Several months before we moved to our new church building in 1998, our ministry staff met at the new site for a special staff meeting. Most of the building still wasn't carpeted, and some of the rooms still had no drywall. We handed out hard hats, magic markers and a few Bibles.

We instructed staff members to go to the classrooms and offices in the building where they would be working and write Scripture verses on the concrete floors. I said, "Someday soon the scriptures will be covered with carpet. But I hope you will always remember what you have written today. And what we do today will be a visible reminder that we are always to stand on God's Word."

The staff really got into it. Some of them used cans of spray paint they had brought so the words would show up better. (They acted as if they had some experience, which bothered me a little!) Those in the children's ministry wrote things like, "Let the little children come to Me ... for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

In the education wing, the adult education ministers wrote things like, "Study to show yourself approved unto God," and "Your Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against You."

In the music practice rooms, the music ministers wrote, "Sing and make music unto the Lord," and "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord."

In the offices of the preaching team, we wrote passages like, "Preach the Word in season and out of season," and "Watch your life and doctrine closely ... if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers."

One of our single ladies who worked in the children's ministry wrote her favorite verse on the floor of her office: "It is not good for a man to be alone!"

The "scriptures-on-the-floor" idea caught on, and soon hundreds of church members followed suit. In a matter of weeks, there were scriptures all over the concrete floors -- down hallways, on stairways, on the steps leading up to the pulpit. I saw moms and dads bring their children to the building just to write their favorite scriptures on the concrete floors. We actually considered asking people to stop because they started writing in places we hadn't planned to cover with carpet! But we decided it wasn't a good idea to make people quit writing scriptures!

I heard of class officers gathering in their future classrooms, praying together and writing scriptures on the floor. Small groups chose special places in the building to write their favorite scriptures. When you walked through the building, all the floors looked like they were covered with graffiti. But instead of curse words, they were covered with God's Word. The building became a dramatic reminder to all of us that our church has been called to stand upon the Word of God.

One of our small groups had volunteered to help clean the building one afternoon. As they were preparing to leave, Marty Rice, prayer leader of the group, said, "Why don't we write down a scripture reference in one of the rooms before we leave?"