Plumbing

While all of North American Christendom is discussing baptism, allow me to contribute a somewhat lighter discussion topic: What's the most bizarre baptismal plumbing that you have confronted? When I served at First Baptist Church, Mill Creek, OK, I found quite a riddle facing me upon the occasion of my first baptism—how to get water into the baptistry. The fixture itself was constructed from pieces of plywood into a simple box rather than the molded fiberglass installations often encountered. A three-foot painting ladder had been sawn in half at its apex, the back portion discarded and the front nailed in place to form steps down into the baptistry from stage right. At the other side, a section of garden hose snaked into the baptistry. So, I traced the hose into an anteroom, where it terminated into an outside-type water faucet threaded into the top of a water heater. Good! We'll have warm water. I opened the faucet, but nothing came out. So, I started looking around, trying to diagnose the problem. The water heater input was plumbed into a section of PVC pipe. I followed the pipe along an interior baseboard until it turned a 90° elbow and disappeared into an exterior wall. I needed to determine where the water was being obstructed. I went outside and discovered, just where the inside pipe went into the wall, an external faucet on the outside of the church. "Good," I thought to myself, "I can check to see if there is water here by turning on this faucet." But I couldn't turn on the faucet. It had been jammed. Open. But no water was coming out. Now I was really puzzled. Obviously, there was no water to this point in the plumbing, and I couldn't find any other external faucets or internal fixtures in the area to check. In fact, there were no other signs of any plumbing at all in that section of the building. The bathrooms were far away in another section of the church. I went there to make sure that I hadn't happened to start trying to fill the baptistry when the water was somehow shut off to the entire building. The sinks in the bathrooms worked just fine. Then I happened to glance up on top of the water heater in the men's bathroom. I normally didn't pay much attention to the water heater, because it didn't heat any water—it was broken. The water in the bathrooms was all cold. But there, at the pressure-release valve of the water heater, was a severed section of garden hose connected with a hose clamp and then coiled neatly atop the water heater. The moment of enlightenment dawned—surely that's not how this is supposed to work! I picked up the hose on top of the water heater and found that it terminated in a female end. Stretching it out, it was just the perfect length to go outside the bathroom, out the external door, across the church yard, and to the jammed, inactive, external faucet near the baptistry. The hose neatly attached to the faucet. Returning to the inoperative water heater, I flipped up the lever on the pressure-release valve, sending water into the hose, backwards through the external faucet, through the pipe inside, and into the water heater. A light switch inside gave power to the only working water heater in the building (except for not having a permanent supply of water). Once the heater had time to bring a tank of water up to temperature, opening the makeshift faucet on the top sent hot water into the homemade baptistry. Some things they just don't teach you in seminary.