Gone with the Wind

This is probably my last blog as a member of the West End UMC staff here in Nashville, Tennessee.  I will not lie.  I am in denial, and may even be through Sunday, when I preach my last sermon there.  Take a deep breath for your pastor, okay?

But for today, I will cling to Scarlett’s enduring quote from “Gone With The Wind,”  I’ll think about that tomorrow.

So with this in mind, I want to share with you what I believe are the 17 reasons hymn lyrics should never be projected in the West End Sanctuary, particularly without a proofreader.  These are bloopers from church worship teams, and in some cases, may be caused by that demon of technology, auto-spell-checker:

1. “Lord, You are more precious than silver… Lord, You are more costly than golf.”

2. Easter. The line was supposed to read “We were naked and poor” but instead it read “We were naked and poop.” Quite possibly the best typo of all time. I could not stop laughing for the rest of the song. It was epic.

3. ‘Defender of the week’ like Jesus is getting an award for being great at sports.

4. When we lived in Latin America: the line in the song was supposed to be “levantando manos santas” (lifting holy hands) but they wrote “monos” (monkeys) instead of “manos” and put that on the screen. Lifting holy monkeys. Um hmm. People standing around us thought the shekinah glory had come over us.

5. “Our God is greeter, our God is stronger.” I like that image. God greeting us as we walk into church. He’s like the little old lady who shakes our hands, only…He is God and God gives high fives! I assumed they left out the “a” and forgot to embrace the contraction, so I sing: “Our God’s a greeter.”

6. I made the power points for our college’s ministry and had a slide that, instead of saying “Jesus my closest friend,”  said “Jesus my closet friend.”  Don’t know how many people’s experience I ruined.

7. I create the lyric sheets for our small fellowship, and one Sunday the “strumpets” were calling during Days of Elijah. Oops.

8. The slide said “four our sins He died.” Someone behind me asked if we’re on our own for the fifth sin.

9. The best one I have seen was: “Amazon love, how can it be?”

10. I’m personally a fan of “Angles We Have Heard on High” at Christmastime. I always assume they are right angles.

11. I once attended a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” where the phrase “surely He has borne our griefs” was printed as “surely He has borne our briefs” in the programs given to the audience. I laughed for a while.

12. My favorite? It was in the song “The Great I Am.” “Holy, Holy, Guacamole…”

13. My favorite is not a song lyric–it’s a typo in the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our debits as we forgive our debitors…” Not exactly the same meaning.

14. Our church is multilingual, and at Christmas time, we translated "where ox and ass are feeding" into Spanish for our Spanish-speaking attendees. Turns out, we used the wrong Spanish word, so our Spanish-speaking friends had lyrics that basically read, "Where ox and a**hole are feeding." No bueno

15. From Amazing Grace: “ I once was blond, but now I see….”  Good thing Jesus heals the blond!

16.  “Oh that with yonder sacred thong…”  Enough said.

And finally,

17.  From Silent Night:  “Radiant beans from thy holy face…”

 

I hope you got a chuckle from those.  And I guess I can share these more heartfelt lyrics with you.  Rest assured I’ve proofread them (please, dear Lord, don't let there be any mistakes!), and changed them to gender/moment appropriate, with apologies to Michael W. Smith!

Packing up the dreams God planted
In the fertile soil of you
I can't believe the hopes God's granted
Means a chapter of my life is through.

But I'll keep you close as always
It won't even seem you've gone
'Cause my heart in big and small ways
Will keep the love that keeps us strong.

And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say never
'Cause the welcome will not end.
Though it's hard to let you go
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long
To live as friends.

And with the faith and love God's given
Springing from the hope we know
We will pray the joy we live in
Is the strength that now we show.

I'll keep you close as always
It won't even seem you've gone
'Cause my heart in big and small ways
Will keep the love that keeps us strong.

And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say never
'Cause the welcome will not end
Though it's hard to let you go
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long
To live as friends.

Grace and joy, now and forever my West End Friends,
Julie