Embarrassing moments: share. Today I replied to an email that I thought was going only back to Scott when in reality I sent it to our entire prayer team. I mentioned that we could "pull in loads of money" by making an adjustment to our current fundraiser. My guess is that "pull in loads of money" is not the sort of terminology that our entire prayer team wanted to hear their pastor say in their minds as they were reading my reply. I don't blame them, it was a poor choice of words and I sure do feel silly. Have any of you done foolish things like this? If so how did you deal with them? Maybe you asked that portly lady when her baby was due? Or you left the mic on when you went to the bathroom? Do tell. It will help me feel better.
One of my shining moments was early in pastoral ministry and parenthood. While preaching one Sunday morning, my 4 year old son was just causing all kinds of problems for my concentration sitting in the front row acting up. he was mimicking my every hand movement, facial expression etc. I stopped, called him out on it twice, which he knew was my limit. After not changing his behavior after the second time I did the smart thing and took him out of my line of sight and brought him on stage. Behind me!!! SSSTTTUUUUPPPPIIIIIDDDD!!!! When he was doing it in the front row, he was only disturbing me, now he was doing it so all could see!
ReplyDeleteIt never ends. Yesterday I was in Wal-Mart and an employee gives us a quick look as we came in and says, "Welcome to Wal-Mart."
ReplyDeleteI realize in that moment that she's a friend of a friend of ours, I'll call her "Sally." The thing is Sally had been looking for a job for some time and seeing her in a Wal-MArt smock made me excited so I say in an overly enthusiastic voice:
"Hey! It's so good to see you. How are you doing!"
Here's the problem, it was somewhere in the middle of that excessively exciting sentence that it registered in my brain that this person is not my friend's friend "Sally," in fact this is a person that I have never seen before in my life.
Suddenly I'm the "Wow, that's a low price!" guy.
What an idiot. The lady sort of smiled and let us go on our way. I'm sure we left her with a great break room story. My wife and kids made fun of me all day. It was awesome.
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ReplyDeleteWell there you go. I first posted this as Reagan instead of myself.
ReplyDeleteThey make fun of you anyway. At least they had reason this time. You know most of my embarrassing stories, none of which are safe for digital consumption. Although I did drive my parents car through the back wall of the garage and destroy the washer and dryer when I was 15. That was bad.
I've had lots of embarrassing moments as a pastor... but one event really sticks out. My ultimate shining moment in the pulpit was while associate pastoring at a tiny Midwest church in Kansas City called Summit View COTN. I was using a manuscript (which I have since abandoned partly due to this event). I was describing the act of hitting something hard... as though with a hammer... it read, "wham-bam!" However, the phrase that came out of my mouth, much to my wife's not-so-subtle laughter (then everyone else's) was... "wham-bam, thank you ma'am!"
ReplyDeleteWow... no one at that church has ever let me forget about that sermon... nor has my wife. :-)