You Know You're in Church Planting When ...

A baby sneezes in the nursery, and the mother leaves the service to check his health.

You discover you've preached three sermons in the past month on "Commitment and Faithfulness through Church Attendance."

Your spouse is ill--and attendance dips 20 percent.

Your hymnals (copyright 1895), your pulpit (ninth-grade shop quality), your (dented) communion set, and your core members are all castoffs from Old First Church.

Your attendance matches the temperature--in January.

Soloists always use taped accompaniment.

Your first visitor in two months comes on the Sunday three families are gone--and you're preaching on tithing.

Your services, held in a hotel conference room, are interrupted by passers-by looking for the Baseball Card and Comic Book Convention.

You find the three missing families at the convention.

Anything that breathes is counted in Sunday attendance.

Your donated organ has built-in percussion for the rhumba and cha-cha.

Your favorite Bible verse is "Where two or three are gathered together ..."

You awake from a dream in which everyone who's ever visited your church comes back.

The phone number of the church and parsonage are the same.

A board member asks, "Why do we need a budget?"

Every piece of furniture has to be put away after the service.

Even buckets of air fresheners on Sundays cannot remove the smell of smoke and sweat remaining in the rented sanctuary from the other six days.

You need to speak to the church chairman, Sunday school superintendent, and treasurer--but he's gone this week.

Infants can crawl from the nursery to the pulpit in 19.3 seconds.