Trials and Errors

The letters of the new Testament often make reference to "spiritual gifts," which range from the breathtakingly supernatural, like healing or evangelism or prophecy (which in the Bible tends to mean the revelation of hidden truth, rather than the prediction of the future), to the more mundane, like administration or the quaintly named gift of "helps." I've seen people exercise what I truly believe to have been the gift of healing, and I've witnessed people with prophetic insight speak gently and kindly and incisively and therapeutically into the secret pain of others. Those moments often feel ordinary, yet warmer and somehow more alive--I feel calm, but intensely alert to what God seems to be doing.

It's the best feeling in the world. I've done a little yoga, and somewhere along the line I realized that the purpose of yoga appears to be to replicate that feeling, which in yogic practice is called "being present." I have yet to achieve it in any deep way through yoga--yoga feels, in a sense, like an imitation of that feeling at best.

Anyway, all this is to say that that wonderful feeling of peace and alertness is exactly the opposite of what I've been experiencing lately in my inept (not-yet-apt?) efforts to serve my church. I've just joined the media team, which seems up until recently to have consisted mainly of one guy. He ran the website, made Powerpoint slides for each worship service with our song lyrics and sermon outline on them, ran the slides at every Sunday service, and created videos for each week to illustrate our activities (viewable at http://www.myspace.com/vineyardchurchofwashington).

Occasionally, he has to work on Sundays, so I've been substituting now and then, running the Powerpoint slideshow during the worship service. The main activity required is using my one finger to press the "down" arrow to move from one slide to the next. Not too taxing, right?

Except for this: when I signed up for the job, I didn't tell anybody about how when I was in elementary school, my teachers would always give me the job of clicking the filmstrip (does anybody remember those? The little pictures that went along with a recorded story, and you'd flip to the next picture at each chime?)--and I would always mess it up. I would space out, drifting off into my own thoughts, only to be recalled to the present when my dismayed classmates would wail my name. Startled, I'd come to my senses and flip us too quickly along to catch up to the recorded story.

I'm trying very, very hard not to screw up the church service in the same way. It requires all of my attention. I signed up to help out because writing and editing are second nature by now (in spite of whatever typos or infelicities you may observe in this blog), and I wanted to help with the slides . . . but then what I like about those activities is that you can write something and proofread it a dozen times before going public. This indulgence is quite pleasing to someone with my control issues.

Running the Powerpoint at the worship service is actually just the opposite, though. Any number of things could happen, I've found--the worship leader changes the order of the verses, or there's a different situation requiring a different combination of spot- and houselights (also the media person's job, and also requiring nothing more than the nudge of a knowledgeable finger), or somebody asks me to do something I've never done (play a video, record a sermon). I haven't quite learned to improvise yet, so everything I do to adapt to the changing situation is projected onto the screen at the front of the church, or similarly obvious to all. I'm always hoping that people aren't distracted from worship by thinking, "Why are the lights dimming and brightening at random?"

So on Sunday, there was a little snag, and I was concentrating intently on trying to fix the problem before the service started, which was supposed to have happened three minutes before--and I was working pretty hard to suppress my frustration and a sense of having failed at a responsibility, however small. In the midst of it, though, I heard my pastor, Jodi, say soothingly from the side of the control booth, "Tara, honey, you just tell us when you're ready."

Which made me realize 1) that yes, indeed, I was the one holding up the service, and 2) that it was okay. And I don't know, it felt like a moment of grace, and I was reminded of how good it is to be in a place where you can fail, and how the freedom to do so gives you the opportunity to grow into something new--to become good at something that you're actually pretty bad at, at first. And maybe that's how we continue to receive new spiritual gifts--not just by doing what comes naturally, but by persevering in things that we're failing at, accompanied by those faithful, patient folks who wait by our side and say, "just tell us when you're ready."