breaking INTO church

Yes, that’s correct I broke into my church. Most people have come to a place in life where they find church and boring synonyms. If you went to my church you wouldn’t. You might find yourself being at odds with a point of theology (hopefully minor) but you wouldn’t be bored (if you are applying your mind). Ok, let me get to the good stuff. So it was last Monday and I got to the church around 6:20pm to set up for the EMERGE kickoff meeting that was on the next day.

Anyway, I was there and they had the building inside locked up. I could get in the gym no problem but the guy who was suppose to have a key to the rest of the building was on vacation the week prior and the secretaries had messed up and left his key in the staff mailbox which is in the office which was locked up. So the guy who is suppose to have the key along with another big guy and myself decide we’re going to break in the office and grab the key. Let me give a list of attempts and why they didn’t work:

1. First they tried to move the lock off the sliding glass window. This doesn’t work because if it did work they wouldn’t have put a lock on it in the first place! I tried to warn them, but to no avail.

2. Big guy number 1 tries to go through the ceiling in front of the office and drop into the room. This won’t work because he’s over 200lbs. When you’re that big, good luck getting your arms to cooperate. Did I mention that the electric boxes in the ceiling somehow gave him a really good shock when he tried to feel around up there?

3. Big guy number 1 tries to go through the bathroom and drop into the office. Yeah, good luck. We’ve now not only have the same problem as trying this in front of the office but now it smells worse and we’ve moved another 30 feet away, which would make it harder to traverse through the ceiling.

4. Big guy number 1 tries to go in through a side room, but realizes he doesn’t have a key to get in. Yeah, if this worked I would have been impressed too.

5. Big guy number 2 tries picking the lock on the side door with a credit card. I mean it worked in the movies didn’t it? Yeah, it still didn’t work, but a better attempt.

6. I go and get some wire and attempt big guy number 2’s idea with something that wraps around and pulls towards us. Problem: the wire is too flimsy. If we had something stronger I think we would have been in.

7. Big guy number 2 tries to go through the ceiling in front of the office and drop into the room. Once again, he’s also a big guy (well over 200) and doesn’t have the arm strength to pull himself up.

8. Look, I’m not wearing shoes, I came to clean up. So me going through the ceiling seemed like a bad idea. Besides, big guy number 1 found some power cords up there!

9. Back to picking locks we went. A feeble but honest attempt.


So how did we finally get in? Yeah, you guessed it, I gave up on them picking our way to freedom and I went through the ceiling barefoot. I mean when you have a very low body fat ratio and over 6’ you can do this kind of thing. Being an Electrical Engineer actually paid off, I knew which were electrical boxes and what weren’t (and no, being an EE doesn’t help you distinguish what is what, it’s called common sense, a side effect of being an engineer). So I got up into the ceiling, pulled the ceiling tile above the office up and out and then slowly, and I do mean slowly, lowered myself in to the office and onto someone’s desk, barefoot.

I opened the door, we go the key, I put the tile back and we left to prepare the room for EMERGE (that’s the 20s group we host at our church, and it has been going well thanks for asking, yes you should come, that's a great idea). I hope this Monday is a bit easier...