This
story focused on a man who finds himself thrust into the position of pastor at his
local church after the senior pastor has to move away on family business. Beginning
nervously, he slowly finds his sea legs and becomes quite the sermon-giver,
growing in charisma and popularity. As time goes on, however, Thomas comes to
the personal realization that he does not believe in the things he preaches.
Faced with his newfound atheism, Thomas relinquishes his title as pastor. I
thought this story had a lot going for it. The characters were believable and
engaging, the tempo was paced nicely, and the protagonist showed a distinct
change.
The characters are written in such a
way that I believed they were honest, not contrived or forced. The first example
of this appears on the first page when Thomas gets up in front of the
congregation and says he is “a little bit nervous about this.” I felt like that
is something a new, young pastor might say to a small church, so I had no
trouble picturing the scene as a real event. There is not a lot of dialogue in
this piece, but the little bits that there were I thought were well done. I
especially liked Thomas’s conversation with Bert Jenkins on page seven. Though
not an entire conversation, this bit showed a depth and weight to the
protagonist’s thoughts, making me care about him more.
I liked most of what is here already.
Any suggestions I would have for it would probably have to do with adding a
little more insight into Thomas’s thought process, but even this is already
hinted at in the piece. Perhaps just make the reason for his transformation a
little more evident, but all in all this was a very well-constructed story.
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