in her eighties. My first meaningful and deep friendships with minority brothers and sisters would occur in that church. In short, I learned that the city of God marches to a different drummer even as it participates in some of the civic and cultural marches in the cities of this world. If you had asked me in those days, “What is a church?” I could not have given you a well-formed answer. But these two ideas of preaching and people—a gospel word and a gospel society—were growing in prominence in