Monday's morning meeting agenda was a monstrous, 55-topic affair that was to compact budget, ordinance and other matters into three hours.
What everyone wanted to talk about, however, was the first three minutes.
Terry Jones, the head pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center who has received recent attention for his anti-Islam campaign, was supposed to give an introduction prayer, or invocation, prior to the meeting's start.
As the hands on the clock crept closer to 9 a.m., about 40 pairs of eyes in the Alachua County Commission meeting lunged for the door with every creak.
Jones never came.
Instead, Wayne Sapp, a pastor who acts as second-in-command at the church, gave a brief, 53-word statement on behalf of Jones, who, according to Sapp, was away on a business trip in South Florida. Jones was rotated into the invocation spot by the county from a list of religious leaders.
The invocation, which Sapp said the church knew about since late July, addressed the subject of Islam only once, calling for "Muslims to speak out against oppression and violent behavior." The comments barely sparked any flickers of emotion from the deflated crowd.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," said Sam Bass, a deputy with the Alachua County's Sheriff's Office who expected to be "in the line of fire."
Sapp, who paid for the now-famous "Islam is of the Devil" shirts distributed to adults and youth in the Dove congregation, said that the shirts have actually done more good than harm by helping children raise tough questions and think critically. In the end, he said, the issue is non-negotiable.
"Every good parent doesn't want their child to go to Hell," said Sapp, whose three children have worn the shirts to school. "We're just doing what the Bible tells us to do."
Despite the public outcry, he said the church will continue to speak out against Islam and plans to address other controversial topics like same-sex marriage and abortion, all with the same vigor as the anti-Islam campaign.
"Hey, it could always be worse," he said. "They killed Jesus Christ for speaking out."
