We Won When The Boiler Failed!


The room was cold. Too cold. It's not uncommon for there to be a certain level of discomfort in the early morning hours on a Sunday morning when we turn the lights on at 6:30 AM. In many ways, the old church building doesn't want to stir from its slumber on a chilly day anymore then it's congregation does. But this was different. The room wasn't chilly. The room was worse than that. It was... frigid. I had been warned the night before that the temperature seemed below normal inside our facility, but it seemed like water was still moving through the radiator pipes, and a simple reset in the morning should do the trick. Long story short, it didn't. The church sanctuary was 48°, and our boiler wasn't going to be fixable by our staff or our key volunteers.

After gathering and assigning every space heater we could find for our children's ministry department, our team made the decision to move our Sunday worship gathering from our sanctuary space to our dining hall. It was a balmy 58° in that room, and with lower ceilings throughout it could be warmed up with body heat if we were particularly energetic worshippers. This meant we would need to cancel our early morning electives, and get the word out to our congregation with very little notice. This meant that our sound and media team(s) would have to arrive early to a cold building, unplug and move all of their equipment, and still not have it work correctly. This meant that we would need every available chair in the dining hall, every movable piece of signage relocated, and every available volunteer repositioned. 

Sunday was a beautiful and special time for our church. It's not often that we require 30-40% of our people to actively engage in a weekly service. Often, a few people can come in early and everyone else trickles in later. As the old saying goes, "many hands make light work." Our people were much also more aware of new guests, and the need to direct them to a different location. Finally, what could be heard over and over again was how good it was to sit in a new location with a different group of people. We heard how nice it was to be bunched together for a change, and how good it was to work together to pull it off. Yes, when the boiler failed, we won!
                                                                           
- Pastor Milo
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