We see a picture of a tortured man who appears to have lost everything, reachiong his breaking point. At a little league baseball game, Sonny gets into an argument with Jessie, and when the youth minister tries to intervene, Sonny takes a baseball bat and attacks him - indeed kills him. What is most remarkable about the scene is that the attack just happens. There is nothing to do but leave town, which Sonny does, on the run. On the back roads of Texas, he shortly comes upon the scene of a serious accident.
Police cars are present and everyone is waiting for an ambulance.
Sonny bounds out of his car, bible in hand, and races to the wrecked vehicle, and gives what one might call the Baptist version of the last rites to the two teenagers who were mortally wounded in the wreck. The young girl appears to be dead, but the boy comes out of his unconsciousness to make the appropriate responses. It is routine, though seldom done in everyday life, for a pastor, it is unheard of for a murderer to stop and plunge into a scene where the police have congregated, even though he, himself, is on the run. We are looking at a man with nothing but his bible. The body of the film follows that new life, from nothing, to a very successful small country church in which he pastors a largely black congregation.