Before anyone measured engagement, a church measured like this, by hand, in front of everyone. The board is signwritten Missionary Work in shaded red and gilt, and beneath it the week of a believing community is ruled into columns: visits to the hospital and door to door, Bible readings, cottage meetings, friends brought along, treatments given, golden deeds, books and tracts given away, the Morning Watch kept. This is the lay-mission language of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition, a faith that asked its members to account, each week, for their kindness.

Turn it over and the years move. The back was used much later by the same congregation as a plain chalkboard, Growing Our Church, the barriers and the enablers set in two columns: Saturday not convenient, a seven-day society, set against music, the young, a loving community. One board, two eras of the same anxious hope, carried out of a Melbourne church the day it came down. It keeps its knocks and its green frame and its whole working life on its face.