On a recent Sunday morning, as I neared the climactic moment of the sermon where I was to reveal the bottom line, I was supposed to read Psalm 109:30:
With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord; in the great THRONG I will praise him.
Except that’s not what came out of my mouth as I read. Instead it was this:
With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord; in the great THONG I will praise him.
Oh my God. I said “THONG” when I shoulda-oughta said “THRONG.”
Well, what do you do in a case like that? How do you recover from your very own blooper reel in real time? Especially when the “bloop” has to do with intimate apparel and the skimpiest of bikinis?
Here’s what you DON’T do: pretend it never happened. People heard your gaffe, they’re already snickering over it, and it would be foolishness incarnate to carry on as if nothing unusual had taken place.
Instead, acknowledge the moment, laugh at yourself, and then try to summarize the slip so you can change gears in a healthy way. Hopefully, you can then recover whatever sermon traction you had going on.
I will let you evaluate my own recovery here: YouTube clip.
All in all, not too bad. The people of the church were certainly kind about it and seemed to appreciate the window into what makes me tick.
In retrospect, I realize my response merited something like a “B” or “B+” grade.
Because if I’d brought my “A Game” that morning, I would have summarized it all by saying that any thong references were most likely in the Song Of Solomon.