Noah Funk (Ryan Robbins) plays a life changing game similar to a game you may have seen in which a card shark tries to deceive his paying audience with his sleight of hand by switching around three overturned cards and the mark has to find the right overturned card. In this case four Mennonites are asked to participate in a game in which four identical bibles are quickly mixed around on a table in front of the churches entire congregation, and the four Mennonites at the front of the church are requested to step up one by one, and select one of the four mixed up bibles. Noah Funk gets to pick his bible as the third of the four participants and lo and behold he happens to pick the only bible with the invitation to become the churches new pastor.
In Noah's role as their new pastor he is responsible for his congregations spiritual and physical well being. Evil does lurk in this little southern Ontario (Canada) town of Antioch, population 9,500. One of Noah's old schoolmates Bronco Novak (A. J. Buckley) the football jock who is now a police detective with the Antioch detachment approaches the new pastor Noah looking for assistance in the recent disappearance of a family of four Mennonites from another community after discovering their torched vehicle's registration number originated in Mexico. After contacting the U.S. drug enforcement agency, and talking to detective Phoebe O'Reilly (Rosie Perez) about the burned out car with a Mexican V.I.N. number, Bronco Novak takes a second closer look at the burnt out vehicle and he finds a kilo of pure heroin hidden in the cars under carriage.
Eli Voss (Peter Outerbridge) who is a drug mule and dealer in pure heroin disguises himself as a Mennonite, but his community fears him and what he would do to them if they went to the police authorities. In the opening scene we witness that Eli Voss is responsible for the murder of three of the four Mennonites who have their vehicle run off of the road then torched after Voss recovers his heroin from the cars under carriage. A young boy named Ezekiel Janzen (Felix Bieger) is able to escape from the wrecked car before Eli Voss can murder him along with his father and siblings, but poor Ezekiel is burdened with witnessing his father and brothers murders.
This is a drama series about hard working Mennonite families like the new pastor Noah Funk, his wife and two teenage high school aged children, trying to live their isolated lives but within a melting pot of drugs, prostitution and police corruption, and 21st century liberal attitudes. Noah Funk is accepting of his new role as his congregations new pastor, but as he tries to maneuver his way around the Mennonite criminal element, his little white lies like trying to pass orphaned Ezekiel Janzen off as his nephew, and planting drugs in the homes of the drug pushers, the drug lord Eli Voss gives Noah an ultimatum, work within the drug trade or his family will become Eli Voss's next target.
I found this series got of to a rip roaring good start and I am looking forward to how the young new pastor and his family will cope with going against the crime lord Eli Voss, and unwillingly have to rely on outsiders for support like his old high school nemesis detective Bronco Novak.
Eeny meeny miny moe, I wonder if Noah wished he had picked another bible instead of the congregations new pastors bible?
