The Power of the Question (1984–1987)
Chapter – The Night the Question Was Born
The basement of Lamb’s Manor smelled of wet wool, burnt coffee, and the metallic tang of too many bodies pressed too close. Four hundred folding chairs creaked every time someone shifted. The fluorescents buzzed like dying insects above your head.
Stewart stood under a single bare bulb. His uniform was precise: green long‑sleeve work shirt, brown welding pants, ten colored pens clipped neatly in his breast pocket. Sleeves rolled high, veins standing out on his forearms.
He didn’t use notes anymore. He just stared until the silence made your ears ring, until your own breathing felt like a disruption. Sometimes he tilted his head toward a lieutenant, Brother David or Sister Ruth, who would step forward and repeat the last command in a hushed voice, filling the vacuum. If anyone dared to question, Stewart wouldn’t answer. He would extend the silence until the tension broke — a cough, a hiss, a violent shift in a chair — and the dissent dissolved.
Tonight the pressure snapped. He slammed the table. The microphones jumped. A glass of water tipped and bled across the wood.
“God has already done ninety‑nine‑point‑nine percent of the work! The sheep are already His. We’re just delivery boys!”
The air left your chest. Four hundred people inhaled at once and forgot to breathe out.
He leaned forward, eyes fever‑bright. “Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.’ So why are we wasting hours arguing with goats?”
That night you left clutching a clipboard and tally sheet still damp with mimeograph ink. The February wind off the Hudson cut through your jacket, but you didn’t feel cold. You were carrying lightning.
Chapter 18 – Eleven Seconds of Glory: The Rush
Times Square, 2 a.m. Neon bled into puddles. The air tasted of hot dogs, bus exhaust, and the sweet chemical bite of cocaine smoke drifting down from balconies. The city was chaos, but you were focused on the mission.
Brother Paul moved like a shark, clipboard tucked under his arm like a rifle. He scanned the crowd flowing out of the late movies.
“Quick question — are you one of Jesus’ sheep?” His voice sliced through the noise.
A kid in a leather jacket stopped, cigarette dangling. “Yeah, man… I guess.”
Paul grabbed his hand. “Repeat after me, fast.”
The prayer fired like a starting pistol. Eleven seconds. You clicked the stopwatch. Paul spun, eyes wild, grinning like he’d stolen fire. “Eleven! Write it down!”
You scribbled the number. The excitement was instantaneous, physical. A pure, clean hit of adrenaline that cut through the grime of the city. For that moment you weren’t cold, hungry, or tired. You felt chosen. You felt effective.
That’s what sixteen years of conditioning does: it teaches you to measure eternal souls with a stopwatch, and mistake the adrenaline of competition for the joy of salvation.
Later, in the van, heater blasting, windows fogged, the energy was frantic. You compared times like gamblers counting chips, shouting over each other. Someone claimed nine seconds — a new record. The driver slapped his knee so hard the van swerved.
Back at the meeting, Stewart wrote the harvest in big yellow chalk:
TOTAL SALVATIONS – 91 FASTEST – 9 SECONDS – BROTHER PAUL
The room detonated. Paul climbed onto a chair, arms raised. You joined the four hundred voices roaring his name. The electric joy running up your spine was the loudest thing you’d ever felt. It was the reward, the validation that you belonged, that you were winning against the darkness. This manufactured, measurable high became the new metric for faith.
The kid in the leather jacket never came to a meeting. None of them ever did. But for one shining winter, you chased that rush, believing you were rewriting eternity eleven seconds at a time.
Chapter 19 – Counting Goats in the Rain: The Crash
By October 1986 the magic curdled. The rush was harder to catch.
Port Authority at rush hour. Cold rain slanted sideways, turning sidewalks into black mirrors. Umbrellas bloomed and died like jellyfish.
You asked 204 people that night. Two hundred and two variations of no. The two “yeses” were so drunk they could barely stand. You held their wet hands, rushed the prayer while taxis hissed past, horns blaring, steam rising off the grates like hell breathing. The stopwatch read twenty‑seven seconds. The feeling wasn’t joy, but sick relief.
That’s what sixteen years of conditioning does: it tells you your worth is the number on a wet tally sheet, and the absence of a high is proof of your failure.
Back at the meeting the chalkboard looked naked.
TOTAL ASKED – 2,187 TOTAL YES – 23 TOTAL SALVATIONS – 19
Stewart didn’t cheer. He walked the aisle slowly, welding pants swishing, shoes squeaking on the wet floor. He held your sheet up like a death warrant.
“One hundred and eighty‑seven asks. Four yeses. Two prayers.” His voice softened, almost tender. “That means you spent three hours and twelve minutes of Jesus’ time talking to goats. Do you hate the sheep, brother?”
You stared at the floor. Shoes soaked. Rain and vomit clinging to your coat. Someone behind you started crying. Then another. The room filled with the sound of shame. The crash from the earlier high was total.
That winter you learned to lie on the tally sheets. You softened the question until it was meaningless, just to hear a yes. You learned to hate the sound of your own voice asking it.
One night in early 1988 the clipboards never came out of the closet. The tally sheets stayed in their boxes. Stewart never mentioned John 10:27 again.
But thirty‑five years later, if you close your eyes, you can still feel the cold metal edge of that clipboard in your hand, still taste the rain and the exhaust, still hear the second hand of the Timex ticking down toward a salvation that never arrived.
That’s what sixteen years of conditioning does: it makes the voice of shame louder than the voice of God, and keeps you craving a chemical rush you can never safely get again.
And every time someone in a normal church reads John 10:27 aloud, your pulse jumps, your palms sweat, and for one terrified second you are twenty‑four again, standing in Times Square, waiting for a stranger to tell you whether or not you belong to God.