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CELEBRATE JESUS—HE’S JUST LIKE US!

I appear on E! News and E! Online five days a week as a professional extrovert—where I analyze, report on, and critique the personal and professional lives of famous people, performing my public service in stylish clothes and perfectly coiffed hair. It’s all a carefully crafted production that celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of Hollywood life.

Yet when I leave the E! studios and drive the hour (or more) on the freeway back home to Hermosa Beach, I retreat into my sweatpants and a T-shirt and I like to read, write, relax, ride my bike by the beach, and generally stay out of other people’s business. Or, when in hockey-dad mode, you’ll find me at an ice rink watching my kids with a hoodie pulled over my head, white earbud wires dangling beside my cheeks, the portrait of an antisocial personality.

I’m what you’d call dichotomous. And it’s a balance I mostly like about myself. It’s also a big reason why I have always gotten along so well with another Hollywood personality—the matriarch of the Kardashian-Jenner empire, Kris Jenner.

Kris flaunts her materialistic celebrity lifestyle, residing in a mansion in the ritzy gated community of Hidden Hills, flying around the world in private jets, driving her Rolls-Royce in her designer shades, and carrying handbags worth more money than some Americans make in a year. Yet as I have gotten to know Kris better over the last ten years, I’ve learned that she also is a deeply spiritual mother, loving grandmother, and a badass businesswoman who gains her strength from a dedicated, genuine relationship with God that includes weekly church attendance.

Kris and I met in early 2006, some two years before the Kardashians would become America’s First (reality-TV) Family upon the launch of E!’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Back then, I was an editor for Us Weekly and had driven up to Calabasas to interview her daughter Kim, who had just gained attention for having a brief fling with Jessica Simpson’s ex-husband, Nick Lachey. Kris and I instantly hit it off. We gossiped about various celebrities, and I served as a sounding board for different ideas she had to boost her husband Bruce Jenner’s career. At that first meeting, Kris even tried to set me up with her oldest daughter, Kourtney…until she found out I was recently married.

Soon, I had a front-row seat to the family’s subsequent rise to the top of the famousphere, regularly interviewing family members and breaking exclusive news about their various adventures. In 2008, I joined E! full-time and my relationship to the family grew even closer and more personal. I attended their birthday parties, housewarming parties, weddings, dinner parties at the family home (yes, they love to throw parties); flew to Las Vegas to party with them; even brought my family to Kris’s annual Christmas Eve party, a soiree featuring elves serving Willy Wonka–like candies in a huge tent decorated like a winter wonderland. The night ended with a visit from the “real Santa Claus,” who placed kids on his lap and handed personal gifts to every child. One year, I got to see Kim and Kanye West proudly snap photos of their infant daughter North’s first sitting upon Santa’s knee (yes, she cried).

Through it all, Kris, who is fifteen years older than me, has become a friend, confidante, and mentor. I will often seek her advice on various issues. Through the paparazzi and reality-TV lenses, Kris may appear to be a self-absorbed pagan, but in real life she is anything but that. Like a lot of things in Hollywood, appearances are deceiving when it comes to Kris Jenner.

Yet despite my coziness with the Kards, as some fans affectionately call them, I have never gone to church with them, though they regularly attend Christian services near their home at a small, nondenominational church (to which Kris donates 10 percent of her annual income, a tithe) founded by a charismatic pastor who has appeared on their reality show many times, the Rev. Brad Johnson.

My first Wednesday-night Bible study with Judah went surprisingly well, breaking down at least a few bricks in the wall that has separated me from the Bible. But I feel like I need to find a pastor with whom I can develop a relationship, in a church I can go to on Sundays and figure out if churchgoing will lead me down a path to finding God.

A week after attending Judah’s Bible study, I see on the in-house shooting schedule for the E! studios that Kris has a promotional shoot in our building. As soon as I get to work, I walk down to the makeup room on the first floor to say hello.

“Hey, Ken!” Kris says from her chair as I part her entourage. She leans in for a hug and kisses me on the cheek. “We haven’t talked in a while,” she says with a smile.

“Yeah, it’s been about two days,” I reply.

“Well.” Kris laughs. “That’s a long time for us!”

I stand next to Kris and we look at each other in the mirror as her makeup artist, Joyce, finishes up her glam touch-ups. After some chitchat about how fast her teenage daughters, Kendall and Kylie, are growing up; about how much better Lamar is doing now that he survived his overdose several months back (I haven’t yet told her how much his health crisis helped spark my spiritual journey); I ask her how often she goes to Pastor Brad’s church.

“Every Sunday,” she says. “As long as I’m in town—or not working.”

“Can I come with you sometime?” I ask.

“Of course, Ken! You can come anytime.”

“How about this Sunday?” I ask. “Will you be there?”

I would feel awkward going alone.

“I’ll check my schedule,” Kris says. “But that should work. You will love it. Brad is the man!”

I have never met Pastor Brad, but I am familiar with his story. Turns out that before Brad Johnson became “the man,” the charismatic preacher had to undergo a personal resurrection as dramatic as any Hollywood comeback I’ve ever seen.

Around the time I met the Kardashian family in the late 2000s, Brad led the 4,000-member congregation at Calvary Community Church in the upscale L.A. suburb of Westlake Village. The Kards were among the megachurch’s many famous members.

Then, in 2007, a tabloid-ready scandal struck the church. But this one had nothing to do with its most scandalous family. Rather, this tale starred its ever-smiling and charming leader with a thick head of golden-brown hair, who shocked the congregation by confessing publicly that he had been cheating on his wife with another woman. He later wrote in a blog post: “I am sorry for the pain and emotional upheaval my actions have caused you and the precious bride of Christ. I’m sorry for the deceptions, the irresponsibility, and the sin of adultery that came from my life and infected others. I assume full responsibility for my actions with no excuses and no rationalizations.”

Brad’s indiscretion resulted in the end of his twenty-seven-year marriage, and seemingly his pastoral career. He fell into a spiral hauntingly similar to that of Lamar Odom, whose wedding to Khloe Kardashian Brad officiated (in front of E! reality cameras). Brad fell into clinical depression and, sadly, even attempted to kill himself three times. One time, paramedics rushed to his home after it was reported that he had overdosed. He survived—but barely.

Brad focused on his faith in Christ and prayed daily for forgiveness. He also went on antidepressants to help pull him from his psychological abyss.

Then he got a new job, as a barista at Starbucks.

While working for minimum wage pouring coffee, Brad was almost quite literally stalked by Kris and Bruce Jenner, who had been looking for him for several months. The couple had since left Calvary and, along with other like-minded former members, wanted to start a new church. Their choice for pastor: Brad Johnson.

“When I found out he was working at Starbucks I couldn’t believe it,” Kris told me. “Not that there is necessarily any shame in working at Starbucks, but I was like, Brad needs to be leading a church. I felt that his mistakes, and his persecution by the old church, would make him a better pastor. It was his shot at redemption. I couldn’t think of a better person to lead the church. Nobody is perfect.”

Days later, as I head to the front door to leave for Kris Jenner’s church, my wife, Brooke, is standing in the kitchen and jokes, “Say hi to Jesus if you see him.”

Even if she did not think the idea of finding divine inspiration at a church founded by a reality-TV star was a potentially silly one, I certainly wouldn’t want her, and not the kids either to come with me on this church visit. After all, the experience could be a bad one and could turn them off. So I go alone.

I pull in right before the ten a.m. service is set to start. When I walk through the glass doors of Pastor Brad’s church, the first thing I notice is a box of black-and-white rubber bracelets on which is printed, NO PERFECT PEOPLE ALLOWED. I’m early, so the sparse sanctuary, which sits in a strip mall near the 101 Freeway, is still half empty as I enter and an usher hands one to me. As I am sliding the bracelet onto my wrist, a thin blond woman comes up to me.

“Kris told me to look out for you!” she says, shaking my hand and flashing a big smile. “I’m Karen, Brad’s wife.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

“Come back here and meet Brad.”

Karen guides me to the rear of the space and pushes open a door to a meeting room, where Brad is sitting at a conference table going over his sermon notes.

Upon seeing me, Brad bounds to his feet. “Hey, Ken! I heard you might be coming.”

“I’m here,” I reply. “Where’s Kris?”

“Oh, I guess she had a shoot today for the Oscars,” Karen explains.

Actually, I knew this. But I forgot. She had to appear on the E! pre-show, but lately my mind hadn’t been doing a great job of keeping track of much of anything, especially other people’s schedules, not to mention I’d just had to beg a publisher to give me another year on a book deadline because…why? Because by the time the weekend (when I typically do most of my writing) comes, my brain is so scrambled from managing the stress of my job, my commute, my anxiety, my general state of feeling adrift. In short, I have been overwhelmed. I am here because I desperately need to still my mind, find peace, and have a life grounded in spirituality. Going to church helps a lot of people, including my friend Kris, and Judah’s Bible study opened me back up to the Christian message; why not try going to church for real?

“Well, I get you all to myself,” I joke to Brad.

“Along with a hundred or so others.” He laughs.

Brad has the sleeves of his paisley-print button-down shirt rolled up to his mid-forearm and wears a black NO PERFECT PEOPLE ALLOWED rubber bracelet on his right wrist. He looks like he’s a dad dressed “cool” for a Super Bowl party. And Brad is smiling like it’s a party.

“Welcome to our humble sanctuary,” he says of the former retail space that sits in a strip mall flush against the 101 Freeway, beside a shoe store and a swimming school for kids called Water Wings. And here I sit, front and center, hoping Pastor Brad can help me swim closer to God—or at least keep me from drowning.

Brad has a round face and teeth that seem wider and whiter than most, which makes him all the more inviting. At Starbucks, Brad must have been the happiest, most blessed barista ever.

“I have been hearing about you for a long time,” I tell Brad. “I can’t believe we’ve never met.”

“But I feel like we have.”

“Yeah, like maybe I saw you at one of Kris’s parties.”

“Something like that, I am sure of it.”

“Let me ask God.” I fold my hands in front of my chest in mock prayer (I act goofy when I’m nervous). “Maybe He remembers.”

“Good one!” Brad says with a grin. “I’m gonna have to use that one.”

Brad is easy to talk to, which seems to be a job prerequisite for preachers these days. They need to be accessible, real people. Brad emanates realness. I can see how Kris Jenner and the family feel comfortable here with Brad. Plus, he’s entertaining, earnest, and with the small sanctuary of some 150 seats he provides a sense of privacy every Sunday to otherwise wildly public people. Then, when you factor in that the church’s motto is “No Perfect People Allowed,” it’s clear that a group of people who are criticized daily by online haters and bullies would find this humble little suburban church a welcoming spiritual retreat.

“Well, we hope you enjoy the message today,” Brad says, glancing at his notes.

“I’ll let you get back to your sermon,” I say. “Thanks again for having me.”

Brad’s wife walks me to the front row, and we sit side by side. “Kris always sits right here,” she whispers.

“Is this the VIP section?”

Karen nods and smiles.

Stop being silly, I tell myself.

A four-man soft-rock band warms up the mostly full room, which is neither the grand opulence of Judah’s Beverly Hills hotel ballroom or the echo-filled chambers of my Catholic youth. Given that Kris and company are away, there are also no celebrities, no Hollywood insiders, thus I feel like I can just sit and listen and learn and pray. And I like having this space.

When Brad steps behind the lectern, it’s just him, his Bible, and a microphone. All the other trappings of some churchgoing experiences—candles, stained-glass windows, marble altars, dramatic lighting—are missing. The sparseness evokes a natural, genuine, welcoming atmosphere. With its low ceiling and carpeted floor, an airy cathedral it is not.

Brad starts off by announcing that for the next four Sundays he will be preaching a series of sermons titled, “Jesus in His Own Words,” explaining, “Jesus gave us ‘I am’ statements. He had seven different descriptions. We are taking on four of them for a month.”

Today’s sermon, he says gleefully, comes from John 10:11, which reads, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Brad goes on to describe how Jesus often used the metaphor of God as our keeper and caregiver as a shepherd is to his flock. “Sheep are mentioned two hundred times in the Bible,” Brad says. “They’re the most frequently mentioned animal in the Bible.” By comparison, Brad notes, dogs are mentioned forty-four times and cats…well, zero times. Being a dog person, and highly allergic to most cats, with this knowledge I am already feeling closer to Jesus.

I glance inside the program that was handed to me on the way in and find that an outline of Brad’s sermon is printed on the inside, sort of a Cliff’s Notes of his preaching. Wow, if my priests back in Buffalo growing up gave me a read-along guide like this I would have gotten a lot more out of their homilies!

“The Bible says we are sheep,” Brad continues. “And sheep aren’t necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer. They are the original possessors of ADD.” Brad mimics a wandering sheep bouncing from spot to spot on the stage. “There’s some grass, there’s some grass.” The congregation laughs along with him. “They can’t recognize danger ahead of time. They are very hard to lead.”

I get what he’s saying. Part of the reason I soon will be pushing fifty years old and still don’t have a well-defined spiritual belief system is that I get distracted moment by moment by the external ephemera of life (phones, friends, work, sports) rather than stopping, at least for a little bit each day, to seek out God. Sure, modern life makes it a lot harder than it was two thousand years ago, but we are also a hell of a lot more comfortable than they were back then, thus we should have more time and energy to devote to spiritual matters. But most of us don’t. I know I don’t. I am a sheep.

Brad goes on with the humans-as-sheep metaphor, and he encourages us to glance at today’s program where he has printed a summary of his points:

SHEEP GET LOST EASILY.

Pastor Brad stands at the lectern and reads from Isaiah 53, saying, “We like sheep have gone astray.” He looks out at the congregation. “We are prone to wander. Our tendency is to get lost. We, like sheep, easily go astray. That’s why we need a shepherd.”

SHEEP ARE DEFENSELESS.

Smiling, Brad adds, “The best they can do is say baaaack off.” Everyone laughs, including Brad.

SHEEP ARE STUBBORN.

“Now everyone is looking at the person next to them and saying, ‘He must be talking about you.’ ” After a quick chuckle, Brad turns serious. “The Bible says that the sheep who go astray, their desire is to do what they want rather than what the shepherd wants.” Brad steps away from the podium and wipes his forehead with his forearm as he relays that sheep are well known to go off on their own and get stuck between rocks, determined to squeeze through without their shepherd, only to die trying to go it alone. “How many of you are determined to work your own way out of it?”

Brad has silenced the congregants, including me, to whom he seems to be directly speaking. He’s spot-on that I am Lone Wolf Guy, always insisting I figure things out on my own. Yet this has only left me feeling stuck.

Brad, a man who once was disgraced following a church sex scandal, lets out a sigh.

“Look, my life was a wreck. My life was a mess. A lot of people confronted me, but I was like Baskin Robbins: Take a number, dude. But then at night I couldn’t sleep because what they said went right to my heart. I hadn’t turned to the Lord yet. A friend said to me, ‘Brad, if it was your best thinking that got you here, what makes you believe that it is your best thinking that can get you out?’ That went right to my heart. I decided that I needed a shepherd. I was being very stubborn.”

SHEEP ARE DIRTY.

“They are nasty,” he says. “They stink, there are flies. They have no ability to wash themselves. And that is the way we are in the mind of God. Without Jesus, without our sins forgiven, the best you can do in the eyes of God is to be nasty. Here is the point: We need a savior like sheep need a shepherd. The Good Shepherd laid down his life for his sheep.”

I’m not feeling very warm and fuzzy about the message that I am interpreting, in part, as this: I’m dirty unless God washes me of my sinful ways. That seems a bit harsh to me, a little too 30 AD to my twenty-first-century thinking. I would prefer a more positive message, perhaps like, “We are all clean, but God wipes away the grime when we get dirty.” This Almighty God—I imagine: gray-bearded old man standing at heaven’s gate with a report card of your sins—is the one I have always resisted and came to resent. But like Brad points out, maybe I am being stubborn. There is some logic to the argument. I mean, where has this God-resistant way of thinking got me? The answer seems to be it got me here to Kris Jenner’s church, hanging on every word, hoping to find God amid the noise that is my life.

Brad asks everyone to open to John 10:3–4, and he reads, “The gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

Brad further explains, “The Bible says we can learn to recognize the voice of God. It doesn’t have to be the literal voice, but he speaks through scriptures. The Bible is God’s love letter to you. ‘This is my direction to you, this is my way, this is the path to follow…’ If you are not reading the scriptures, you are missing a lot of what God could say to you every single day.

“The pressure is off you. Psalm 23 says, ‘Jesus, you guide me and I will follow’…He provides for our souls. Some of you right now, it seems like life is going your way, but inside you have an unsettled soul. You have an un-refreshed soul. You don’t have peace in your life; you’re not sleeping well at night. You’re burdened every day. On the outside you’ve got your smile on, and when you walked in here people smiled at you and said, “Man, you’ve got a good life.” But you know something is wrong inside. You need your soul refreshed.”

And in a thirty-second clip of his sermon Brad has summed up my wayward spiritual state of being. I’ve been taking the sedative Trazodone to sleep at night, I entertain and inform and smile my way through work every day. I know that the real me is a scared little boy who just wants to find equanimity, peace…God.

Brad pauses, seemingly sensing his relatable sermon has connected with his flock. He glances down at me and cracks a soft smile before looking up at the congregation. “Some of you right now are facing the consequences of bad decisions you’ve made. Like, the pain is horrible. It’s like somebody took a stick and had at it with you. You feel the pain of your life. Listen, not all pain is a result of sin. But sometimes we’ve got to ask, God have you let this pain into my life to correct me? Have you allowed this pain into my life so that I will come closer to you? When are you more apt to turn to God? When you are hurting or when life is good?”

That last question elicits a murmur of chuckles.

“If there was ever a time in your life when you were closer to Jesus than you are right now, this is a good time for you to come home,” Brad says. “This is a good day for you to come back to the Shepherd. This is a good day to say, Yeah I wandered. And I am going to turn my life back and I’m going to talk closely with the Lord one more time.”

The stage lights dim and Brad bows his head.

“Let us pray together,” he says gently. I bow my head and close my eyes. I fold my hands in prayer, just like at church in the 1970s, as Brad begins his earnest prayer.

“Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit would begin to speak to us right now and transform people’s hearts right now. Who here would say, ‘I am a sheep and I need the care of a shepherd’? Who would say that in your heart? Who’s here this morning and would say, ‘I have decisions to make and I need my shepherd to guide me’? Some of you would say, ‘Brad, right now I am empty. I need the shepherd to be my provider—maybe materially, maybe spiritually. You need peace. Who here would say, ‘I used to be very close to Christ and I’ve wandered away like a sheep’? And I wanna come home and I wanna come back to him? You can do that right now. And I pray that no one leaves today without knowing the Good Shepherd. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Can I get an amen?”

“Amen!” I say. And I mean it.

Brad then asks anyone in the church today who is ready to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior to stand up. This call to accept is standard fare in most nondenominational Christian churches, as I learned from my brother Kevin. The act of professing your faith in Jesus as a way to ensure an infinite place in heaven is at the core of Christian faith. As John 3:16 states: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Despite the nurturing thought of not having to sweat the small stuff because I will be happy in heaven if I accept Jesus in my heart, I remain seated. Like at Judah’s Bible study, I feel as though the biblical message Brad has shared is relevant, relatable, and is bringing me closer to God—but not so close that I am willing to commit my soul exclusively to Jesus Christ. Could I use a shepherd in my life? Absolutely. Is it going to come only through Christianity? Maybe. But I haven’t examined enough to know. Still, so far, I see no reason why Christianity, and its uplifting message of redemption, can’t be part of my path to spiritual healing. So I remain on the fence. At this stage, to do anything else would be dishonest. But I am enjoying this celebration, even if I might conclude that Jesus Christ represents nothing more than the notion that we can all be reborn no matter how much we mess things up. There’s a well-worn adage that says “Hollywood loves a comeback.” But really, when it comes to ourselves, we all do.

Afterward, Brad stands at the exit shaking hands with everyone as they leave to their cars.

“Thanks for coming, Ken!” Brad tells me as I pass by. “Let’s chat more about this search of yours sometime. Just give me a call.”

I promise him I will and shake his hand. Brad looks into my eyes for an awkwardly long time. He knows I have pain I haven’t shared. And so do I. Today is not the day to share it. I am not ready.

Nonetheless, I wave goodbye and leave the church feeling way more at peace and mindful than when I entered. Progress. I decide to give myself homework: Read the entire Book of John, from which Brad was reading today. So I drive through the Santa Monica Mountains to Malibu and sit outside a coffee shop as rich hipsters shuffle in and out in their beach sandals.

John, along with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is one of the four Gospels of the New Testament. Tradition holds that John, known as the beloved disciple and one of Jesus’s original twelve followers, wrote his Gospel in twenty-one action-packed chapters around 90 AD and recalls his firsthand, eyewitness account of Jesus’s life. With caffeine buzzing through my system, I rifle through the chapters and verses…

He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life….Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her…I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved…I did not come to judge the world but to save the world…Love one another, even as I have loved you…

The Bible isn’t just a book, it’s sort of a screenplay, chock full of entertaining and informative stories. While as a kid I got the impression that the stories were about these boring old guys from a long, long time ago, I realize that, as Brad preached, the stories are really about us. For me, they’re not so much literal as they are allegorical. In this Cecil B. DeMille–like biblical production, we are supposed to see ourselves. I’m reminded of when I was working as an editor at Us Weekly back in 2002, and my editor in chief, Bonnie Fuller, asked me what I thought about a new photo section she wanted to start called “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!” featuring paparazzi photos showing famous people doing everyday things.

“It’s brilliant,” I said. “People read our magazine to see themselves.” And that’s why I am reading the Bible. I want to see myself. And I do. I know that the Bible is the all-time bestselling book, but I bet sales would really skyrocket if it was renamed Jesus—He’s Just Like Us!

As the caffeine buzz begins to wear off, I check my phone and see a text from Kris Jenner.

how was church w brad?

very good. I like him a lot!

yay!! come next Sunday and ill be there. How r u doing?

honestly, feeling a little lost.

God knows I know what that’s like and it’s super tough…I’m happy brad brings you some comfort and that you can come to a feeling of peace thru a relationship with him and us and God and prayer…I’m here for you if you ever need me…Just one day at a time…And breathe….

Breathe.

It was like Kris was with me earlier that morning. I actually could breathe while in church. My chest didn’t feel tight. My thoughts weren’t racing. I felt calm.

If only life were lived within the four walls of a church, I could feel strong enough to face anything. But real life is far more challenging when you go home and don’t have a pastor of positivity wrapping a “Jesus Loves You” blanket around you.