Hitting The Wall

On the walls of the church sanctuaries of my youth were these consecrated tote boards. I don’t know the official name of these accessories, but these placards recorded every jot and tittle of faithful Christian service for all the world to see.

The boards recorded the numbers in attendance; the amount of the offering; those who had brought their Bibles with them to church. A second attendance board covered the basics of Sunday School, Discipleship Training, Choir Rehearsal, and the like. Someone had to change the figures every Sunday like the old-school changing of the numbers on a gas station sign, this weekly clamor of adding, subtracting, counting, and reporting.

Each individual Bible Study class was intensely more testing. In the age of flannel boards, chalk drawings, and colorful construction paper, I learned the stories and doctrines of the Bible (in King James English of course), and I learned to…