Danny ChaiMy friends from Houston took a road trip this past week and they as a favor to my mom, drove out a car for me to use this summer. Anyway, this morning I take them to the airport, and I have an appointment at the CoHo so I park in Tresidder lot and put in an hour’s worth of time. Anyway, it turns out I’m there for just a little over an hour, and I already get a parking ticket. The very first day I have my car. Sigh.
I realized why I’m not meant to be a leader of any sort in any way by any means. Well one of the reasons, at least. And that is I care too much about what people think. I mean, it’s not good to not care at all, like Dave Hong, but I think I care way too much. And it sucks. So anyway, on Friday, for praise I pick out a set, and apparently, people thought it was “weird.” Which shocked me, but the more people said it, the more concerned I was. Wait, maybe it’s not bad to care about it, since I’m supposed to facilitate their worship of God. I guess I don’t really know. But I think it bothered me too much. Especially when it wasn’t my intention at all to pick out a strange set or anything like that. Ugh.
Anyway, on Sunday Charles was in Japan and Albert had not been able to make Saturday devotional, so I had to lead. Yike, one of the more uncomfortable situations in my life. I hope this isn’t discouraging anyone, by the way. I mean, I was blessed and everything. I just need to face facts and believe me, I’m not meant to lead and there are other ways I can bless and be blessed. For example my “3 strings in a bar” joke. But I digress.
Anyway, oh my goodness I can’t believe how uncomfortable I felt, from the practice on Saturday to early Sunday to the service, yike. I actually had a nightmare the night before. Basically it was about the service and everything that could go wrong did. For example, this is a secret but somebody (now that I think about it, I wonder who does it) gets a few donuts and sticks them outside the door of the sanctuary so the Worship Team can have some after we’ve cleaned up. Anyway, in my dream, everything in service is going so horribly wrong that I’m about to start praise when some random person bring the tray of donuts and sticks them in the front of the sanctuary. And I’m thinking, “what the heck are you doing????” Anyway, I woke up sweaty.
Anyway, I think one thing I lack is this confidence maybe a leader needs. Like the whole time I would ask about 5 times a minute, “Is this OK with everyone?” I think it got on Sang’s nerves cuz after a while he told me to stop. But I just can’t help it. I’m not really much of a confident guy. Obnoxious, but not too confident, if you can believe it. Anyway, during the service, there were the tense moments when I’m thinking, “Gosh, I need to say something… whadoIdo, whadoIdo, whadoIdo…” So I say nothing. It was worst when Pastor Dave finished speaking and he didn’t say “Let’s sing a song of celebration” or something like that. He just kind of looked to me. Ack. So now I gotta say something, but I don’t know what, so I look at Grace, the keyboardist, then Kris, the drummer, then back and forth, then after what seemed like and hour, Grace finally started in with the intro to the song we practiced.
Which brings me to another point: I have no conception of what is appropriate at any given time. Especially in church. So this song we sing, I told Grace to do this kind of cheesy 80s rendition because I thought it would be “cool.” In fact, I told the whole worship exactly this: “Make it as cheesy as possible.” Maybe it was inappropriate. Probably. I mean, when I was pianist at my church in High School I once played “Take me out to the ball game” during service. Possibly inappropriate.
Anyway, I’m through with leading anything. It’s just not for me.