A Bride for Pastor Dan Read online

and headed for the front of the church.

  She walked through the quiet church toward the front doors. She needed to figure out something for lunch, and then maybe she’d get a nap. Two and a half hours of excited children was sometimes more than she could take during the summer. She opened the door and was just about to step out onto the hot concrete when a male voice behind her said, “Wait! You’re going to burn your feet.”

  She looked down. “Well, phooey. I forgot my shoes again, didn’t I?” She turned to smile at the man who had stopped her and thank him. She swallowed hard. Wow. Whoever he was, he was nice looking. The church was small enough that she knew most everyone, but big enough that seeing a new face didn’t surprise her at all. She stared for a moment. “Thank you. I appreciate you stopping me.” She was surprised she was able to find her voice. He was handsome enough that she had a huge lump in her throat.

  The blacktop heated by the hot Texas sun had been known to cause blisters. She was glad he’d stopped her, but who was he?

  He held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Daniel Stevens. And you are?”

  Oh. So this was the new pastor. No wonder Ashley had been all but drooling as she’d talked about him. Anna put her hand in his. “I’m Anna King.”

  Dan looked directly into Anna’s eyes as they shook hands. She was a rather non-descript red-head carrying a few extra pounds. He wouldn’t have looked at her twice if she hadn’t been a member of his church.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Anna. Are you new to the church?”

  Anna laughed. “No. I’ve been coming here since I was a little girl. I was baptized here.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “Why haven’t I met you before today? I make sure that I introduce myself to everyone as they leave the service.”

  “I work with the babies during the service.”

  “Every week?”

  “Until other arrangements are made, yes.”

  “How long have you been waiting for other arrangements to be made?” he asked skeptically.

  She smiled. “About six months now.”

  His jaw dropped. “You haven’t been to service in six months?”

  She shook her head. “I always pick up the CD after service so that I can listen to it when I get home, though, so I really don’t miss it.”

  “You miss the fellowship! Hebrews 10:25 tells us not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together.”

  “I know. It’ll get straightened out in time.” Of that, Anna was confident. The Lord always made it so things worked out for the best.

  “Which Sunday school class are you in? I thought I’d visited all of the adult classes.”

  “I teach the kindergarten class.”

  His eyes grew wider. “Which do you prefer? The babies or the Sunday school?”

  “I volunteered for Sunday school. I love it. The baby room was meant to be temporary.”

  “Do you even have children?” he asked indignantly. The longer he was at the church, the more situations like that he ran into. It was as if a few choice people were carrying a church of hundreds on their backs.

  She almost laughed at the look on his face. There had been a problem with too few volunteers in the church for a long time. The mothers of small children looked at church as their time away from their kids. They didn’t stop to consider the fact that others needed to go to the service as well. She knew it was a problem in a lot of churches, but it had gotten worse and worse here in the past few years as the previous pastor’s health declined.

  “No, but I do have a degree in early childhood education.”

  He closed his eyes as if he was trying to get a mental grip on the situation. “I had no clue our children’s program was so lacking in volunteers.”

  She shrugged. “I always have one of the youth in the baby room helping me. I have an assistant teacher with the kindergarten class. It could be worse.”

  “Well, I was looking for a topic for my sermon for next week. I think giving of ourselves is going to be that topic.” He’d started to write that sermon multiple times since he’d gotten there, but there’d always been a greater need. Next Sunday he would be giving that sermon whether the congregation liked it or not.

  She smiled. “It’s a good one.” She looked down at her bare feet and blushed. “I need to run back to the baby room to get my shoes. It was nice to meet you, Pastor.” She wished she’d been more put together for it, though. She had taken to wearing slacks on Sundays because they were so much easier when she was working with the babies. Of course, she didn’t have a chance with someone who looked like Pastor Stevens did so it really didn’t matter anyway.

  “I’ll walk with you if you don’t mind.” He felt like he owed her something for pulling double duty in the church. He really was astounded that situations like this were so common.

  She nodded. “That’s fine.”

  “Do you not have time to come on Wednesday nights?” he asked. “I’m sorry if it seems like I’m grilling you, I just want to know why I’ve never met you before. I’ve really worked hard to make sure I’ve met everyone in this church.”

  “I run the school-age children’s program on Wednesday nights.” She turned and started walking back to the baby room to get her shoes and he followed closely behind.

  “So you don’t even get to be part of a Bible study on Wednesdays? I promise you within two weeks, you will have someone to share your burden.” He shook his head. What was wrong with the people of this church? He’d seen over and over that just a few were carrying the load of so many. This was the worst of it, though.

  She opened the door to the baby room and found her shoes in the corner where she’d tucked them to keep them away from the babies. “I really do enjoy the babies, and wouldn’t mind being on a rotation to work with them, but I think some of the moms with small children should be volunteering in the nursery as well. They think this is a great time to be away from their kids and get a break, but they don’t look at it as an opportunity to serve.”

  He loved the way she’d phrased that. As if service were something to be looking for, instead of something that people should be forced to do. “That makes a lot of sense. Have you talked to the children’s minister about that?”

  She laughed. “I’m assuming that since you’ve been here for a month you’ve spoken to the children’s minister?”

  The children’s minister was a sweet old lady who had no interest in anyone’s opinion but her own. Agatha had been in children’s ministry for thirty years and new-fangled ideas like “nursery rotations” were ridiculous to her. She knew how to run things, and they would be run exactly the way she wanted them run.

  He chuckled. “Okay, I see your point.” He sighed heavily. “That means I have to talk to her, right?”

  She grinned at him. “I guess it does. To be fair, she doesn’t really take a lot of advice from me, because she was the children’s minister here when I was brought in as a newborn. She still sees me as one of the children.”

  “I know what I’ll be doing Monday morning.” He sounded weary.

  “Is this church more work than you’d realized it would be?” They’d wanted someone young and energetic to tackle the workload, but had they been unfair to go with someone with no experience?

  “In some ways. At the core, there’s a wonderful group of people that have kept it going for years with little leadership, but there is so much that needs to be done. I almost don’t know what to tackle first.”

  “There are wonderful people here who love the Lord with all their hearts. I promise you, we’re worth the time and effort it’s going to take.”

  He nodded. “I know. I do know that. This may not have been the church I should have tackled straight out of seminary, though.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t mean to sound negative.”

  “I disagree. I think a lot of the problems in this church stem from having lea
dership so set in their ways that they couldn’t see the good in new ideas no matter what. I think that having a pastor straight out of seminary is just what our church needs.”

  They’d reached the front doors again and she picked up the bag she’d left there earlier. He opened the door for her, and she waited while he locked it. “You’re probably right. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.”

  “We have some wonderful deacons here who are more than willing to help out. Have you spent any time talking to my father yet? Joe King?”

  He thought for a moment. He’d met so many people in the past month. A man in his fifties with dark hair with traces of gray came to mind. “I haven’t spent much time with him yet. He seems like a good man, though.”

  She smiled. “He’s wonderful, and I don’t just say that because I’m his daughter. He’s really a good man. He’s had a lot of ideas for this church for years, and would love to share them with you.”

  They’d arrived at her car. She unlocked it and put her bag in the back seat. Then she opened the driver’s door and started the AC hoping to cool it off a bit as she finished talking to the pastor. “I’ll keep that in mind. Do you think he’d agree to meet with me?”

  “I know he would. Do you have plans right now? He and mom are probably just sitting down to eat at their favorite Mexican place. I can call him and make sure they’re there, and you could join them.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “Only if you’ll come