Monday, May 6, 2013

Gaff

One of the prayers in the old Minister's Prayerbook has something about "guarding our thoughts from wandering." This is a very good thing to pray for. Yesterday was Confirmation Day in these parts; my eldest son was one of our four confirmands.

And I forgot to confirm them.

I would like to blame one (or all) of the FOUR other pastors in the sanctuary at the time (two of whom are High Ranking Synodical Officials) for not helping a brother out, but 1) one of them did try and 2) as Mr. Buffett said, "it's my own damn fault."

Thanks be to God for the usher. After the entire communion liturgy, as I was blithely motioning the befuddled youngsters up for their first communion, he called me aside to say, "You forgot to confirm them." So I confirmed them then before proceeding to the distribution.

Well, at least it wasn't as bad as the time I dismissed a table at Wednesday low mass without giving them the Chalice. . .

+HRC

7 comments:

  1. At least that table got the body of Christ unhindered. A certain pastor who left Brookfield for Hamel once said, "Depart in peace" immediately upon our arriving at the communion rail. :-)

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  2. Neither do I condemn you. Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more.

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  3. Pastor Weedon should post the funny story of his sin of omission that occurred here at St. Paul years ago. Or allow me. It's too good.

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  4. I say why settle for minor gaffs? Go big, or go home.

    You made it an even more memorable event for all of them, I'm sure.

    Of course, you could simply have explained, "Oh, you see, we celebrated First Communion first, then confirmation."

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  5. My most chilling moment in the chancel include:

    Going totally blank on the Lord's Prayer.
    Going totally blank on the Nicene Creed.
    Going totally blank on the Aaronic Benediction.

    Of course, the best thing that ever happened was forgetting to put my sermon manuscript in the pulpit, got up there, and ... nothing.

    Have never brought one back to the pulpit again.

    Sometimes forgetting is a good thing.

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  6. Aside from accidentally skipping the Lord's Prayer entirely back when I was doing the unding known as Page 5, my best gaff has to be when I was delivering my sermon one day, and I flipped over the page half way through and discovered that the second page was the same as the first page. You see, my printer didn't duplex back then, so I had to print the second side by running the sheets through again.

    Thankfully, I had spent years preaching from outlines prior to using manuscripts in the pulpit, and after a bit of stumbling was able to finish it extemporaneously.

    That can't happen anymore, because my "manuscript" these days is not so much a manuscript as a strung-together set of notes (not quite an outline - I don't outline much either anymore), that fits on one page.

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