a full weekend

I was awakened a bit early today (earlier than I intended) by thunder. We had a brief power outage but I guess other parts of the state got worse.

After the excitement of Friday and Saturday, Sunday I had to essentially lead worship at church. In the denomination I belong to, it's OK for laypeople to do this (long story but: we were a "frontier" denomination, founded in the early to mid 1800s here in the US, in places like Kentucky and Ohio, back when those really were the frontier, and the idea is that if you have a "circuit preacher" maybe once a month, the rest of the time you have to have someone capable of at least doing a scripture reading and leading prayers....so laypeople were pressed into service. We were also one of the early denominations to ordain women, and I THINK here in the US, one of the early ones to be open to African-American pastors leading white or mixed congregations...)

But yeah. As I wrote earlier, the church secretary called me on Monday and asked if I could do it. I found a scripture, wrote a devotional loosely based on it. For the "pastoral" (which I would really call "layperson" here, seeing as I am not ordained) prayer, I rewrote one I had used in an earlier time of doing this, and had an offertory invitation and all that that I could reuse.

This was the "music celebration" (mostly: singing lots of hymns that people like) that we usually do once a summer, often when lots of people are on vacation. (Our choir director was on vacation, though our organist was able to play the piano for this). Normally the minister would do this, but he's still down with a kidney stone. (I hope it's gone before next week, or failing that, that the other guy who can serve can do it).

I guess it went well. I don't always remember those kinds of things well from when I'm doing them because I'm so focused on enunciating and not stumbling over my words (when I am nervous I sometimes stammer a little and it takes a lot of hard mental work not to do that). I do know people laughed at two points I was planning on - first, when I commented at the beginning that maybe I was sort of equivalent to the Speaker of the House (as in: the chain of succession) and later when I referenced being able to recite the Preamble to the Constitution because of "Schoolhouse Rock."

People told me afterward they enjoyed the message and it was good, and it was not just people I regard as "particular fans," so I guess it went well. The bell-choir director commented "See? no stage fright!" (I had complained that I had a hard time performing music because I get stage fright but I see speaking publicly - where I am using my voice and I don't have to really do anything but control my enunciation and volume, which is different from dealing with an instrument....and even with my own, well-tuned and well-functional and familiar-to-me piano - I have a harder time, it seems, controlling my hands than I do my voice. And of course, I've taught for something like 20 years (and also 10 years before that as a TA), so this kind of thing is not unfamiliar to me. I don't think it's odd that one could have stage fright specific to one type of doing something in front of other people...especially if it's "it all depends on me" (speaking) vs. "I have to trust this piece of equipment will work for me" - I sometimes get nerves if I have to demonstrate a lab technique in front of a class.)

But yeah. It's done now. Hopefully I won't have to do it again soon.