Ortberg Quote
I found the following quote from John Ortberg's book Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them posted over at BlogRodent. Even being a former Willow Creek attender, I have never heard this one. It's hilarious!
The church where I work videotapes pretty much all of our services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.
It’s a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150. This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his mighty firmament!†The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra. My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly: “Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.â€
A moment of silence. The same thought passes through 4,000 brains—did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?
Then everybody in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard for so long I couldn’t say a thing. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.
Eight years I’ve been teaching at that church: of all the passages I’ve exegeted and messages I’ve taught that’s the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops. Over and over.
It’s an amazing truth: being fully right barely brings as much life to other people as simply being human.
The church where I work videotapes pretty much all of our services, so I have hundreds of messages on tape. Only one of them gets shown repeatedly.
It’s a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition into some high-energy worship by reading Psalm 150. This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his mighty firmament!†The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra. My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word slightly: “Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord.â€
A moment of silence. The same thought passes through 4,000 brains—did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this some exciting new translation I can get at the bookstore?
Then everybody in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard for so long I couldn’t say a thing. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.
Eight years I’ve been teaching at that church: of all the passages I’ve exegeted and messages I’ve taught that’s the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops. Over and over.
It’s an amazing truth: being fully right barely brings as much life to other people as simply being human.
posted by bigdaddydave at 6:55 PM 
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