"Do you mind if I ask you a
religious question?" Pastor Clyde Reed asked the waitress at the popular
chain restaurant where Mindy and I had arranged to have lunch with Clyde and his
wife, Ann, during our time in Phoenix. Clyde is obviously not shy and retiring,
which is a good thing considering that last year he and Ann were standing on
the steps of the United States Supreme Court answering questions from the
national press about their case before the justices.
Pastor Reed was the pastor of the
Good News Presbyterian Church in Gilbert, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix). A
small mission church plant, the congregation met in rented facilities, which
changed from time to time. With a miniscule budget, it was important for the
church to post signs to give the time and location of the Sunday morning
services. Usually those signs were posted on Friday night.
One day about eight years ago,
Pastor Reed found a citation on one of his signs when he went to collect it on
Sunday afternoon. The citation stated that their sign was in violation of the
city's ordinances. Another sign was confiscated. Pastor Reed went to the city
to inquire about the citation and was told that according to the city policy of
Gilbert, signs for church services could only be posted two hours before the
service time, and signs had to be removed one hour after the service time. They
must also meet regulations for size.
This puzzled Pastor Reed, because he
had seen signs for yard sales that were posted days before the event and
remained posted sometimes days after the event. He had seen political signs
that were very much larger than the size regulations he was given. He was
informed that the city regulations for church signage were different than the
regulations for any other kind of signage.
Pastor Reed was at a loss to know
how his small congregation (forty to sixty people on a Sunday) could fight city
hall. A minister friend informed him about Alliance Defending Freedom, a
Christian nonprofit organization that aids in the litigation of primarily First Amendment issues. ADF was willing to take Reed's case (which became as
"Reed v. Town of Gilbert").
Pastor Reed says the congregation
was fully supportive of the decision to pursue this legal course, even when four
court decisions came out against the church and for the city. But in that
fourth decision from the Ninth District, one of the three justices ruled in
favor of the church, allowing the case to proceed to the Supreme Court.
Before the Supreme Court, the ADF
lawyers argued that by singling out churches for different rules for signage,
the city was discriminating against speech for its religious nature. This time,
the ruling came out in favor of the Good News Church, a ruling of 9 - 0.
When I contacted Pastor Reed about
getting together, he joked about enjoying the last gasps of their fading
national fame. Pastor Reed (in his early 80's) recently retired from serving
Good News Presbyterian after the church called Dr. Charles Roberts to take his
place. We found Clyde and Ann to be cheery, lively folks, happy to share about
their family and years in ministry.
The waitress, Danny, did answer
Clyde's questions about religion. "If you should die today, do you know
whether God would accept you into heaven?" he asked.
She said, "Yes." When he
asked why, she asked for time to think about that. Danny came back to our table
for conversation several times, and we learned that she came from out of state where she had gone to church with her grandparents, but she hadn't found a church
in Arizona. Clyde told her about Good News Presbyterian, and Mindy wrote down the
address and service time for her.
Jesus (in Matthew 12:39) said,
"A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign." But I think
He's okay with the signs pointing the way to Good News Presbyterian in Gilbert.
Even retired, Pastor Clyde continues to point the way there as well. And more
importantly, he continues to point the way to Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment