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5 In the late summer of 1997, in Denver, Colorado, an African American man named Gregory Fields had a Ford van stolen.1 Fields reported the theft to police , and a few weeks later a white detective named Colin Whitford came to his house to follow up on the case. In talking, the two men discovered that they each hunted and fished, were involved in the lay leadership of their churches, and shared a strong passion for the Bible and Christianity. Whitford brought up his recent participation in the Christian men’s movement Promise Keepers (PK) (he had attended a couple stadium rallies) and mentioned the group’s emphasis on fostering relationships between men of different races. Fields invited Whitford to attend services at his church, Jubilee Community Baptist. Detective Whitford later shared that he felt as if Fields’s invitation was a sort of divine appointment for him: [Fields] is a black guy and I . . . never had hardly any relationships with anybody of any color. You know, I grew up in pretty much white, honky, middle-class America . . . . I mean, I was born out in Wyoming. . . . And he invited me to go to church, you know to come to visit their church. . . . But I remember sitting there [at a PK conference] thinking, well, this is not really my problem, because I’ve never had any relationships with these people. It was kind of like, you know, God, I don’t even know any black people, and you talk about going and building relationships, and, well, I don’t even know any, I mean. And God kind of reached down and slapped me upside the head, and I remembered that conversation that I had with him, and he said, “Here’s your chance.” You know, “put up or shut up” kind of thing, and so, I think Gregory made an offer to come to church, kind of like, “Well, I’ll see if I can come up to visit sometime,” and “Well, we’d love to have you there.” I had that short conversation in my mind and I pulled out my pen and said, “Okay, where’s the church, what time does it start? I’ll come.” Epiphanal Spaces of Evangelical Culture 118 A New Wave In late November, Whitford visited Jubilee Baptist, a medium-sized (300seat , two Sunday services) church in what is considered a mixed-race (though traditionally black), working-class, “inner-city” neighborhood. He thoroughly enjoyed the lively music, preaching, and friendly people, and as the main service merged into another discussion, inadvertently found himself in something of a church business meeting where Pastor Darrell Brickson was discussing a financial problem the congregation was experiencing. Jubilee was faced with raising a $28,000 payment on the new church building the congregation had built after meeting in abandoned buildings and basements for the previous fifty years. The payment was due on December 31 to keep from losing the building, but the congregation did not know how they were going to raise the money. Whitford took this information home with him and found himself troubled about it for days: My personality: Part of my makeup is that I have been a horse trader and a schemer from day one, and that’s just sort of, something I like to do. You know, kind of a conniver , you know, try to horse trade, “what can you do for me, what can I do for you?” kind of thing. And I said, “$30,000 bucks in order to save this building. This is not that tough, we should be able to do this.” And $30,000 is a lot of money, but it’s not a lot of money, you know. I went home from that Sunday service, and God just absolutely would not leave me alone. This was on my heart, it was heavy on my heart. And I was sitting there trying to watch the Broncos and God just kept, you know, every TV commercial I saw was geared towards white people. Every magazine I picked up was geared towards white people. Every newspaper I picked up was geared towards white people. And God just sort of hit me with the question, “What’s it like to be a black man in a white man’s world?” And again, I grew up in white honky Applewood, Colorado, I never, I mean there was one black kid in my high school, Gary Thompson, I didn’t even know who...

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