Afraid of saying (or writing) something stupid

In my new position, I am in charge of giving the opening welcome and announcements. God help me, I'm afraid of saying something stupid when I do that.

Then again, it's already happened. Last Sunday, the senior pastor and I had worked out which announcement I would give and which one he would announce. Well, once I got up to the lectern at the first service (8 a.m.), I gave his announcement and then turned to him for the other one. Whoops. He let me do both announcements for the remaining two services.

In my previous appointment, I was less afraid because it was in my second language; mistakes were inevitable. I was going to say (and did say) something estúpido on a pretty regular basis. My congregation either laughed at it, because they had never heard something phrased that way before (they loved it when I used the word chismes, or gossip), or if it was really bad, they gently corrected me and taught me the correct way to say something. When speaking in your second language, you're going to say something stupid. This slows lots of folks down from speaking in the language that they're learning, which is unfortunate, because speaking it is part of how you learn it and making mistakes is part of how you learn in general.

Even when speaking in your native tongue, you'll also inevitably say something stupid. When I told my husband about this blog entry's topic, he said, "Being afraid of sounding stupid doesn't slow me down any. I do it all the time!" (And he said I could quote him.) When I write this blog, I want for what I write to not sound stupid. That's part of why I don't post any more than I do - what I do post, I've thought about for a few days to make sure it's post-worthy and not stupid. I know sometimes it'll be stupid anyway. That certainly happened a few times in my monthly newsletters I sent out when I served in Nicaragua.

And I suppose a stupid greeting is going to happen from time to time in church as well. They can't all be winners, right? It may just be a problem of practice - the more I give the greeting and the welcome, the more comfortable I'll be doing it and I'll find a "standard" way of doing it that suits me and doesn't sound stupid.

Pastora Incognito

When I arrived at Unidos por Cristo, it was very obvious that I was the new pastor. They'd heard their new pastor was not Hispanic and I was the only unfamiliar un-Hispanic face in the building.

After two weeks at Orange, I am still meeting folks who don't realize that I am the new associate pastor. They've been out of town on the weekends and so haven't seen me in services; during the week, they assume I'm part of the preschool or one of the other events happening daily at the church. In a congregation of 500 that's predominantly white, it's easy to assume that an unfamiliar white face is just someone else you don't know.

Last week I volunteered with the church at the Interfaith Council Homeless Shelter. Only I didn't tell anyone I was coming. I arrived in the kitchen and said, "Hi, how can I help?" I was put to work before one of the other volunteers whispered to her husband, "psst, that's the new associate!" I wasn't trying to be secretive, I'm just more comfortable saying, "Hi, what's your name?" than "Hi, I'm the new associate pastor." Later on, I was talking with another church volunteer (who was smart enough to ask back, "what's your name?"!) and another church volunteer joined us just as we were talking about my predecessor. The two talked about how they missed the previous associate and the second one said, "but I hear our new associate has her own gifts and talents." I didn't interrupt her, just introduced myself to her when she was done. Good thing she had only heard positive things about me!