Christmas in Hell

In a year like this one, when the bad guys are played by black actors, Brown prepares himself for the inevitable questions. "We sometimes have to explain that we give the parts out according to whoever's the best actor. But they sometimes don't like seeing a black Antichrist, even though the Antichrist won't be Anglo-Saxon, either. He will be a Jew," Brown says.

"In my house, you won't see any pictures of Jesus. You go to some black folks' houses, and they've got these pictures up and Jesus looks like he could be hanging out on 39th and Prospect with a Jheri curl, and all the disciples look like Crips," he adds. "Jesus isn't black any more than he is blond. It's none of that.... But people want to worship the Jesus that looks like them. G-Three understands."

G-Three does understand.

G-Three is George Westlake III, son of Senior Pastor George Westlake II. The Sheffield Family Life Center's board of 13 members recently decided that when the senior pastor retires -- or if he becomes ill or incapacitated or commits a "moral failure" -- Westlake will take the reins of his dad's megachurch and inherit its responsibilities. For now, he preaches a handful of sermons a month on some Sundays and Wednesdays.

The elder Westlake (who enjoys watching Tribulation Christmas but isn't in it) won't retire until he's good and ready and he's sure that the transition will go smoothly. He is an electric presence behind the lectern, quoting endless Bible passages from memory and drawing amens from the crowd. Westlake is the first to admit that he gets a few puzzled looks from the congregation when it's his turn. His style is more reserved and a little sarcastic.

In this year's Tribulation, Westlake plays the character formerly known as Bubba, the hell-bound atheist who argues about Jesus with the repentant Dave and Lisa while they hide in his cave. The name Bubba reminded Westlake of former President Bill Clinton, and he wanted to make the part stand out from all the redneck Bubbas before him, so he renamed his character with a number: 12-25 -- 25 for short.

Westlake plays his part like a cross between Jack Nicholson in The Shining and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. He also has changed a bunch of lines. When Maxwell, as Dave, tells 25 he's missing out on the greatest gift of all, Westlake snaps back: "You can take your Jesus and wrap him up in a big package and give him to someone who cares. Because it's not me. Not 25. Not 25." He wiggles his fingers, gnashes his jaw and twitches his head. Maxwell can barely keep a straight face in their scenes.

It's not a stretch for a pastor to play a skeptic, Westlake says. He encourages periodic questioning of faith -- it can make a person more certain of the Bible as literal truth, he says. "It's either true or it's the dumbest thing in the world," he says.

Westlake fights the fortunate-son stereotype. "My goal was never to come back here and work for my dad," he says. He returned to Kansas City 3 years ago after 15 years away. During that time, he toured the country as the drummer in a band and hosted a TV show in Chicago. Even after getting a Bible-studies degree at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, he wasn't convinced he should enter the ministry, but he worked as a youth minister in Florida.

Filling his dad's shoes is going to be a lot of work. "He's a spiritual father to a lot of people," Westlake says. Already, people tell him he looks too punk to be a pastor; at 42, he wears his jeans baggy and his hair spiky.

Westlake's ministry will be different from his dad's. He's not as comfortable denouncing homosexuality from the pulpit, for instance. When he talks about having a "personal savior" and a "relationship with Christ," he tempers his words with qualifying phrases -- "as mystical as that sounds" or "as weird as that sounds." And he dislikes using the threat of hell to get people interested in heaven.

But scaring people into heaven is the whole point of Tribulation Christmas.

"If it were up to me right now, would I create it [Tribulation Christmas] if I were left on my own to do it? Probably not," Westlake says. Then he realizes the mess he's waded into by saying so. "I'm in it, so how can I say that? I don't know. If people turn to God simply out of fear, it's not going to last. Fears are something that you get over, like an emotion. The grip, or should I say the touch, it has to go deeper than that. I don't want to speak against what we're doing. I'm part of we're. It works, and I can't argue against that."

Westlake is confident, though, about casting a black Jesus. He imagines doing it, partly to invite controversy and to keep people thinking about diversity. "I think it could be great to make people stop and say, 'Whoa, it doesn't matter what he looks like.'"