Sam Gardner has been pastor of Hope Friends Meeting for just four months when ninety-eight-year-old member Olive Charles passes away. What's more shocking news is that Olive has left her entire estate--worth nearly one million dollars--to the meeting. At first the gift sounds to Sam like a like a godsend. Yet as word of the unexpected windfall spreads, it stirs up a storm of conflicting opinions amongst the church members as to how the money would best be used. And before the estate is even released to the meeting, Olive's estranged niece, Regina Charles, turns up tipsy and furious in Hope...

When Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner is asked by the ill Unitarian minister to oversee a wedding in his place, Sam naturally agrees. It's not until the couple stands before him that he realises they're two women. In the tempest of strong opinions and misunderstanding that follows the incident, Sam faces potential unemployment. Deeply discouraged, he wonders if his pastoral usefulness has come to an end. Perhaps it's time for a change. After all, his wife has found a new job at the library, his elder son is off to college, and the younger has decided to join the military once he graduates high...

Bestselling author Philip Gulley offers humorous, small-town storytelling as he follows the foibles and follies of Pastor Sam Gardner.

Thanks to an unexpected windfall, Sam Gardner's congregation (with the exception of a few malcontents) is eager to expand their meetinghouse. But before building can commence, the County Environmental Board and the Department of Natural Resources put the quietus on the plan.
A colony of endangered Indiana bats have made the tree beside the meetinghouse, and the meetinghouse attic, their place of hanging, mating, and living, which poses a big...