average life

In every Mormon church (and other churches, too, probably), there is what’s known as a ward bulletin. This is essentially the program for the meeting that Sunday stuffed with a couple of extra announcements and important phone numbers. This job is usually given to someone as their first calling (i.e. responsibility) in the ward. While not essential, it does require the person to be consistent. If a person can’t maintain the status quo with the ward bulletin, it is highly unlikely that they can handle something like, say, a Sunday School class on the verge of apostasy (as they so commonly are).

The one exception to this precedent appears to be the Old Lady Ward Bulletin…er. In this case a little old lady has been making the ward bulletin for years. She makes a point to put a new clipart on the cover every week and she agonizes whether the border around the Current Serving Missionary Addresses section will match the pioneer theme of the meeting. In such situations, she will probably continue to create the ward bulletin until the day she dies-or finally gets fed up with the OpenOffice.org that is generally found on the church computers.

Being “new” to the ward, I received the calling of Ward Bulletin Guy a couple of weeks ago. I was relatively happy with the calling. It was totally a “Sunday Calling”, but it was one that actually demanded my presence on Sundays breaking my avoidance of Sunday commitment to this point. The first day went rather well. I made a error on who was going to be the chorister (which was actually corrected…at the pulpit), but all in all, no big. I am aware of my tendency to scan text quickly – thus occasionally missing small errors and typos, but in a legitimate desire to fill my calling well, I double and triple checked spelling and other typographical elements.

The same was true for this week. Unknown names were double checked for spelling against the war list. The hymn numbers were double checked against the online hymnbook. After I was satisfied, I pressed “Print”.

Soon after the sacrament was over I hear the conducting member of the bishopric outline the rest of the meeting. There would be a couple of speakers, followed by a musical number by a man in the ward, more speakers and then a musical number by the ward and the full-time missionaries. I realized that I had misunderstood the email from the bishopric the day before. Instead of putting down that the second musical number was to be performed by the ward missionaries accompanied by the full-time missionaries, I read that the ward was going to accompany the full-time missionaries in singing “Go Forth With Faith.”

I don’t think I breathed for a good five minutes. I could just see it. The missionaries with their civilian counterparts would set up behind the pulpit. The organist would begin playing and right when the mini-choir started their hymn, the part of the congregation would belt out the musical praise with all their might. This would cause a few of the missionaries to be unsure of what to do and their hesitation would start to break the harmony. A few of the other members of the congregation who had been asleep until this point would assume that this was your run-of-the-mill rest hymn and would join the few singing from the pews.  More awkwardness and disharmony would ensue as people tried to decide if they were to be singing or not.  Something would spontaneously catch fire simply to add to the tension.

Turns out, the speakers ran over and we had to cut out that hymn any way.  Sometimes God does hear frantic prayers from ocd Ward Bulletin Guys.