By Clementine Harrow, Climate Control Correspondent

MAPLE HOLLOW — At Grace Point Fellowship Hall, the most contested piece of church property is not the coffee urn, the soundboard or the last parking space under the oak. It is a beige wall thermostat bolted beside the sanctuary doors and sealed, since the spring of 2008, inside a clear plastic cage with three small padlocks.

The cage was installed after what the trustees still call "the Great Swing." Someone — accounts differ — turned the dial from 68 to 74 during a midweek Bible study, and by Sunday the sanctuary felt, in the words of then-chair Edna Crowe, "like a luggage hold." A hardware-store lockbox arrived the following Tuesday. Three keys were cut. Three trustees still hold them.

"I keep mine on the key ring with the furnace room," said trustee Harold Vint, 72, who prefers 68 degrees year-round and believes "a little chill wakes people up for the second hymn." Trustee Marlene Quist, 64, keeps hers in a labeled envelope in her purse and sets the dial to 72. "People wear layers for a reason," she said. "The reason is me." Trustee Roy Pettigrew, 58, aims for 70 and calls it "the peace number," a phrase neither of the others has ever accepted.

They do not meet about it. They take turns. Vint adjusts on the first Sunday of the month, Quist on the second, Pettigrew on the third. The fourth Sunday is supposed to be "hold," which in practice means whoever arrives earliest with a key "checks" the setting and, according to Quist, "accidentally improves it."

The congregation has adapted. Regulars keep a shawl folded under the pew and a battery fan in the hymnbook rack. Visitors are briefed in the narthex by greeter Dottie Bream, who taps the plastic cage with one fingernail and says, "Dress for three climates." Youth group members have started a spreadsheet titled "Whose Week?" that tracks scarf density against the month and has, so far, correctly predicted the thermostat setting 11 Sundays in a row.

A proposal to buy a programmable model was raised at the 2016 annual meeting, tabled in 2017, revived in 2019 and lost after someone asked who would program it. "That is just three keys and a screen," Vint said at the time. Minutes show the motion failed 6-5, with one abstention from a member who was fanning herself with the agenda.

The plastic has yellowed slightly around the edges. The dial still works. Nobody has broken the locks, though a youth-group lockpick demonstration in 2022 was ruled "educational but not for the thermostat" after Quist arrived with her envelope.

At press time, it was Quist's week. The sanctuary was 72. Vint was wearing a cardigan anyway. Pettigrew said he would "just peek" on the fourth Sunday, for continuity.