Fireworks...

It never ceases to amaze me how grown men can turn into children when they walk into a fireworks tent. Our church does an annual fund raiser where we man a fireworks tent. It takes a lot of work but it does a couple of things for our church besides raising money.
1) It gets outside the four walls. Too many times the church gets confined by the four walls of the structure that they never get outside of it. I spent the last weekend talking to guys who had too much to drink, gals who had not enough on, and people whose language would not be welcomed in most churches. You see when you explain to a guy that big hunk of fireworks is a 16,000 piece fire cracker, they usually use an expletive before they grin. It is good for our people to get out and interact with those we never see in our normal day to day lives. It lets us invest in their lives ever so slightly, who knows what might be sown.
2) It creates opportunities for team building, for conflict management and for problem solving. We needed all three when working with a rotating staff over an entire week where most were spending at least six hours a day in almost triple digit heat. Tempers did not have to go far to reach the boiling point when the tent was 120 degrees. And we also got to build team as the setup and tear down crew jumped in and did what needed to be done in record time. You should have seen them organize the battle plans when a huge thunderstorm headed our way. Everyone knew what they needed to do, how they needed to do it and when they needed to do it. I love it when a plan comes together!! And we had to solve problems. Like how do you tie down a loose tent flap, why with duct tape and a zip tie. How do you patch a hole in a tent? Well with the afore mentioned duct tape. How do you cool down hot tent workers? Well with an ice cold bottle of water or a diaper soaked in ice cold water. Hopefully that diaper was not the "used" kind.