudson had died long before Paul was born, and Paul could remember very little about Grandpa Ezra, who had spent his last years in a convalescent hospital. The old man died when Paul was eight. Paul remembered feeling relieved that he would never have to go back to that foul-smelling place, or see the tears running down his mother’s face every time they walked out of the depressing facility.
    Odd how the mention of an area of the country could bring such a flood of memories washing over him in the space of a few seconds. He could almost smell the hot sand, vineyards, and orchards and hear the laughter of his cousins as they plotted another prank.
    “You’d be a staff of one,” Dean Whittier said. “And you’d be stepping into the shoes of a pastor who shepherded that church for forty years.”
    “Forty years is a long time.” Paul knew a loss like that could cause a fire-storm in a church, enough of one to incinerate the congregation before he even got there. Or incinerate him if he did feel called to head west.
    “I know, I know. Losing a long-standing pastor can kill a church quicker than anything else. But I think you may be the man God is calling there. You have all the qualifications.”
    “I’ll have to pray about it, Dean Whittier. They may be looking for someone much older and far more experienced than I am.”
    “Age didn’t come into the conversation. And this is no time to be faint-hearted. The elder wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He called for advice more than anything. But it struck me after ten minutes of talking to this gentleman that he wants to do more than keep the doors open.”
    Paul wanted to say yes on the spot, but held back. “You know I’ve dreamed of pastoring a church, Dean