Even though I followed my new resolve to prepare well, there were a handful of hiccoughs in the carol service. After a dramatic and atmospheric start in the pitch dark with me intoning "In the beginning was the Word..." and continuing through 14 memorised verses whilst the candles were lit, followed by a rousing rendition of "O come, all ye faithful", I then slipped into a very matter of fact manner to arrange the lighting levels - "Can Ruth turn on the lights in the chancel? Too much? Can you turn off the strip lights and leave the spots on? Roger, would you mind pressing that switch to turn off the light that's in my eyes? Malcolm, could you turn off the aisle lights? Oh, he's not there - well, whoever is near the back... Hang on, the musicians are complaining - they need that light to see the music. OK is this the right level of lighting? Is everyone happy? Right. On with our second reading..."
In the Lord's Prayer I suddenly found my mouth was not saying anything like "Forgive us our trespasses." I've no idea what I said, but when I realised it was wrong I stopped - and the whole congregational momentum was lost. Over the years I have tried to avoid giving too strong a lead so that if I fluff it the congregation will continue regardless, but my voice on this occasion was clearly too influential.
The final reading was from Philippians 2 and I struggled to find the right place on the page. I began OK at verse 5, but somehow managed to slip back to verse 4 and then added a couple of extra words of my own to bring it back on track at verse 6. No-one noticed.
The brief address was a kind of ironic visual aid where I unwrapped a parcel and discarded the contents to enthuse about the wrapping. Isn't this what Christmas is all about? I speculated. Shouldn't we concentrate on the trimmings? Does it matter if we ignore the gift underneath the wrapping? I had run through this talk several times during the afternoon and the ending still didn't come out anything like I'd practiced. No-one but me would have known.
The other things that went wrong were not my fault - the organist playing an extra verse and the singing group getting muddled with the hand chimes introduction. But all in all everyone said it was a great service. So it just goes to show that even if good preparation is essential, the actual event can contain mistakes and still be well-appreciated.
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