Exercised Stock Option - Christianity Today

When the car rolled to a stop, Phil Davis nervously glanced over at his wife. He knew what Cynthia was thinking–Phil, what have you gotten us into this time? He wondered the same thing. They were parked in front of a low-income housing project.

Why did I agree to this? he thought. Oh well, I’ll just preach and leave.

He had been asked to speak at Galilean Baptist Church, a church plant in a rundown neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina. The pastor, who was white, was attempting to start an African-American church. That’s about all Phil knew.

As soon as he shut the motor off, however, Phil also knew he was overdressed. He had on a blue, pin-striped suit and a crisply starched button-down shirt with a red tie. He normally dressed that way: he was a corporate manager for a finance company. But in his heart of hearts, he was a preacher. Several years earlier, he had sensed God’s call to ministry.

The Davises got out of the car and climbed the rickety steps to a first-floor flat. There the members of Galilean Baptist -all seven of them–welcomed them: its pastor, his wife, their three kids, a blind elderly woman, and a shell-shocked war veteran with an uncontrollable twitch. The pastor pointed Phil to the living room, which doubled as the church sanctuary, and the service began.

“Whew!” Cynthia said on the drive home after the service. “I’m glad that’s over.”

“So am I,” Phil replied.

The next week, however, Phil got another phone call from the same pastor.

“Our church voted,” the pastor said, “and we’d like for you to pastor Galilean Baptist.”

“What?” Phil replied. “Who voted?”

“I’ve decided to resign,” the pastor continued. “Can you be here next week?”

This church just can’t close, Phil thought. The neighborhood had no other gospel witness. After considerable thought and a conversation with Cynthia, Phil accepted the “unanimous” call. And that, in short, is the improbable way that Phil Davis came to pastor Galilean Baptist Church.

Within a year, however, the church had grown to 45 attenders, and, with Cynthia working, Phil was able to quit his corporate job. The church moved from the cramped apartment to a vacant building up the road.

Phil rolled up his shirtsleeves and put his business skills to good use. He formed alliances with suburban churches, which shared resources and volunteers with Galilean Baptist. Soon the church started a food pantry, clothes closet, and ministry to drug addicts.

Two and a half years later, Phil sat at his desk, staring at his plans for a Christmas food drive. It suddenly struck him that most of his volunteers to distribute the food were white people from suburban churches. That bothered him.

Why are there no volunteers from middle-class black churches? he thought. He began to get upset. Hold it, he thought. What about me, God? What can I do?

He began scribbling on a sheet of paper, and a vision emerged: a church for professional African-Americans who would, in turn, minister to others. In two years, Phil would leave Galilean Baptist to plant Nations Ford Baptist Church.

BUSINESS DESIRES

Growing up in a divorced family with nine children, Phil split his early years between his Catholic father and his Baptist mother.

“We were po–that’s P-O,” he says, “which is a step below poor.”

But his mom scrounged up enough money to send him to private Catholic schools. Her hard work paid off when Phil got an academic scholarship to Xavier University. He majored in marketing and dreamed of the corporate world.

To graduate from Xavier, a Jesuit school, students were required to take several hours of religion. Phil put off that requirement until his senior year but finally signed up for a course called “Black Theology,” taught by a black Baptist preacher.

In the small class, the professor noticed Phil’s conspicuous disinterest but also his potential. One day, the professor asked Phil to stick around after class.

“God has a definite purpose for your life,” the professor said. Then he gave Phil two passages of Scripture to look up when he got home.

Later that evening Phil pulled out his Bible and opened it to one of the passages, John 15:16. Its words gripped him: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.”

Two days later, Phil, guided by his professor, chose to follow Christ. He immediately relayed the news to Cynthia, whom he had married a few months earlier. They began to attend the Baptist church where his mother attended. Upon learning of Phil’s conversion, his mother’s church friends said, “Phil, you’re going to be a great preacher someday.”

“Yeah, right,” he replied. “I’m going to be a businessman.”

But their words stuck in his mind.

THE PROMISE TO PREACH

After college, the Davises settled into the corporate life. Cynthia trained managers for the Bell system, and Phil worked in the marketing department of Dow Chemical. They remained in Cincinnati, Ohio, where both had grown up. Shortly after their son R.J. was born, however, the Davises moved to Bolingbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

R.J.’s birth triggered something deep within Phil. Thoughts of preaching bombarded his mind. He couldn’t shake his college professor’s words nor the prophecy of his mother’s friends. His son’s birth turned up the volume even louder.

“I began to make excuses,” Phil says. “I said, ‘Lord, I can’t preach because of R.J. I need to spend time with my son.'”

Not long after moving to Bolingbrook, Phil got a call at work. The call was from the pre-school R.J. attended.

“You need to pick up your son immediately,” the administrator said, “He is not acting like himself. He has messed his pants and is very listless. Something is definitely wrong with him.”

When Phil arrived, R.J. was sitting in the school office with saliva dripping off his chin. A few minutes after they arrived at home, R.J. went into convulsions and foamed at the mouth. Phil called 9-1-1, and the ambulance arrived minutes later.

“Don’t follow us to the hospital,” one of the paramedics said. “Call your wife and meet us there in a few minutes.”

As Phil headed for the front door, he suddenly felt paralyzed.

“I felt God’s presence,” he says. “I sensed him saying, ‘Phil, I need you to go preach.'”

“I promise, Lord,” Phil replied.

What seemed like forever was only a few seconds, and suddenly Phil was able to move again. He rushed to the hospital, and when he arrived, R.J. was sitting up and playing with the nurses. He seemed perfectly normal. The doctors kept R.J. for a week, running every test possible. They found nothing.

Phil determined to make good on his promise. He planned to start a Bible study in his Bolingbrook home. The day before the first meeting, however, Cynthia bumped into an African-American pastor while shopping. He handed her a card that read, “Join us tomorrow for the first worship service of Alpha Baptist Church in the Bolingbrook High School.”

So, the Davises scrapped their Bible study and joined with Alpha Baptist, a Southern Baptist church. Feet first, they jumped into ministry. They taught Sunday school and led the youth ministry. Phil preached occasionally and began attending Moody Bible Institute. Shortly thereafter, Alpha Baptist Church issued him a preaching license.

But still, Phil was frustrated. He chafed under the yoke of corporate America. The long hours exhausted him, keeping him from his first love–ministry.

RIGHT MOVE, ROUGH TIME

But Phil’s corporate stock was on the rise. He was up for a promotion and a transfer. After much prayer, the Davises moved to Charlotte. The first year there, however, was not kind to them. Phil began to have “buyer’s remorse.”

“Buyer’s remorse,” Phil says, “is the marketing term for the regret you feel after making a major purchase. I thought I had sensed God’s leading but suddenly had serious doubts.”

Cynthia, who had trained managers for the Bell system in Bolingbrook, couldn’t find a job at Southern Bell in Charlotte. There was a glut of trainers. Then, Phil lost his job, his entire division eliminated without warning. Thanksgiving of 1981, a year after their move, looked grim. The Davises had only $100 to their name. One morning while listening to a Christian radio station, Phil heard that the station was collecting donations and clothing for the needy. He and Cynthia decided to give $50 and also some of their clothes. When he took both over to the radio station, he struck up a conversation with the station manager. Phil began telling her about his heart for ministry. One thing led to another.

“What would you think about doing a radio program?” the station manager said.

“What?” Phil replied. “I’ve never been on the radio before.”

“So what. I want you to do it.”

“But I don’t have any experience,” Phil argued. “Besides, I have no money.”

“I’ll give you a half hour every week on Saturday morning,” she continued. “Call it what you want. The time is yours.”

So Phil began preaching on the radio. Not long after, the pastor of Galilean Baptist called Phil to preach for him. It was the call that would finally propel him into full-time ministry and ignite a vision to reach middle-class African Americans.

SPEAKING THE CORPORATE LANGUAGE

Six years after its beginning, there are three Sunday services at Nations Ford Baptist Church. The vision: to be a regional, full-service church reaching people of all races, enhancing their quality of life, by ministering to the whole man–spirit, soul, and body. Many skills and experiences Phil acquired in the corporate world serve him well in the world of ministry.

“Like Moses with his rod,” Phil says, “God told me to throw down my business skills and aspirations. By giving me this vision for Nations Ford, he asked me to pick them up again.”

No doubt Phil understands the pressures of being a professional African-American. In a recent sermon, he said, “God does not come to take sides but to take over. Life is a constant choice between God’s agenda or our agenda.

“When Junior comes home and asks for a $200 Charlotte Hornets jacket, you have a conflict between two agendas. God’s agenda is not buying that $200 jacket but buying an $80 jacket and giving the rest to missions.”

One young woman began attending Nations Ford, but her husband, an insurance executive, refused to come. One Sunday, to get her off his back, he showed up at church. Phil’s message that morning was peppered with illustrations from the corporate world. The insurance executive left the service saying to Phil, “You and I need to have lunch.”

When they did, Phil challenged him: “A lot of people balk at coming to church because they feel it’s not relevant to their life. All I ask is that you judge me for who I am and don’t hang any labels on me.” That man is now the lay director of Nations Ford Sunday school. Men, in fact, compose 43 percent of Nations Ford Church. Phil has discovered that corporate types rise to a challenge.

“When people join our church,” Phil says, “we say, ‘Here’s what is expected of you. If you can’t live up to these expectations or you don’t like what you see and hear, we’re probably not the church for you.

“But we also say, ‘We promise to train you to do what God has called you to do.’ They understand the need for training and expect us to equip them.”

RE-TOOLED PROFESSIONALS

Just up the street from Nations Ford Church lives the grand wizard of the Mecklenburg County KKK. So do many of his followers. To this day, they shoot handguns at a target set up near a back corner of Nations Ford’s property.

Socio-economically, many of the KKK are, as Phil says, “second cousins to the blacks living in the housing projects.” They have low-skill jobs and often need money for food and rent.

That’s where Nations Ford steps in. They provide these people with food from their food program and on occasion help them make their rent payment. Many of these working poor are unaware of the services provided by the city, so Nations Ford links them with the information they need to get low-interest loans and clean up their yards. Many of the area KKK even vote at Nations Ford Church.

Ministry to the neighborhood KKK represents only a slice of Nations Ford’s outreach. But it shows that another church vision has become reality.