Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Humility and How I Attained It

Twenty-one preachers in the same room. A little scary, huh? It was the weekly breakfast for local pastors. I have another job so I seldom get to go. In fact, this was my first time. I found a couple of familiar faces and sat down at their table to eat my biscuits and gravy, sausage and bacon, scrambled and fried eggs, coffee and juice.

Preachers always have to take a little of everything at a potluck so as not to offend any dear lady in the church who brought her prized recipe. I’m not sure who cooked our breakfast but it wasn’t the ladies from the church. Still, I had a little of everything.

Speaking of potluck dinners, did you know the Marriage Supper of the Lamb will be potluck? At least that what us Baptists believe!

I spent a few years traveling the state singing in a Southern Gospel quartet. It’s hard to get five or six guys together often enough to maintain a busy schedule so we eventually became a trio singing with soundtracks. (The extra numbers in the quartet were the musicians.)

By the time we had spent a few years going from church to church (most of which would serve some form of potluck after we sang) we thought it would be a good idea to put together a cookbook using recipes gathered from the cooks at these churches. It was a great idea…we just never did it.

So twenty-one preachers are in the dining room eating breakfast and someone says we ought to share humorous stories. What? We don’t have all day! I didn’t say it out loud but I thought it real hard. I could tell what was coming next. Twenty-one preachers would each tell a funny story (we all think we are good storytellers) and then we’d go around again trying to “one up” the last story. This could go on for a while.

I’ll relate two stories: one of my own and one from Dr. Bruce Chesser.

One of the dates for our quartet was at the church where I was serving as music director. That position used to be called song leader but now it’s called minister of music or worship pastor. I was just the music director. And I managed to have our quartet booked for a singing, complete with potluck!

I am by no means a prolific songwriter (nor blog-writer) but we did sing a few songs I had written. The two verses were cleverly crafted if I say so myself. Here’s the first verse:
Blind and by the wayside, cast out from society,
The old man had to beg to live, the world he could not see.
Jesus sent him to a pool there to wash his eyes.
He came forth in victory much to the world’s surprise.

And the second verse closely following the first:
One day when he passed my way, Jesus found me there,
Bound by this world’s pleasures and lying in despair.
Jesus sent me to the cross there to save my soul.
Because of that one glorious day I’ll let the whole world know.

The clever part of this was the way the third lines in each verse mirrored each other. I usually didn’t sing the verses; our fantastic lead singer did. And he did great. But we now had a new lead singer and somehow the group decided I should sing the first verse and the new lead singer would take the second verse.

So I’m a little nervous wanting to get the words right in front of my own church and this would be the first time to perform the song this way.

I’m singing along pretty good until I get to the third line of my verse. Then something in my head snapped. My ability to think a coherent thought left me. Oh, I looked normal but I couldn’t talk or sing normal. Here’s what I should have said: “Jesus sent him to a pool there to wash his eyes.” But, no, that’s not what came out. Instead, I sang, “Jesus sent him to the pool there to cross his eyes.”

I was so worried about singing the wrong line that I just sang both lines at the same time. I immediately came to my senses no sooner than the words left my mouth. I couldn’t sing another word. I was stunned. Shocked. Not yet embarrassed but that would soon follow.

Our pianist was always the comedian and he couldn’t let it go. “Did he say, ‘Cross his eyes’?”

Had I kept singing I might have been able to make everyone think they just heard it wrong. But I had to stop and draw attention to the error. I always tried to be the professional even though we were just a local group. I admired the quartets that traveled the country singing four or five times a week. I wanted so much to be like them. But, nooooo, I have to sing, “There to cross his eyes.”

And I did it in front of people I would have to face again next Sunday. And the next.

We survived. I was embarrassed. Everyone laughed for several minutes. Then they made us start over. I got it right the next time.

So I’m thinking I made it past this moment. No. The pianist had brought his video camera. We came to his house to practice the next week and he gathers us in the den to “see a video of a song I want us to learn.” It was the video of our concert queued the that moment. We watched it. They laughed. He rewound it. We watched it. They laughed. Over and over again.

The other story from the breakfast is the next entry in the blog. It’s called “Grady Money.”

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