Witness Fitness or Flatness

I remember the early 2000’s (doesn’t that sound weird?!?) when John Scott and Gary Hughes and Ken Zimmerman painted the blue handicapped parking spots on our parking lot. That was the brightest blue paint I had ever seen on the ground. I told them it looked like a helicopter landing pad and we would probably have helicopters landing there! Last night that came true.

I received a late-Sunday-evening call from a member asking “What’s going on at the church?” I didn’t know of anything . “Well, there are emergency vehicles in the parking lot-- an ambulance, a firetruck with bright lights on-- there’s even a helicopter landed there. And it looks like they’re spraying something.”

“I’ll be right there!” I said, hanging up the phone. “Oh great…”, I thought. “The church is on fire.” But even that did not explain why there would be a helicopter.

By the time Cathy, Cammy, and I got here (an eight-minute drive in four minutes) the action was all over. I was relieved to see that the church building looked quite normal with the porch light and steeple lights on and the parking lot clear and dry. I thought (and maybe said out loud): “Someone in the neighborhood was having a bad dream.” We went to the Pottsboro Fire Station.

A police squad car was arriving—an officer with similar questions. Finding three of Pottsboro’s finest firefighters there, we inquired. An emergency medical call was made and a patient needed to be transferred to Life Star. Since we have a large parking area in the center of our community (and a blue heliport!) they had landed a helicopter here and transferred the patient. With a smile and a “Whew!”, I thanked them for their service to all of us and welcomed them to come to the church anytime! As we drove back past Lakeway, I prayed three things: thanksgiving that the building was intact, hope for the patient who was being flown to the hospital, and gratitude for our emergency personnel that we so often take for granted.

As my curiosity (and my heart-rate) continued to subside, I got to thinking how I want our church’s evangelistic and mission activities to draw that much attention. What if people noticed the activity, the bright lights and the spraying. What if we acted like our witness for Jesus Christ is as urgent as getting the best medical help for someone who is in a health crisis?

The church is actually a good place to land on Sundays and take off for another week of witness!

Oh, and what looked like something spraying was probably just dust stirred up from the parking lot as the helicopter took off. Let’s wake up some members and shake up some dust and get going with our witness for Jesus Christ!

The bright lights and landing port just might just draw a crowd!