Over the weekend, I got an email from Deion Sanders inviting me to church. The subject line of the email read: “You’re VIP | Sunday at Kingdom War Church | Downtown Dallas, TX.” The content of the email was a crazy GeoCities mishmash of images of Deion at church, invitations to join him, and, well, other stuff. After studying this email for three hours, I have been able to determine the following:
1. There is a church called Kingdom W.A.R. The acronym stands for “Worship And Restoration,” both of which sound like good things, even if war doesn’t conjure the most serene, holy imagery. There were the Holy Wars, of course. But I don’t think everyone enjoyed those. In any case, Kingdom W.A.R. is probably a better name for a church than, say, Kingdom N.A.Z.I. (New Awesome Zion Incubator).
2. Kingdom W.A.R. holds its services in the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. At first that seemed odd to me, but then I realized that the downtown library is a better venue for worship and restoration than either City Hall or the McCommas Bluff Landfill.
3. Kingdom W.A.R.’s pastor, Omar Jahwar, is apparently a fan of N.W.A, because, as you can see from the above picture that came to me in the email, he borrowed the type treatment used for the recent biopic about the group, Straight Outta Compton. I haven’t seen the movie yet. I’ve heard it’s great. In college, my roommates and I nearly wore out N.W.A’s debut album of the same title. I don’t remember Eazy-E rapping about anything appropriate for church, even a church that assembles in the downtown library.
4. The email wasn’t sent by Deion. It was sent by a woman named Dalyce “D’Lyte” Kelley, who is part of an operation called Key II The City and who has set up her email account to make it look like it’s Deion’s. That’s why I didn’t go to church last weekend with Deion.
