Jon Cash sees a silver lining in firing: God's word

Maybe Jon Cash knew it would rain that first Sunday in September.

Maybe he knew, as the cars pulled into the Poquoson Community Center, that windshield wipers would pace and people would run to dodge the drops. That they would hopscotch through the gravelly parking lot, past the black trailer with “Keep the Promise ministries” painted on the side, shielding their plaid shorts and T-shirts and slacks and ties to keep them dry.

But if Cash knew it would rain and the skies would be overcast, no one in Hampton Roads seemed to remember. Sunday was the second-to-last day covered by his final seven-day forecast, issued before he had been, in his own words, “brutally” fired as WAVY’s morning weatherman.

As he stood to the side of the community center, he still looked the part in a white shirt, pleated navy blue pants, crisp haircut and not a trace of a whisker. Nearly everyone in the congregation stole glances at him over their shoulders.

The purpose of the service that morning was to worship God, but an unspoken curiosity drifted through the room. Cash was not just a weatherman. He had worked at WAVY, the local NBC affiliate, for 21 years. He was the one they depended on for the science of storms. Viewers considered him “their” weatherman.

That’s why the church’s sunny pastor, Buddy Chapman, had called Cash after news of his firing broke. Chapman heads a new, casual and contemporary ministry of about 50 people who meet twice a month. He wanted Cash, 45, to preach because they both shared an energy for spreading the word, and so Cash had arrived early that soggy Sunday morning.

Chapman kicked off the service like a Southern-rock concert. When he strummed his guitar and said “herewego,” it sounded as though he might be breaking into “Fortunate Son.”

Cash waited out four songs.

“If anyone has a feeling like 'I’m feeling sorry for Jon,’ that’s over right now,” he started.

From the kitchen, where an overflow crowd had gathered, a man yelled back, loud enough to make sure his weatherman could hear: “Amen!”

Some meteorologists fall in love with celebrity. Cash fell in love with the weather.

He was fascinated by it as a 5-year-old growing up in Staunton, a picturesque town of 20,000 west of Charlottesville and the Blue Ridge. Snow. Rain. Clouds. Storms. He loved it all.

He studied atmospheric science at the State University of New York at Albany, but he hadn’t considered a career in television until the weekend a friend invited him along to meet a meteorologist.

The weatherman said the two college students shouldn’t bother with television. It was too hard to break into. Because Cash has never liked being told what he couldn’t do, he shipped resumes to 200 markets and landed one offer: a TV job in Roanoke.

He stayed for a year, then moved to eastern North Carolina for another. In Hampton Roads, a young reporter named Andy Fox suggested the news director review Cash’s tape. Fox’s station was looking for a morning weatherman, and Cash could explain the weather but still act like a jokester on the air. He got the job and the unnatural schedule that went with it.

The morning shift meant the alarm clock buzzed at 3:30 a.m. Cash would guzzle coffee, and later would study hundreds of weather maps, prepare forecasts, set out graphics, chase storms, research storms, explain storm warnings. On rare occasions, there was snow.

Cash loved the snow, and he devised a Snow Hope Index that gauged the unlikely chances of the white stuff. It won over audiences.

He was a natural at chatting with anchors. He talked about his family. He griped about the Redskins. “I was always myself on the air,” he says.

When he wasn’t delivering the weather or smiling at the camera, he spoke at dozens of schools each year. He handed out autographed photos.

By his own estimate, he was viewed by 500,000 people a day, about 1 in 4 in Hampton Roads. Ratings sometimes were two to three times that of the competition. WAVY’s morning show had a simple strategy: it was a radio show on television and the star was its weather guy, Jon Cash.

On the night Cash says he learned “it’s not about me,” he was driving to Florida from eastern North Carolina. It was midnight and he was on I-95 near the South Carolina border. The radio was blaring.

“I was singing that song, and something told me to turn off the song, “ Cash said. “And I literally just started crying. I mean, I literally just started crying.

“Spiritually, what was going on is the Holy Spirit was coming upon me saying it’s time to make a choice.”

The song, of course, was AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”

Cash had not grown up with religion. He didn’t regularly go to church and had started reading the Bible only a few months earlier at the suggestion of a woman he was dating.

He doesn’t remember the exact date or much else about the trip, but on that night in 1989, Cash says, the Holy Spirit seeped into his life. His attitudes changed.

His politics changed. Everything was different.

He tried out a series of congregations before joining Atlantic Shores Baptist church in Virginia Beach. He taught Sunday school for seven years.

In 1999, he wrote the first of his three books, “The Age of the Antichrist,” which he says has sold about 60,000 copies for Christian publisher Whitaker House. An end-of-the-world novel, the book tells the story of a fictional TV reporter at the top of his game who has little need for God and becomes a pawn of the antichrist. The online reviews are extreme: love it, especially fans of the popular “Left Behind ” series, or hate it, “worst book I ever attempted to read.”

The back cover calls Cash one of the highest-rated weathermen in the country and notes that he lives in Chesapeake with his wife, his daughter and a dog named Stormy.

Within a year of writing the book, a half-dozen pastors called to ask Cash to preach. In 2003, he was ordained by Rick Amato as an interdenominational minister at Jerry Falwell’s church. The calls kept coming. Last year, he booked gigs for 40 Sundays.

Cash has traveled the world and has spoken about God in Moscow and Cuba and Nigeria.

During a mission trip last spring, he claimed he saved more than 1,100 people in Nigeria and witnessed four miracle healings, including a woman who had relied on two canes to walk but was able to toss them away after the service.

“Miracles happen every day,” Cash said. “They only happen, though, to people who believe in them, which is very important. You don’t believe miracles will happen to you? Chances are God’s going to say, 'why am I going to give you a miracle if you don’t believe I can do it?’”

The ministry took up 10, 14, then 20 hours a week. In four years, he raised more than $240,000 for bibles overseas, for a Christian school in Sierra Leone and for the construction of more than a half-dozen churches.

During the summer of 2007, he realized his ministry hadn’t grown as quickly as he had hoped, and he re-upped his WAVY contract, even as his passion for preaching grew stronger. Last year, he told friends privately, he wasn’t going to sign on for another year at WAVY and would work full time on his ministry if it was God’s will.

In a July 21 e-mail sent from his WAVY account, he offered his services to local pastors: “The Lord has called me to give up my television job and plunge into full-time evangelism to more effectively spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the next several years my team is planning city-wide revivals to take our country back for the cause of Christ. I hope your church will take part in this enormous push for the gospel in the future.”

So why do people care so much about a TV weatherman?

Nick Walker is a Weather Channel meteorologist and chairman of the National Weather Association’s committee for broadcast meteorology. When he made the transition in Seattle to weatherman, he noticed that more people began to approach him in public than when he was a news reporter.

Walker believes viewers forge a deep connection with their local TV weathermen.

The guy on the small screen is not just forecasting the weather, he also is living it. He’s cutting his grass and taking his kids to the ballgame and trying to get in a picnic on a Saturday afternoon – just like his viewers.

That’s why people now readily approach Cash when they see him at Starbucks –men with scruffy beards say things like, “Man, I miss you, man. You’re the only one I trusted. I’m not watching it anymore.”

In the chemistry of TV news, the weatherman reveals more personality than the anchors reporting on crime and government. The weatherman becomes the guy next door, and viewers feel they know and can trust him.

“From a weather forecaster, they want a little entertainment. They want a smile on their face,” Cash said. “They invite you into their living room, and you are part of their family.”

For as much as you think you know a guy by watching him do the weather for 21 years, here is what most people don’t know about Jon Cash: Cash believes in reading the Bible every day. If you’re not reading the Bible, he says, you’re not growing as a Christian.

Cash believes the middle class is being destroyed. He wrote on his website, “Freedom will slowly but surely die and be replaced with a godless system that will drain the very life from this great country.”

In interviews, Cash did not want to talk about politics, except to say that it is dividing what he calls the American Church. But his actions offer a clue: his attorney, Gary Byler, is the Republican party chairman for Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.

Cash believes we are all descended from Adam and Eve. He believes Jesus died on the cross so that our sins would be forgiven. He believes God loves you. Cash believes God is performing fewer miracles in the United States than in other countries because America’s wealth has distracted people from believing in him and in miracles.

Cash believes it’s imperative to confess your sins. “I simply believe what the Bible says.”

Cash believes those who have a relationship with Christ are less likely to suffer from depression.

Cash believes many recent catastrophes – the volcanic eruptions in Iceland and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – are not signs of a pending apocalypse. Similar disasters have been happening for thousands of years, he says.

Cash believes global warming is not man-made, a view that is not uncommon among TV weathermen. Thermometers, particularly the ones in Chesapeake, he says, have not been adequately adjusted, and that’s why the city has registered some of the highest temperatures in the country the past few years.

Cash believes global warming could be used as a front to bring the world closer together and fall under the spell of an Antichrist. He believes the remedies for global warming will bankrupt the world economy, creating the perfect scenario for a dictator to come to power.

Many of his beliefs, particularly those dealing with faith, could be seen as being at odds with his role as a scientist, but modern theology is not so rigid. The prestigious Templeton Prize, for example, honors academics and scientists who have made an exceptional contribution “in the spiritual dimension of life.” Cash does not struggle to separate the spiritual part of his life from the science his job demanded.

“The two go hand in hand beautifully,” he said. “God created science. Science is the true study of God and his creations. It’s just that many scientists who are evolutionists or atheists have turned it into something different.”

The storms, the snow, the maps he spent decades studying?

“You’re looking at God’s handiwork,” he said.

Television producers know how to hook viewers. They’ll tease an upcoming newscast, and once the audience starts watching, they can’t turn off the set or change the channel until the moment arrives.

On that Sunday morning in Poquoson, Cash had the crowd a half-step behind him, hanging on every word. “I happen to believe there is a heaven and a hell. A god and a devil. Angels and demons. Do not let the devil get a foothold.”

He opened the community center’s front door, using it as a prop and imagining the devil on the other side. Then for a few seconds, he stopped and reverted to his former career. His weatherman’s instinct kicked in. A smile crawled across his ruddy face.

“The rain’s almost over,” he said quickly. The assembled laughed. He had them.

Cash returned to his lesson, showing how it was impossible to close the door if his foot was there. He tried shutting it again and again and again, and each time his foot got in the way.

He said unforgiveness was lodged in peoples’ hearts and urged them to let it go. The people listened.

He spoke fluidly and confidently. When he gestured, it was as though he were in front of a green screen, pushing a cold front through Western Tidewater. By the end of his hour, with soft keyboard chords playing in the background, 20 people stood in a circle in front of the crowd. Cash gently touched each of their shoulders. Some cried and wiped their eyes.

Cash asked for privacy to better connect with the audience. Chapman’s church is small, but the services are videotaped for future study. “No cameras. No cameras. No cameras,” Cash said.

He had saved 10 members and convinced another 10 to recommit their lives to Christ.

As the service was ending, Chapman announced he was giving Cash that morning’s collection. He reassured his members the weatherman would stay and sign his books, $15 each or three for $40. Two dozen people formed a line.

For nearly 20 minutes, Cash smiled and joked and showed pictures of his kids. He finished each autograph by drawing a tornado.

Here is what Cash and his attorney, Gary Byler, say about Aug. 31, the Tuesday Cash was fired.

Cash says that his boss, WAVY General Manager Doug Davis, had sent him an e-mail at 10:03 p.m. Aug. 29, asking to meet that Tuesday.

The e-mail came a few hours after the weatherman had left the pulpit at a church in Isle of Wight. At the revival, Cash had announced that he intended to pursue full-time ministry next summer, if it was God’s will.

Cash arrived at the station Monday, read the e-mail, went on the air for the noon broadcast and then followed the same routine Tuesday. After the show, he walked into Davis’ office and “he fired me,” Cash said.

Davis said Cash’s actions were “bad for business,” according to Byler.

Hagit Limor, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists and an investigative reporter for the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati, said television contracts often contain a clause that prevents employees from disclosing information about their agreement because it could aid competitors.

Almost all stations prohibit their reporters from publicly supporting political candidates or parties, but the ethics policies generally do not prevent staff members from participating in religious services or from preaching.

Cash says he had been reprimanded in March after his name was displayed on a sign outside a church where he was speaking and for reproducing an electronic photo of himself that was shot by WAVY. Davis declined to discuss what happened Aug. 31, citing company policy not to discuss employment matters.

As Cash left the building on his last day, he hugged anchorman Don Roberts, explained what happened and told him he would miss him. Within five minutes, Cash knew he was going to pursue full-time ministry. He knew that God had orchestrated all of it. “God allows certain bad things to happen to allow good things to happen to those who trust him.”

That night, his worried 9-year-old son asked his dad if they were going to eat dinner.

By the next morning, Cash had vanished from the airwaves. Mothers called out-of-state sons to say the weatherman they had grown up with was gone. A Facebook group sprang up almost instantly with 5,000 fans. In five days, more than 140,000 people checked out Cash’s ministry’s website, where he asked for financial support.

Nearly everyone seemed to be on his side. “In the end, you will receive the victory and not the spoils,” one fan wrote. “We have an awesome god.” But when Cash started to read the other comments online, his daughter turned off the computer and said he didn’t need to see them. Some people thought the weatherman was a quack.

The key to Cash’s on-the-air success, he says, was that he came off as a “real person.” He was a good communicator. He was funny. He shared personal stories.

“Sometimes I’ve wondered in the past 5½ weeks whether I’m making the right move,” Cash told the congregation of Bethlehem Christian Church in Suffolk two weeks ago. “And he keeps telling me I am.”

Earlier this month Cash filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying religious discrimination cost him his job. He expects that people inspired by the details of the suit and those unhappy with the role God plays in the United States will attend a rally at Mount Trashmore in Virginia Beach on Nov. 14.

Cash believes the same qualities that allowed him to touch a nerve regionally with the weather will allow him to succeed nationally as an evangelist. He sees himself as a uniter.

“Our country is so splintered, I don’t think there is a mainstream anymore.”

At the rally, he will talk about God and country. He planned the event for a weekend so entire families can attend. He will preach about unity. The United States has lost its morality, he said, pointing to his old medium, television, as an example. Just look at what is allowed on TV compared to 40 or 50 years ago, he said. “We need God’s mercy now,” Cash told the congregation in Suffolk. “I’m very fearful of the future of America as we know it.”

He has devoted himself full time to his ministry. He said he is one of about only 100 people nationally who work as evangelists without a church. He will depend on “love offerings” to pay his bills and for pastors to call him for revivals.

He doesn’t plan to go back to television, but he is doing the weather part time for a radio station on the Eastern Shore. He is writing a blog about faith for The Daily Press’ website, will host a Christian talk radio program in the Hampton Roads market and plans to go to Cuba in January for a mission trip.

He writes devotionals on his website and sends daily e-mails to subscribers that include a forecast and his popular morning trivia questions. He is working on a fourth book. He promises the return of his famous snowflake.

In his new career, Cash must do what he has always done: convince viewers to listen to him. He knows the odds he’s facing. He knows what some people are thinking: Is he crazy?

He was a meteorologist, a man of science. Now he is a preacher, a man of faith. Both professions have devout followers, who incorporate what they’ve heard into daily routines. Both have skeptics, who dismiss the work as quickly as they can change the channel.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com