The Perfect Idea for Church Attentiveness

I remember as PK's (pastor's kids) growing up, my younger brother, Smooth, and I had a contest going each and every Sunday. Too old for children's church, we'd be forced to sit through "big church" and pay attention. Being as we were too old for children's church and therefore too old for coloring books in the service, and though filling in the hoops of letters found in the bulletin (such as "O" and "P" and "Q") was fun for awhile, we were left wondering what heavenly distraction we could concoct to occupy our time and simultaneously not bring too much of mom's attention to ourselves. We found the perfect thing.

We decided that we would listen to Dad's sermon!

Brilliant!

Actually, no, that's only half-true.

We decided to listen with the intention of keeping a running tally of particular words that Dad used throughout the sermon, such as God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Hell, Heaven, monster trucks, Thundercats, Go-Bots and things like that. Then, at the end we'd tally our score and see who heard the most. Then later, we'd give Dad the score, because we were sure that he was just dying to know how many times he said, Umm. Soon, we were well on our way to being the most perfect, attentive little PK's you ever laid eyes on. We could almost hear the thoughts of those around us,

"Look at those sweet little boys. Who would have thought, 9-year-old pastor's kids being attentive and obedient in church and even ... TAKING NOTES!!"