Finally...

Continuing on with the list of why you, personally, were not chosen for your church’s drama team:

2. They have you already.

This goes under the heading of: It Ain’t Always About You.

You’re talented and they like you, and you nailed the evening gown competition. But your real strength is baton twirling while discussing the need for world peace, and they have five such twirlers already.

And since most churches only have three baton twirling/world peace themed days per year (according to the orthodox liturgical calendar), two of those twirlers are already underutilized.

Remember that whole thing about the body? The body doesn’t need a pancreas pretending to be a left foot, right? But it also may not need two left feet.

So it really may not have anything to do with you…

(I cast a Christmas show in Seattle with a cast of four: two men, one young girl, and one woman. I only cast one woman in the one woman role. It took a half hour to explain to one of the other auditionees why I didn’t cast all the women who auditioned in the one woman role. Frankly, I didn’t have a Mary costume big enough for all of them to fit.)

3. The timing is wrong.

Time of life timing. The team may be feeling a prompting of “not now,” without any good reason – which happens more often than you might think.

Of course us not knowing the reason doesn’t mean there is no reason. It may mean that you’re being poised for something better. Or you have something you need to clean out of your system before coming on board.

Or the team itself isn’t ready for you. Maybe G-d is planning on using you to help the team leap forward in their craft and service – but He still has some prepping to do on the team.

Who knows? Well, we know the answer to that, so I’ll move on.

4. You know that song that they used in American Idol every time they booted someone – “So you had a bad day…”?

We all have them. And if yours landed on auditions, well, that’s a bummer. Sometimes auditors aren’t wise enough to gauge the diff between an off performance and an off performer.

I’m convinced that my group has missed out on real quality because we saw a flubbed monologue, or (even worse) an uncharacteristic bad mood at the break table.

So if that was you, I hope you got over it, moved on, and plan on trying again later.

5. And most important to keep in mind, another reason that you weren’t chosen for the drama team:

The drama team screwed up.

They were supposed to pick you, but they didn’t. They didn’t see the talent, missed the depth, mistook your work ethic for overeagerness, didn’t realize that when you were swearing at craft services it was because you were showing off your Mamet monologue.

The Holy Spirit prompted them, and they didn’t get it right.

Happens all the time.

The early church voted in Matthias to be the twelfth apostle, replacing Judas. They prayed about it and everything.

Except that G-d had already picked Judas’ replacement, and his name didn’t begin with an “M.”

Oops.

As for myself, I’ve screwed up in casting/hiring/commissioning/partnering a lot. It comes with the territory.

All I can do is pray that I don’t make the mistake of passing over you the next time around…

Just my thoughts,

Sean