When my wife, Debbie, and I and another couple arrived at the nursery after the midweek evening program, we discovered our toddlers playing church.

Here's how it went: The 3-year-old "parents" were taking the 2-year-old "babies" to "nursery," then the "parents" went to "meetings." The attendant said they'd played the game over and over all evening.

We laughed out loud, but we glanced at one another's eyes; we knew how sick it was. Our children's first word to describe the gospel ministry was "meetings." It wasn't a cuss word they'd learned at the neighbor's. This was home-grown heresy.

I didn't do anything about it. I started things, I planned things, I taught things, I organized things, I ran things, I built things—of course I had a lot of meetings to go to. Isn't that ministry? It sounded professional when I said it, but coming from our babies it sounded horrible, like a betrayal. It occurred to me that I was the one playing church.

ALEXANDER WHYTE'S LARGE LIFE

G.F. Barbour's "The Life ...