The elevator started its steady climb to the 6th floor of the Edward Jones Dome. I’d just hiked back from Keiner Plaza five blocks away after helping to rig a roof to protect a group of Adventist singers from the burning sun and rising temperatures.

The journey to the top floor provided a few seconds to catch my breath: dripping sweat, feet aching and ... cell phone ringing. “Hi Ray.” It’s Ray Dabrowski, communication director of the world church. “We’ve got a crisis,” he tells me. “I need you here.”

Ray has two media events starting within the next half an hour and we’ve only got one room available. As the Communication Department operations manager, I’m seen as the ‘fixer,’ so this now becomes my problem and I’ve got to fix it.

I won’t tell you how this story ends, but we held two meetings simultaneously in separate rooms and my case comes up next week.

The cell phone rings again. Mark Finley is about to go on air on Hope TV. He needs a copy of the “Growing in Christ” fundamental belief statement. I’m in the exhibition hall and the document is in the Press Room six floors above the Dome and almost a quarter of a mile away. So, I’m off and running and all the time I’m running I’m thinking on my feet—tossing around all the other issues that need addressing today. 

Some delegates feel that this has to be the best-run conference in the recent history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but it still needs those able to think on their feet when problems present themselves.

Linda de Leon and Sheri Clemmer will need cell phones and well-worn footwear surgically removed when this St Louis Session finally swings out of town. Exhibit Hall manager, Dean Rogers, admits he’s had “a few bumps along the way” but his skill, experience and diplomacy has served him well on his journey.

Nominating committee chairman Jere Patzer and the various platform chairmen have certainly needed to think on their feet as they’ve coped with the challenges and demands of their Session functions. And, the sheer accessibility of the world church president and senior members of the leadership certainly tests their reaction skills—repeatedly accosted in corridors, concourses and halls, quizzed and questioned by media, delegates and laity alike. The eventual privacy of their hotel rooms must seem like Heaven itself.

My work as operations manager takes me on regular sojourns to the press conference room, which stands immediately adjacent to the prayer room. They say that to really appreciate life you should take time to stop and smell the flowers. So, during one of my manic moments today I stopped, popped my head inside the prayer room, and experienced such peace and tranquility as groups knelt in prayer and praised the Lord.

Necessity requires some of us to think on our feet at the moment, Lord, but it’s all in Your service, I promise, and we’ll be on our knees real soon.