The cacophony ended and the four young men sighed in
ignorant bliss. I said “Well, let’s pray
and then start again.” I had taped the
mock 'performance'; I knew.
The leader stood up and prayed, “Oh Lord, thank you for this
group and for the opportunities you are giving us to reach the world for
you. Thank you for this awesome sound
and for the parts each of us brings to the mic.” I felt the pain that would follow. I was embarrassed for the coming minutes, but
I knew, as the arrogant excited prayer went on, what had to happen. When the young men resounded with confident
“Amen”s at the end of that ridiculous prayer I keyed up the tape.
The four of them sat in stunned amazement at the discord and
foolish showmanship without skill. At
the end of the recording they sat with averted stares and heads down. Finally one young man stood up, looked at the
ceiling and without making eye contact, said “We have a lot of work to do.”
I had been assigned the task of bringing some music to a
youth meeting and so I had pulled together this inexperienced quartet of
teenage guys who had little training, but good potential. I chose a popular contemporary Christian song
that would be hard to mess up and we practiced well before presenting it to the
group. They were nervous and humble;
they did a very good job and received a good amount of praise which they were,
at first, convinced was undeserved. Then
they got the call.
The invite to do a half hour program at a slightly larger
gathering was eagerly accepted by the ‘leader’ without any consultation or
advice. By the time he came to me, they
already had the program worked out, including several little speeches and
several rock star showmanship moments, and several challenging vocal
pieces. They were ready to take their
place in the sun. They were already
playing with a stage name for their ‘group’ and marketing techniques. I had a job ahead of me.
For a week, I worked with the individuals on parts and voice
quality. They really didn’t take it very
seriously. They were each more concerned
with how they would strut on stage and how they would ‘handle’ their mic. And to top it off, the lead time was not
really what I could have desired. And so
we met early that Saturday to go over the program. While their antics were humorous, I knew the
humor would not extend into any performance, so I suggested we do a serious run
through of the program start to finish and tape it so we could see how it
flowed. It didn't.
The result was sobering and the next week consisted of some
pretty intense practice. In the end,
they discarded the marketing strategies and the stage antics and ended up doing
a pretty good job. They did parts of it
for our church and were duly appreciated.
But the inflated egos from the first performance were excluded in their
loss of innocence. Life happened and the
‘group’ broke apart in various cycles of teenage drama, though they did remain
friends.
There is a precious, humorous innocence that covers the
beginning of about any new venture.
Unsure we work and worry and trust and extend. We pray because we understand how badly we
need it. Our insecurities drive our
humility and faith. All the hard work
pays us dividends of praise and encouragement and we begin to think ourselves
to possess a certain invulnerability.
I’ve seen it play out many times.
We become rock stars. We get
market fever. Pride goes before a
fall. After the fall, we summon our
courage, examine our direction and pick ourselves back up having lost the pure
innocence of our beginning, but becoming more fitted for true service.
