Panic in the Pulpit

Small Church by Sardis Temple

The nightmare finally came true. My reoccurring nightmare is standing up in the pulpit and suddenly realizing that I forgot to prepare a message. In the nightmare I also realize that I forgot to put my clothes on. So there I stand, unprepared and naked in front of the entire church. It happened last Sunday… well, part of the nightmare came true. At least I wasn’t literally naked.

And it wasn’t that I forgot to prepare a message. With printed manuscript in hand, brimming with confidence, I mounted the pulpit and started preaching. I was fairly impressed with my introduction comparing an enormous pagan temple to the small 4^th century church in Sardis. I thought the picture illustrated well what the early Christians were up against (see above pic). And how clever was that hypothetical conversation between the Corinthian Christian and his pagan neighbor? For those that missed it, here’s an abbreviated version…

Pagan to Christian: “So where is the temple of your God?”
Christian: “Our God isn’t big on temples.”
Pagan: “So where is your God?”
Christian: “Our God is the creator of all things. He is everywhere; no building can contain Him.”
Pagan: “Every god must have a temple to inhabit. So your god is homeless.”
Pagan guy walks away leaving Christian thinking, “It would be nice if we had a temple.”

Then I read the text (1 Cor. 3:1-23) from my Bible and stated the first point of the message, a word to church leaders: “You are farm-hands, not landowners”. I’m totally into it now. This is a point that challenged and convicted me in the preparation of the sermon. The Spirit reminded me that PCC isn’t “my church”. I’m merely a “farmhand” working God’s farm. He is the owner, not me. He brings the growth, not me. Then, the most unexpected thing happened. My eyes moved from the bottom of page 1 of my manuscript to the top of page 2; the pages were side-by-side on the music stand I use for a lectern. There at the top of page 2 was point 2, not the detail of point one I expected to see. I glanced to the bottom of the page and saw that it was page 3, not page 2. “Oh” I thought, “I’ve got the pages out of order.” Turning to the next page I saw “Page 5” printed at the bottom, and there were no more pages.

Full-fledged panic set in! I stopped talking to the congregation and began talking to myself… silently of course. “How could that stupid printer have failed to print pages 2 & 4? How could I have been so stupid as to not notice two pages were missing? I don’t have this sermon memorized! I’ll never remember my carefully crafted supporting material for point #1 of this sermon. Should I just tell everyone to wait a couple minutes while I dash back to my office and print the missing pages? Should I fake it and do the best I can?”

By now everyone knows there’s a problem in the pulpit and the pastor has just hit the panic button.
“Worship was so wonderful this morning; I can’t believe I’m wrecking the whole service with such an idiotic goof-up. Oh God, I’m in trouble!”

I’m not very good at faking it, so I decided to confess my failure to be adequately prepared by failing to check my manuscript before I stepped into the pulpit. I remembered my old haunting, reoccurring nightmare. I might as well have been stripped naked as a jaybird before the entire world as I said, “It seems that I failed to print pages 2 & 4 of my manuscript. This has never happened before.”

Silence. Very uncomfortable silence. The only thing missing was the sound of crickets chirping. Then I picked up page one; I don’t know why, but I did, and a guy sitting on the second row yelled out, “It’s on the back.”
At first his comment didn’t register. “What?”
“Page two is on the back of page one.”

I flipped page one over and sure enough, there it was in all its glory… PAGE 2! Page 4 was on the back of page 3. I had inadvertently hit the “double sided” option when I printed the manuscript. It was like realizing that I wasn’t naked after all, I’d at least remembered my underwear. And that was enough. After all, I’m only a farmhand working for the Lord.