Glasgow is in something of a heatwave, which as you may know is not my favourite sort of weather. It was good to be back in church tonight, although it was oppressively hot in the building, and I think I irritated everyone sitting near me by generating quite a breeze when I kept wafting my pink paper (that’s the intimation sheet, just to clarify) in my face in an attempt to cool down.
While sweating my way through David‘s excellent sermon on Romans 8, and when I should have been focussing on Jesus, the heat got me thinking. What can we do in church when it gets too hot? There must be plenty of things.
101 things, in fact…
- Ask to get baptised in order to cool off.
- Post a sign outside saying “Welcome to Hell”
- …or one saying “You think it’s hot in here?”
- If it’s communion, ask for your wine with ice.
- Count the understains among the congregation. Especially if it’s a charismatic church.
- Announce that you’ll only give to the offering if there’s ice creams given out in return.
- Convert to Catholicism so you can justify throwing holy water over the congregation to cool them down.
- Sing loud enough to lift the roof. Literally.
- Mould the intimation sheet into an attractive Japanes-style fan. If you have a pen, decorate it. Ask your neighbours to mark it out of ten.
- Tear up your Bible and do a test to find out which book makes the most effective fan.
Simon, you have got to be kidding me. I’m looking at forecasts for Glasgow and it shows that it’s only about 70F, which constitutes a nice day. I might start feeling sorry for you once it gets to 85+.
Jenny, remember that we don’t have air con. So, 70F quickly begins to feel like 85F+ (especially when you are stuck in church buildings listening to sermons etc). Not only so, but we are talking about Scotland here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6739007.stm) Everything feels worse than it actually is on any objective reckoning of things.
Jenny, 70F (or 20C as I discovered it is) is hot. For me, anyway.
But that’s all a tangent. Ideas, people, come on…
11. Or..get up and open all the doors
12. Or…buy a few fans for next week
I worry about it when it’s too warm: it restricts the worship, because your fear of exposing sweat circles prevents waving hands in the air.
And surely the communion wine should be “on the rocks”…
13. Call on the congregation to strip down and dance around in their pants, ala King David. (2 Sam 6)
14. Hold the service in a park outside.
15. Hold the service at midnight when it will hopefully be cooler.
16. Move your church to the North Pole. It will encourage population redistribution at the same time.
17. Thank God that you don’t live in Australia where summer is ACTUALLY very hot {:->
18. Take the opportunity to be as motionless as possible, by engaging in deep meditation.
19. Following on from this, respond to the common invitation at Deeper services and suchlike to lie down, a common ploy adopted by lions when it gets very hot.
I’ve done number 5 before. At a Baptist church, it’s incredibly easy to do. 🙂
Cxx