I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d been greeted nicely at churches before, of course, but
never quite so effusively. There was an energy in the space that felt enlivening.
Inside, the moving, rousing theme from Chariots of Fire was playing. An air of expectancy
filled the theatre. People were chattering and laughing. Finally, the house lights went down
and a man and woman appeared on the stage, the man taking a seat at one side and the
woman at the other.
“Now is the time to become quiet, to go within,” the man said into a microphone. A choir in
the back of the room softly sang an invocation about “peace,” and the service began.
I’d never experienced anything quite like this. It certainly wasn’t what I’d anticipated, and I
was feeling a bit out of place, but I decided to hang in there. After a few opening
announcements, Terry Cole-Whittaker stepped to the center of the stage behind a see-
through, Plexiglas podium, and chirped, “Good morning!” Her smile was radiant, her
cheerfulness contagious.
“If you came here this morning expecting to find something that looks like a church, or feels
like a church, or sounds like a church, you came to the wrong place.” She was certainly right
about that. The audience laughed its agreement. “But if you came here this morning hoping
to find God, notice that God arrived the moment you walked through the door.”
That was it. I was hooked. Even if I didn’t know exactly what she was driving at yet, anyone
who had imagination and courage enough to open a Sunday service with a line like that had
my attention. It was the beginning of a nearly three-year relationship.
As with the first time I met Elisabeth, I was captivated by Terry Cole-Whittaker and her work
within ten minutes. As I did with Elisabeth, I made that clear very quickly by volunteering my
enthusiastic assistance. And as with Elisabeth, I was on staff with Terry’s organization very
soon, accepting a position in the ministry’s outreach department (writing newsletters, creating
the weekly church bulletin, etc.).
It “just happened” that I was out of work within a few weeks of crossing paths with Terry.
Elisabeth fired me. Well, fired seems like a harsh term. She let me go. It wasn’t in anger; it
was just time for me to move on, and Elisabeth knew it. She said simply, “It is time for you to
go. I give you three days.”
I was flabbergasted. “But why? What have I done?”
“It is not what you have done. It is what you will not do if you stay here. You will not realize
your full potential. You cannot possibly do so, standing in my shadow. Get out. Now. Before it
is too late.”
“But I don’t want to leave,” I pleaded.
“You have played in my backyard long enough,” Elisabeth said matter-of-factly. “I give you a
little kick. Like the bird from its nest. It is time for you to fly.”
And that was that.
I moved to San Diego and got back into the commercial public relations and marketing game,
starting my own firm called The Group.