Randy Wray’s Blog

We’re used to putting out fires, it’s part of the job.  The excitement comes when putting out a fire is actually putting out a fire.

Our church / school campus backs up to a levy.  The levy is covered in dead grass, stubble and other such natural incendiary material.  Add vagrants, delinquents and other presidential candidates to the mix and you’ve got quite the explosive situation.

Our Youth minister came in and said "do we have any shovels, there is a fire on the levy?"  We scrambled around trying to find shovels and yes called the fire department.  Talk about response time, they never showed up.

It was a grass fire that because of the wind was spreading quick enough to make you nervous.  The fire was gathering momentum at the base of a couple of dead oak trees and action was required. 

One of our teachers had one of those collapsible army shovels which our youth minister grabbed and our children’s minister / school principal found a shovel in a closet.  The shovel was pretty.  It was the shiniest shovel I’ve seen.  It looked like one of those ceremonial ground breaking shovels.  The way most churches hang on to relics it probably was. 

Imagine this conversation:

1 - There’s a fire and we need some tools to put it out.

2 - We have a shiny shovel and gigantor sized pair of scissors.

3 - All right then, let’s get to work cutting some ribbon.

Following the lead of our youth minister, the two of us "jumped" in and put the fire out.

Just another day at the office. 

At his last place of ministry our youth minister tackled a shooter to the ground.  As we walked back to the building, him with his small green shovel and me with my shiny shovel over my shoulder he said "well that’s better than being shot at on the job."

Hey, this is Stockton, there’s always tomorrow or today as the case might be.