When Bernie Came to Bible School

By Thomas M. Parsons

It was the third day of Vacation Bible School. Our teachers and helpers had been praying for the salvation of some of the unsaved children being brought to VBS each day by our workers. In just a few minutes I would close my lesson in my junior high classroom and move to the auditorium where I would have fifteen minutes to challenge the children to trust Jesus Christ as Savior. Any child who wanted to make a response to the Gospel would be given an opportunity to talk with one of our workers.

The door to my classroom opened. My wife, our Director for the school, motioned excitedly for me to come to the door. It is not wise for a husband to ignore his wife, especially just forty-five minutes before lunch, so I went to the door. She quickly pulled me into the hallway.

"There's a bat in the auditorium," she whispered, so my junior highers couldn't hear.

"A what?" I whispered in response.

"A bat," she repeated, "and it's almost time for the closing. What are you going to do about it?"

Me? I thought. Me? You're the director! A quick picture of an empty plate at lunch caused me to ask instead, "How did a bat get in there?"

"I don't know, but how are you going to get it out?"

"You stay with my class," I said trying to sound like a confident I-know-what-to-do leader. "I'll see what I can do."

The auditorium was nearly empty - only a few workers stood huddled in one corner. All eyes were fixed on the same spot - a dark, gray spot slowly crawling up one of the drapes on the window on the opposite side of the room. My eyes soon picked out two little ears that moved from side to side and two large black eyes that searched the room. As I watched, the creature took off in flight, swooping down erratically as it circled the auditorium. This caused much ducking and screaming from the workers assembled below.

"Pastor, how are we going to get this thing out?" one of the workers asked.

"Let's get a broom and knock it out of the air," one worker suggested.

"Don't kill it. It has a right to live!" another said.

"Maybe we should call the police," said another.

Each of these suggestions was punctuated by hollering and hand flinging as the bat passed repeatedly within inches of the startled workers.

The bat came to rest for a moment on one of the sound columns mounted at the front of the auditorium. I returned to my classroom to give my wife further instruction.

"Keep the little children downstairs," I told her, "and tell the other teachers to have the closing in their classrooms. It's only fifteen minutes until the parents come to pick up the kids and then we can figure out what to do about Bernie."

"Bernie?" my wife asked.

"Bernie," I said.

She went to talk to the teachers. My students, mature, intelligent junior highers as they were, were dismissed to watch the proceedings.

I returned to the auditorium. "We called the police," I was told.

"What did they say?" I asked.

"They wanted to know if the bat had committed a crime," came the reply, "and they wished us good luck in getting it out."

"Mrs. Jones called her husband," another worker said, "but he wasn't much help. He told us to call Robin."

"Robin?" I had to ask. "You know, Batman and Robin!"

This situation was far worse than I thought. It was bringing out the bad jokes.

This story is based on an actual event that took place in the summer of 1986 at First Baptist Church, Oglesby, Illinois during Vacation Bible School. I was the pastor of the church at the time. An edited version of the story was published in Conquest, the adult take-home paper from Regular Baptist Press in 1987. This is the original version, just as I wrote it and submitted it to RBP.

During all of the excited and fruitless activity, Bernie continued to make passes close to the heads of the workers who continued to huddle together in the corner of the auditorium. It soon dawned on me that they were huddled in the wrong corner.

Bernie was swooping down on them because they were standing between him and the door, which had been propped open. He was flying toward daylight. Each approach to the light - and freedom - was met with an onslaught of cries and hand flinging that must have convinced Bernie that he had flown into something other than a Baptist church.

Unnoticed by me, something else was happening during all this activity. One of the teachers had slipped out of her classroom, which opened into the auditorium, with a little boy, one of her students. Together they quickly walked past the growing crowd of excited workers and went outside.

"Listen, folks," I said, mustering all my pastoral authority and wisdom. "The bat just wants to get out. I think if we leave the doors open and all of us leave, the bat will just fly outside.

"You really think so?" someone asked.

"It will never work!" said another.

"Let's give it a try," I said.

"What if it doesn't work?" I was asked.

"Then we'll just send the kids home. It's about time anyway, and this afternoon I can call an exterminator to get rid of the bat."

One by one the workers began to leave the auditorium. Some lingered, however, curious about this strange visitor to Bible school.

Just then someone came to me and said, "Pastor, telephone." Noting that Bernie was resting just above the door to my study, I decided to go to the fellowship hall where there was an extension phone.

"I hear you have a visitor," said the familiar voice of my Sunday School superintendent. His wife had called him at work to tell him of our situation. "I'll be glad to bring my rifle over and take a couple of shots at him," he said. Visions of bullet holes covering the walls of the sanctuary at next Sunday's service filled my mind.

"Well, that might be a little drastic," I said.

"It might work," he said.

The conversation was interrupted by one of the workers. "He's gone!" came the joyous news. He just flew out the door.

Glad that my pastorly advice had been heeded, and even more glad that it had actually worked, I informed my caller of the news and hung up the phone.

I went outside where everyone had gathered to say goodbye to the kids as their parents arrived to take them home. I was approached by one of the teachers, her arm around a small boy. "He has something to tell you," she said.

"I just asked Jesus to be my Savior," he said.

Later the teacher, who was deathly afraid of bats, told me that the boy was very bashful. He probably would not have responded to the invitation I had planned to give at the closing service that day because there would have been too many people present. But in the classroom with fewer people around, when the teacher asked if anyone wanted to trust Jesus, one shy little boy said, "Yes." He and his teacher slipped out past the staff distracted by Bernie, and outside in front of the church one bat-shy teacher led a bashful little boy to Jesus Christ.

Is it possible that Bernie was sent on a mission to Bible school that day?