In the Contact Church, we spend about 10 to 15 minutes on Sunday mornings concentrating on prayer and praise. During this time, anyone in the congregation can raise his or her hand to inform the church about a prayer request or a reason for giving thanks to God. Christopher has a tradition of telling the congregation, "I'm thankful for Bat Dog!" Everyone enjoys hearing his praise to God for Bat Dog, possibly because it's cute and possibly because our dog has such an unusual name.
When we adopted Bat Dog from the animal shelter nearly 3 years ago, Christopher was a big fan of The Batman cartoon series and Krypto the Superdog cartoon series (which often featured Ace the Bat Hound--Batman's pet dog--as a guest star). So when we got a dog, Christopher named him Bat Dog. Now Bat Dog may be the most prayed-for dog on the planet, since he is mentioned nearly every Sunday morning during prayer and praise at the Contact Church.
"A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal..." (Proverbs 12:10).
