The Sunday before Thanksgiving, 1993, I had the brilliant idea to have a turkey potluck at the small church we were pastoring outside of Houston. The church would provide the turkey and the congregation would bring the side dishes and desserts. We encouraged everyone to bring their friends, it would be a great outreach opportunity in our little community. Everything was going great that Sunday; people had invited their neighbors and there was a lot of anticipation as the service started. And then the electricity went out. Now not only did we have no way to warm the turkey and side dishes, we had no music for worship; our “band” at this point in the church was on cassette tape. The only thing we could come up with was a battery powered “boom box” which I held on over my head while sitting on the front row. (A lot like John Cusack in “Say Anything” minus the cool overcoat).
Humiliated doesn’t scratch the surface of my emotional state.
Sitting in an unheated auditorium listening to Karaoke worship while anticipating a cold Thanksgiving dinner is not the ideal first impression. It was a disaster. Have you had days like that? Maybe last Sunday was like that. Maybe you felt like Steph Curry missing a wide-open dunk as overtime ran down, costing his team a chance to comeback and win.
Here’s a few things I’ve learned about cold turkey and flop sweat since that awful November day in Huffman, Texas:
Its never as bad as it seems.
We had several families far from God attend that day who later committed their lives to Christ and became a part of our congregation. As far as they knew worship was always on a boombox, and church dinners are always terrible. (They were actually right on the second one) They liked the community they experienced and were curious enough to come back.
People relate to failure
When things go poorly the people you are trying to reach are more sympathetic than you realize. (The church connoisseurs complain, but who cares) They know what its like to fail and they empathize with how you feel.
How you handle flopping is way more important than never flopping
Steph Curry didn’t spend time beating himself up for missing a dunk. He know it was one shot in one game, and it didn’t define him. We all flop spectacularly at some point. The best thing we can do is learn to laugh at ourselves, learn what we need to learn and write about it many years later.
And cold turkey isn’t all that bad. Cold gravy on the other hand, not so much.
