Sometime back we decided to switch our church sanctuary around. Instead of facing the narrow end of the room, we moved the seating to face the wide part of the chamber. An area of concern arose when we discovered that the floor slanted down toward the former pulpit area. Would people seated as we planned feel like they were sitting on the side of a hill? Would it make them feel uncomfortable?

Well, fortunately, the slant was so mild that most people didn’t even notice. You actually had to look for signs that it sloped, and most didn’t. That wouldn’t be true for the church I grew up in. It sloped to the front also, but it descended in a much more pronounced way.

I remember as a boy crawling under the pews and rolling from the back, down to the front. I let marbles and balls go at the back and watched them roll under the pews until they banged to a stop against the small strip of carpet in front of and under the altars. Of course, I never did any of that during a worship time – my Dad would have killed me! But, there was plenty of time during Board or other meetings when my friends and I were left to roam and explore the church on our own.

Now those slanting floors were not a random occurrence, they had a purpose. They were designed that way to make it easier for those seated in back of others to see to the front. I’m not sure it worked real well in the slight decline of our church here in Okmulgee, but that was the idea.

I’ve sometimes wondered if there might be another reason for the downward grade of the floor in our churches. Could it be a helpful tool for someone deeply burdened with sin and guilt?

Could a person who is under the weight of that sin be needing a little assist, a little impetus to get started towards the altars in front where forgiveness, salvation, or turning over those burdens was available? Did that downward grade help?

Or, what about the opposite pull? What if a person chose not to go to the altar when that was what they needed. Would the grade back toward the altar be a pull on them that caused them to turn back? I know of a few cases in which people were leaving the sanctuary and would suddenly grab a friend and say something along the line of, “Don’t let me go, I need to go pray. Will you help me, will you go back down to the front with me?” Then they would head back down to the altar and find salvation. They would finally surrender to the Lord and find new life in Jesus.

My friend’s father was one of those. My father and my father-in-law were in the group that went back to pray with him.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:22, “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”

One of those “means” might be as simple as giving an assist to a burdened soul with the slant of the floor.

– Just a Thought Dale Fillmore is lead pastor at New Day Church.