Ready, Aim......

My father has been a preacher since I was very young (missionary before that) and we were always in fairly small churches. (Sometimes very small). (20-100 people) That means we had to do a lot of things in the church ourselves, because there simply weren't enough willing people to get them done. For instance, I started to teach Sunday School when I was in the third grade. There have been only a few years since that time when I haven't been teaching either Sunday School, Children's Church, a Wednesday night program, or a combination.

I was specifically thinking of a time when we had to install a new thermostat in a church in Colorado. The sanctuary was large, and took up the second and third stories of its section of the church. The heater was on the third floor at the back of the sanctuary, and we need the thermostat down by the pulpit. My father and I crawled up into the attic above the baptistry and looked across the sanctuary's suspended ceiling to the heater. It was much too far to just snake the wires. My father, whose many hobbies will someday be a blogpost of their own, had a great idea.

He brought his bow up, and tied a thin string onto an arrow shaft. He tied the other end of the string to a wire, blunted the tip of the arrow, and had me watch for tangles as he took aim. It was perfect. The arrow flew right through the air above the tiles, and rested in the section with the heater. If it had been any closer it would've hit the heater. Dad went to find the arrow then pulled the wire on through. It all worked just as he'd planned, and I remember thinking what an original thinker my dad was.

That's one thing my father has taught me. Think outside the box. In fact, I'm not sure Dad has a box sometimes.