DADDY GO SIDECHICK
845 Words
DADDY G.O SIDECHICK- Chapter 1: The Lock & The Ledger
The first rule of Grace Pillar Church: you don’t talk about Pastor Cross’s private meetings.
The second rule: you definitely don’t become part of them.
I learned both rules the same Sunday I counted the month’s tithes, sealed the deposit bags, and still ended up in his office after everyone left.
My name is Lena Hart. Finance Coordinator. Age 24. The one who balances every receipt, files every envelope, signs every ledger page.
It was the last Sunday of the month. The counting room smelled like paper, ink, and old coffee. Three duffel bags of offerings sat on the table. Prayer requests tucked inside envelopes: _Healing. Job. Breakthrough._
By 6:42pm the sanctuary was quiet. $37,480. Every dollar recorded, double-checked, signed off. I snapped the ledger shut because Pastor Cross always said, “Excellence is worship.”
Then came the knock. Three soft taps on the door.
Pastor Elias Cross. 52. Salt-and-pepper beard, white suit, the voice that could fill the auditorium without a mic. The same man who prayed over my mother when the hospital bills were piling up and the news wasn’t good.
“Lena,” he said. Just my name. Not my title. “I believe God is positioning you for the next season of this ministry.”
He didn’t look at the bags of cash. He looked at the ledger in my hands.
“The elders can wait a few minutes,” he said, and closed the door behind him. The lock clicked. Soft. Final.
My pulse jumped. “Pastor, the deposit protocol -”
“Is important,” he finished. “But discernment is more important.”
He walked past the table like the money was just in the background. Stopped at the window overlooking the empty parking lot. “Your mother told me things are still tight after last year.”
I froze. My mother shared her testimony, but not the debt.
“How did you know -”
“God tells His servant what the church needs,” he said. “And right now, the church needs someone it can trust completely. Someone who won’t talk.”
That was when I understood: this wasn’t about the deposit. The deposit was just the reason we were alone.
He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. When a person speaks your private fear back to you in a quiet room, it feels heavier than any hand.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to the chair across from his desk. The one reserved for prayer, for confession, for decisions.
I sat. The room felt bigger with the sanctuary empty. And smaller, too.
“You’ve been faithful in little things, Lena,” he said. “Faithful when no one is watching. God notices that.”
“Thank you, Pastor.”
“Do you trust God?”
“Yes, Pastor.”
“Do you trust me?”
The question hung there. Outside, a car door shut. A cleaner’s mop squeaked down the hall.
“I trust you, Pastor.”
He opened the desk drawer and took out a small black notebook. Wrote something, tore the page, folded it once. Pushed it across to me.
“Memorize this number. Then destroy the paper. If anything ever comes up… anything at all… you call me directly. Not the church line. Me.”
I took it. “I can’t keep secrets from the elders, Pastor. That’s the policy.”
“Policy is for administration,” he said gently. “Assignment is for God.”
The door handle turned. Maya Reed from admin stood in the doorway, confused, keys in her hand. She’d come back for her notebook.
The folded paper was still in my palm. Pastor Cross didn’t flinch. He stood, every inch the shepherd.
“Maya,” he said, calm as Sunday morning. “Lena was helping me reconcile a discrepancy in last month’s building fund. God highlighted it during prayer.”
Maya’s eyes dropped to my hand, then to his face, then back to mine. “Oh. Sorry for interrupting.”
“No apology needed,” he said. “We were finished anyway.”
We were not finished. But we both pretended we were.
Maya left. The door stayed open this time. I memorized the number: 555-2417. Then I shredded the paper in the office shredder, watching the strips fall like confetti for a secret I never asked for.
That was three weeks ago.
Today the quarterly audit came early. The elders called me to the boardroom. Spread the ledger, the bank statements, the deposit slips.
“We’re short,” the board chairman said. “$12,000 missing from the building fund. Your signature is on every entry.”
The room went quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before accusation.
I hadn’t taken the money. But I had the number. I had meetings. I had said “I trust you.”
That was the day I became the Daddy G.O sidechick .
I just didn’t know missing funds would make me look like the thief
- Writer
