Holy Roller

Julie Lyons, on her beat as a crime reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, was traversing South Dallas one late April evening in 1990. She was looking for a new angle reporting on crack-cocaine. The idea she pitched to her editor was a story about supernatural healing of addicts. Now she had to find the goods to back up her story.

Aimlessly driving, street after street, she was searching for a church that looked like it might have answers to her quest. At one point, feeling the presence of God in the car with her, she found herself stopping in front of a dilapidated building, one she would have dismissed in the natural. As she states, "I was looking for a feature story to run in the Sunday paper. What I was about to discover was a passionate, self-taught man who would introduce me to a world of spirits, healing, prophecy, and warfare waged to the death between invisible forces of good and evil. To Pastor Eddington these things were not superstition, legend, or overwrought emotion. This was reality, and over the next few months I would see it for myself." (page 5)

Holy Roller is a story of lives intertwined in a pursuit of God. Lyons writes at times with a "no holds barred" flair, exposing abuses and triumphs that she learns about in the black Pentecostal church scene at large. More than that, though, Holy Roller is a very compelling, honest tale of her own spiritual growth at the Body of Christ Assembly. She holds up her best examples, a godly pastor and his wife, a church family where people are desperate for God, and living a life of holiness is taught and expected. Always recognized is the fact that people have a choice: holiness or hell.

This riveting tale of God's love and compassion, with an emphasis on speaking truth in love and recognition of a very real spiritual battle for souls was hard to put down. It's well worth your time.

2009 in hardback, published by WaterBrook Press.