As Pastor Jenkins walked through the church fellowship hall he could not help overhearing part of a conversation between two members of his congregation. What he heard troubled him.

The members were standing in front of the big thermometer sign that the building committee had made. Five years ago the church had begun a fund campaign for a new sanctuary. The building committee had painted a big thermometer on a four-by-ten-foot sheet of plywood. The measurement markings on the thermometer were labeled, not in degrees, but in dollars. Each week the building committee chairman colored in the thermometer to correspond to the amount that had been given to the building fund to date. When the thermometer was finally colored in all the way to the top, that would indicate that they had enough money …