Sep 13, 2009

The Sunday School Currency Exchange

In my early years, my wealth primarily consisted of Bible bucks, yielded from successful ventures in the world of Bible trivia at Applegate Community Church. Making a living as a trivia competitor was tough, the I felt I had reached my ceiling. Even if I swept the competitions, I could only pull in 5 Bible bucks a week. Besides, at the rate Ms. Jennings was printing out bucks in the office, Bible bucks could only land me bible verse bookmarks that I'm pretty sure were the results of the 6 and 7 year olds' craft project. I decided to move to a higher market. I wanted to make my Bible bucks work for me.



Across the street there was a new Korean church. Their Sunday School compensated juvenile spiritual growth with Disciple dollars. They didn't offer much that enticed me, mostly just leather Bibles and personal organizers, but I was so tired of my trivia-for-bookmarks, that Disciple dollars looked like gold. The Korean kids were darn good Bible scholars, but their Sunday School teachers were far more conservative in their payments than Ms. Jennings. The kids were also reluctant to spend, preferring to hoard dollars for security and larger purchases at a later time.



I saw a great opportunity to do business. I wanted goods, they wanted savings. I was loaded with Bible bucks by this time, it's just they couldn't buy me much. I approached one of the more scholarly Koreans, a boy named Timothy, and made him an ambitious offer: I'd trade him all 50 of my Bible bucks for all 10 of his Disciple dollars. He got to beef up his balance sheet, and I got to spend 5 Disciple dollars on an illustrated kid's bible. Turned out that I got the better end of that deal. The next Sunday our class was so well-behaved that she gave us all 100 Bible bucks each. Most of the class raided the goodie store. When the goodie store clerk, Mr. Clark, saw everything getting sold out, he jacked up the prices to slow the run. Just after that Timothy came over to see what he could get with the Bible bucks I traded him. By that time, 50 Bible bucks couldn't get you more than one bookmark.