By Ambrose Tilley, Sanctuary Affairs Writer

LOWER BRAMSTEAD — For the eleventh straight Sunday, worshippers at Willow Run Gospel Chapel opened their hymnals Sunday morning, found the page posted on the oak board beside the pulpit, and began singing "Silent Night" in the middle of October, while a bushel of decorative gourds looked on from the altar rail.

The cause, according to church officials, is not a theological stance, an early start to Advent or a dare. It is a small felt-lined box behind the organ that once held six wooden sevens and now holds none.

"We are a hymn-number church," said head usher Delbert Krause, 74, who has slid the numbers onto the board every Saturday night since 1992. "The hymn we wanted was 177. I had a one. I did not have two sevens. What I had was a nine, and a nine turned upside down is a six, and a six is the closest thing to a seven if you squint. That got us to 166, and 166 is 'Silent Night.' The board has spoken."

Krause said the last two sevens vanished in August, the week after Vacation Bible School, which he described as "a coincidence I have chosen to forgive."

Since then, the chapel's music has been dictated entirely by what the box can spell. Any hymn with a seven in it has been rerouted to whatever number Krause can assemble, which has produced a run of Christmas carols, two funeral hymns at a baby dedication, and one Sunday in September when the board read simply "1," because Krause had also run out of patience.

Organist Mavis Underhill, 81, said she plays whatever the board says. "I've been at this bench 52 years. I don't question the board. In 1979 it told me to play the national anthem at a wedding, and I did, and that couple is still married."

The congregation has adjusted. Several members now bring their own scarves to services. The children's choir has learned all four verses of "O Come, All Ye Faithful," which Sunday school director Ruth-Ann Pomeroy called "the most scripture memory we've gotten out of that group since the flannelgraph was retired."

Not everyone is at peace. At Tuesday's Worship and Property Committee meeting, a motion to "simply use the projector" was tabled after the committee realized the projector remote is also missing, and most likely in the same place as the sevens.

A second motion, to order replacements from the original supplier, failed when the committee secretary reported the company had stopped making that style of number in 1987 and that its phone line now reaches a dental office in Ohio. "They were very kind about it," she said. "They offered us a cleaning."

The chapel's hopes now rest with retired shop teacher Clarence Odom, 79, who has volunteered to carve six new sevens by hand from a leftover church pew. He has completed one. It is, by all accounts, beautiful, and also slightly too tall to fit in the board.

"It'll sand down," Odom said. "Give me until Easter."

Pastor Glenn Abernathy, asked for comment, said he has quietly made his peace with the situation and has begun preparing a Christmas sermon series. "It's going to be a long one," he said. "Practically speaking, we started in August."

At press time, Krause confirmed this Sunday's opening hymn would be 166, and that he had found a two behind the radiator, which he said "opens up a whole new season."