I have caller ID. When the phone rings and I see it’s from a university, I’m usually correct in assuming it’s a professor calling to pick my brain about Billy Graham. I was wrong when my phone flashed University of Missouri a few weeks back. It was John Wigger calling to pick my brain about Jim Bakker.

Let me share an experience that made me appreciate more than ever a church like ours.

Most of these professors are writing books. When they Google their subject, they find me fast, since I’ve written thousands of stories about Graham, Bakker and who knows how many other famous religious figures when I covered religion for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. Funny, no one has ever called about Leroy Jenkins, the ex-con/evangelist who passed through town years ago selling miracle water out of plastic milk jugs. Duke religious historian Grant Wacker, who’s writing a book about Graham, found me a while back. We’ve become fast friends. He had his assistant print out and mail me every word I wrote for The Observer on Billy. Came to more than a half-million. Wish they had paid me by the word.

Wigger is the first scholar to call me about Bakker. An historian who wrote a biography of Francis Asbury, he’s fast-forwarded himself to the 20th Century. His Asbury book was 560 pages. Wonder what Jim and Tammy rate? He’s interested now in exploring explosive religious movements – explosive as in extremely popular, not as in self-imploding in scandal. Wigger said he’s coming to Charlotte, would I be interested in meeting with him. Sure, I said, and I’ll be glad to ride you out to PTL, I hadn’t been there in years and would love to revisit the scene of their glory and crime.

That’s how I wound up spending a much more evocative day than I had anticipated, chaffeuring Wigger around what’s left of the PTL complex. We stopped at the TV studio where Jim and Tammy sang and cried their way to fortune and ruin. It was locked up tight. We parked and walked inside the hotel and adjoining shopping mall where millions came for faith and fun back when it was as close as Christianity came to DisneyWorld. A seminary of sorts meets in the hotel lobby, and a teacher was lecturing to 30 or so students. It was impossible to imagine the tacky grandeur of the 1980s. We walked over to where the water park was, where I took our children each summer. Our “children” are now 28 and 25. The water park’s gone. It’s all weeds now.

At each stop along the tour, Wigger furiously took pictures, capturing what little remains from the past and presumably illustrating the book he doesn’t expect to complete until 2014 or later.

At each stop along the tour, I shook my head and smiled with deep nostalgia. I thought about all the times I drove out there chasing an interview or story. I thought about the millions who came to ooh and aah at the Christmas lights and be entertained by televangelism’s first couple. I thought about the weekend I spent profiling Jim in Los Angeles, and the other weekend I spent profiling Tammy in Palm Springs as they tried to reinvent themselves and cling to the spotlight. And then, as we headed for pork barbecue plates, I thought about the fleeting nature of the theology on which this all was built (Life isn’t about material prosperity). The dishonesty that brought it down. The hollow shell of excess it has become.

Here’s the lesson: PTL doesn’t really matter anymore. What matters is Myers Park United Methodist and every house of worship anchored in love and integrity. Long after the glitz of PTL has faded, the church will be here to soothe wounds, teach the Bible and give us a chance to care for a neighbor. Oh sure, we in the church fuss about this and fume about that every now and then. The waters aren’t always calm. But we are as solid as our stone foundation and steady as another Sunday morning. We are here. We have earned our place here, again and again. We are not going anywhere.

I’m glad the last professor was calling to pick my brain about Jim Bakker.