• Celebrity
    • Daniel Kaluuya Digital Cover
    • Digital Cover Method Man
    • Digital Cover Zazie
    • Celebrity News
    • ‘Yes, Girl!’ Podcast
    • Entertainment
    • Black Celeb Couples
    • Celebrity Moms
    • Red Carpet
    • If Not For My Girls
  • Fashion
    • ESSENCE Fashion House 2022
    • Fashion News
    • Street Style
    • Accessories
    • Fashion Week
  • Beauty
    • Black Beauty Awards 2022
    • ESSENCE Hair Awards 2022
    • AVEENO Skin Health Startup Accelerator
    • Beauty News
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
  • Hair
    • Hair News
    • Natural
    • Relaxed
    • Transitioning
    • Weave
    • 4C
  • Love
    • Love & Sex News
    • The Solve Podcast
    • Weddings
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
  • Lifestyle
    • Black History Month
    • ESSENCE Gift Guide 2022
    • ESSENCE + smartwater Live Well Challenge
    • Build Your Legacy 2022
    • Dream & Plan with Confidence Prudential
    • AMEX Platinum Travel
    • Homecoming Season 2022
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Money & Career
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Black Travel Guide
  • News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Sponsors Recognition Page 2022
    • Latest News
    • Raise Your Voice
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Video
  • Festival
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Fest Videos
  • Events
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Girls United Summit
    • 2022 ESSENCE Fashion House
    • 2022 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2022 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
    • 2022 Homecoming Season
    • Wellness House
    • She Got Now
    • Dear Black Men
    • I Am Speaking
    • Power Tools
  • Studios
  • Girls United

WHERE BLACK WOMEN COME FIRST

Every day we're serving Black women deeply. Come get a plate of goodness! Sign up for daily content and exclusive offers you'll love!

Your email is required.
Your email is in invalid format.
Confirm email is required.
Email did not match.
By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and that you have read our Privacy Policy
Skip to content
SUBSCRIBE
  • MAGAZINE
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Celebrity
    • Daniel Kaluuya Digital Cover
    • Digital Cover Method Man
    • Digital Cover Zazie
    • Celebrity News
    • ‘Yes, Girl!’ Podcast
    • Entertainment
      • Paint The Polls Black
    • Black Celeb Couples
    • Celebrity Moms
    • Red Carpet
    • If Not For My Girls
  • Fashion
    • ESSENCE Fashion House 2022
    • Fashion News
    • Street Style
    • Accessories
    • Fashion Week
  • Beauty
    • Black Beauty Awards 2022
    • ESSENCE Hair Awards 2022
    • AVEENO Skin Health Startup Accelerator
    • Beauty News
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
  • Hair
    • Hair News
    • Natural
    • Relaxed
    • Transitioning
    • Weave
    • 4C
  • Love
    • Love & Sex News
    • The Solve Podcast
    • Weddings
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
  • Lifestyle
    • Black History Month
    • ESSENCE Gift Guide 2022
    • ESSENCE + smartwater Live Well Challenge
    • Build Your Legacy 2022
    • Dream & Plan with Confidence Prudential
    • AMEX Platinum Travel
    • Homecoming Season 2022
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Money & Career
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Black Travel Guide
  • News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Sponsors Recognition Page 2022
    • Latest News
    • Raise Your Voice
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Video
  • Festival
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Fest Videos
  • Events
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Girls United Summit
    • 2022 ESSENCE Fashion House
    • 2022 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2022 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
    • 2022 Homecoming Season
    • Wellness House
    • She Got Now
    • Dear Black Men
    • I Am Speaking
    • Power Tools
  • Studios
  • Girls United
Home · News

Caught Up in the Rapture

For some sisters, no man is quite as mesmerizing as the preacher. Michelle Burford examines why in pulpits around the country, so many Black men of God command a following of church groupies set on becoming their first lady.
By · Updated October 29, 2020

Crystal didn’t exactly plan on sleeping with the minister. But when she first met David at a church conference in Louisiana, the 34-year-old pastor made her feel safer than she’d ever felt in her life. “It was so easy to share my secrets with him,” recalls the 36-year-old marketing executive who lives in Miami. “I revealed that I had once been raped and that I wanted to heal so I could one day be a whole woman in marriage. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought God could use this minister to prepare me for my husband.”

At first, she dismissed any possibility of romance because David was married to his third wife and expecting his sixth child. He was also an associate minister at one of the largest Black churches in the country, a pastor who was being groomed to one day move into the pulpit’s top spot. But the conference ended and their conversations did not. Then David revealed that his marriage was on rocky terrain. “I knew it was wrong to get into an emotional exchange with him, but somehow I felt as if I were helping him,” Crystal says. Six months later, the two arranged to meet at another church conference, this one in Detroit. David’s wife stayed home.

Enter the push-up bra, that powerful piece of equipment used to lift a woman from mistress to Mrs. in a single hoist. “In retrospect, I can see that I purposely went after him,” Crystal now confesses. “I’m a cute girl, if I do say so myself: size 10, 36D, love the glamour, weaves and makeup. At the conference, I wore a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, a Wonderbra and stiletto heels. If I wore a knit top, it was a size too small. And yes, I knew that men were looking at me.”

Make that one man in particular. At a hotel in Detroit, David and Crystal shared a top sheet and a pillow for the first time. The next thing Crystal knew, she was spinning in a scandalous love chase with David as the prize.

The Allure of a Man of God
Crystal admits that she should have known better. As the daughter of a preacher, during her childhood she’d seen the minister-worship scenario played out again and again in her father’s church.

“I remember some women would get up in the front pews, singing and jumping with not-so-steady bras on,” she says of the 2,000-member congregation her father once led near Dallas. “Many of these women strutted into church with their lipstick smeared and still smelling like liquor from clubbing the night before. They wanted what my mom, the first lady, had—the Mercedes, jewelry, mink coats.”

Sunday after Sunday, wearing our best hats, heels and handbags, we gather to take in a message that will ease our woes. And whether we worship in a tiny neighborhood church or at the glittering edifice of a megachurch, that message is often being delivered by a Black man of God. Maybe he belts out his sermon in a rousing baritone, or maybe he hypnotizes us more subtly with his command of the Scriptures and thrilling cadences. Whatever his preaching style, and no matter the size of his flock, the Black minister occupies a vaunted place in our community. Whom do we call on when we’re sitting at the back of the bus? Or when we’re standing in the need of prayer? Our community’s most potent practitioner, the Black reverend.

Decades after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., galvanized thousands to look toward the promised land, the pulpit of the Black church has remained a bastion of male leadership. It is the one place in this country where the often demonized and disillusioned Black man can still reign supreme. Add to that the fact that the leader who occupies the Big Chair is usually charismatic, articulate, charming and emotive, and you have a presence that’s near-irresistible. For some sisters, the pastor is nothing short of a messenger sent by God to deliver the heavenly hope and healing that too often elude us in our earthly existence.

Johnny Parker, an ordained minister and relationship coach who’s been married for 17 years and is the father of three sons, understands this dynamic all too well. “It’s not unusual for women to become attracted to a pastor who is counseling them simply because they are receiving validation from him,” he observes. “That attention is something they wish they were getting from their husbands or the men in their lives.”

Read more in the July issue of Essence! On newsstands June 20, 2006.

COMPANY INFORMATION
  • Our Company
  • Customer Service
  • Essence Ventures
  • Change Your Address
  • Contact Us
  • Job Opportunities
  • Internships
  • Media Kit
  • tag
SUBSCRIBE
  • Newsletters
  • Give a Gift of ESSENCE
  • Magazine Tablet Edition
FOLLOW US
MORE ON ESSENCE
  • Home
  • Love
  • Celebrity
  • Beauty
  • Hair
  • Fashion
  • ESSENCE festival

ESSENCE.com is part of ESSENCE Communications, Inc.

Essence may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.

©2023 ESSENCE Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Essence.com Advertising Terms

Get The ESSENCE Newsletter and
Special Offers delivered to your inbox

By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Get The ESSENCE Magazine
by subscribing below
subscribe now