For the want of a nail...

Have you ever had something go not quite as well as you wanted it to, for reasons which were entirely understandable and completely out of yor control? I had that this morning.

I haven't led a bible study for a while (I think the last time was leading devotions at a kids club type of activity about 3 years ago). This morning, I was leading the study at KYB (Know Your Bible for those unfamiliar with the acronym - a ladies only bible study) to fill in for the leader who was away. It. Did. Not. Go. That. Well. (or as well as I had hoped it would). There were a lot of factors (none of them any body's fault), which all added up to a less than satisfactory experience.

1. I was feeling rather unenergised. OK this one probably was my fault - we stayed up to late watching a Stanley Kubrick movie, and then Alex was grumpy this morning (really wanted Mum for some reason) so I didn't have a lot of inspiring energy.
2. There was nobody to run creche so we had ~ 8 toddlers and preschoolers in the same room. This does not make it easy to run a study as they want your attention, need your intervention, - or possibly the intervention of more than one mother - or just play noisy games! This made it v. v. distracting.
3. About 1/2 the people had not done the questions to the study (for quite good reasons!) and combined with the distractions of the children found it difficult to keep up.
4. There were a few people missing, so there were less people to spread the questions between, especially if there were already a couple of people missing who had to run after children
5. I was leading a study from a book. This is not my preference. I don't mind the KYB study format, especially as it is split into 7 days, and it is written for a range of understanding, but I find it difficult to run a study someone else has written, especially if it is a "20 questions, answer round the circle, finish the study in an hour type". [This means with six people they can answer <30 secs per question...]. I would have much preferred to write my own study, as I could tailor it to the people that I thought would be there. It would have taken longer for me to prepare, but it would have been better, because I would have thought it through more.
[For the record, I had actually semi-planned one out. We were studying Ps 105 and 106, which are complementary history recounts, so I was going to do an annotated time line down the middle of the page and then we would have marked on each side the relevant sections from each Psalm. I may have even gotten creative with some sort of colour code]

So all up it did not go as well as I had hoped.

But - we did get through the study and have a good application and discussion re how we are in danger of doing what Israel did 'mingled with the nations and adopted their customs', and we did share and pray for each other. I think that I shall have to learn to be content with what God desires to come out of the study rather than my personal plans and ambitions.