As I shared Blake Bergstrom’s “pitch his tents” experience with coworkers at Christianity Today (especially Preaching Today, where they got a big vicarious and empathetic kick out of it) I jokingly bemoaned the lack of well-known and well-salted preachers who had the grace to let their verbal gaffes get out there in wider distribution. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I fancied, “If we could collect a range of gaffes and Freudian slips like this from preachers we all know and love? I would buy that CD faster than Lot could pitch his tents!”

Well, we’re no closer to that pipe-dream today, but I did stumble across a verbal slips you might like.

The first made by one of America’s foremost preachers, John Ortberg (teaching pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church). And he personally recounts the tale in his book

Okay, I wasn’t going to post merely frivolous stuff here, but this is far too precious to pass up.

You who preach … well. If you gotta slip up, go big.

Here’s a clip below of poor high school pastor Blake Bergstrom, who tried to work his way around a bit of a tongue twister as he introduced a sermon that might have already been doomed, based on his unusual use of metaphors. As you listen, just wait. No: the “light ourselves on fire so they can watch us burn” is not the gaffe you are listening for, surprisingly, but that imagery is bad enough that he might actually have improved his sermon with an extreme Freudian slip!

Here’s the audio:

[audio:http://tatumweb.com/blog/wp-content/mp3/blake-bergstrom-mistake.mp3]

(Here's the link if the flash player doesn't load.)

And Bergstrom has been good enough to actually release the video, which Kevin Rossen