In Case of Unholy Smoke
Mary Louise Kitsen
Should churches go to the bother of fire drills? Although virtually none do, the idea has its merits. In the late 1950s, Living Faith Baptist Church in Nashville had drills every six weeks or so—and was glad it did the morning the small wooden structure caught fire in the middle of Sunday school. Teachers tested the hallway doors, found them hot, and led the children out the windows as planned. "My children and I escaped safely, along with everybody else," says Ruby White, third-grade teacher as well as mother of five in the Sunday school. "We'd practiced getting out of the building any number of times, and all of a sudden the need was real." Children and teens, being accustomed to fire drills in school, had learned to take the drills in stride once they became a regular part of Sunday morning. Teachers found them disruptive at first but soon managed to plan around them. "I always knew several days in advance when we'd have one and what time," says White. "Then I'd take a good look at my lesson plans for that week. I could usually time it so the drill would disrupt an activity, not a story or prayer time. We got to where the whole thing took no more than five minutes. "Sure it was extra work for us teachers—but wasn't it worth it?" The church burned to the ground, but no one was hurt.
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