Youth Night

I hate having this feeling.
Every so often my youth group has the Sunday evening service. They pick the music and the format. They pretty much have free reign. As with most teens they needed a little prodding from me to come up with something. All in all it went pretty well, they decided to do the same thing upstairs as we do downstairs when we are by ourselves.
The way we start our time together is spending about 10 minutes just talking. I bring some pop and sometimes I'll bring some chips. I let them talk about anything and everything that goes on in their life. So to emulate that I had the adults just take 5 minutes to meet and greet. They got up a walked around and talked to each other. I thought that was pretty cool. So far so good.
I had the girls lead us in a couple of worship songs. That was fine, I like it when they pick the music because it's something that's got a pretty good beat to it.
Then came game time.
I played a version of Hollywood squares, I picked a couple of ladies from the congregation and I had my teens be the squares. Everything was going fine, until...
one of the ladies picked a teen boy. Now this kid is a great kid, but he is one of the shy ones. He would do anything that I would ask him to do, as long as it wasn't anything that would shine the spotlight directly on him. I asked him a question, and then I realized what I had done. I put the spotlight on him. He stammered, answered the question with the wrong answer and then blurted out "I don't know". I instantly knew I had messed up.
After our game we did our lesson, which funny enough was on wisdom. Boy if anyone needed to hear that one it was me. As I did the lesson I couldn't help but feel horrible about what I had done. I should have picked a multiple choice question for him. I really blew it.
I remember back to my Campus Life days, I was doing a lesson on dating. I said something like "you go to her parents house and you discover that her mom is crazy". I said it really without thinking, I thought it was funny because that situation would NEVER happen, right? Well wrong, one of my kids mothers had some mental illness issues. He was hurt by what I had said. I didn't mean to hurt anyone and I didn't know about her illness, but yet I had hurt someone.
I hate that feeling.
It's times like these that make me want to crawl back to my pew and become a spectator. Just become a pew potato. Just sit and watch others do stuff. No risk of hurting anyone, no risk of making the wrong call. No risk at all.
Many people have told me that I would make a good pastor, I always smile and thank them for their comment, but I know in my heart that sooner or later my mouth would get me in trouble. I know pastors aren't perfect and I know I'm not perfect. But the reality is that many people think that they should be. Always say the right thing at the right time. I have never been able to do that. Much like my young friend, I stammer and when something does come out, it's never good enough in my eyes.
God uses imperfect people. I understand my role as a leader is to listen to God. To do the best that I can with what God has given me. I just wish that I could do that without messing up. I know that nobody does it without making mistakes, but when your a leader, messing up can hurt a lot of people.
And I just hate that feeling.