The service was a bit of a train wreck today. The electrician who's been upgrading the wiring had knocked out half of the lights last time he was in working and wasn't able to fix it before today. Then, we got our wires crossed on what vestments to wear. There was a special order of service to dedicate the building and someone gave the Archbishop a booklet that was assembled incorrectly - there was two copies of every page in his booklet - eventually he just took mine. We didn't complete the Processional as the Archbishop had intended. The server went to sleep during the sermon. I ended up filling his role as we prepared the gifts during the Offertory.
As we were taking our vestments off after the service his Excellency said, "Well, we started and we finished and we did the stuff in between. Some of it didn't look good but we got the job done."
There's sort of an inside joke to the 'we finished' part. One of the African Archbishops had flown in to the States a while back and he and our American Archbishop went out to a mission that met in a rented facility at the time. The African was invited to preach and he preached for about 70 minutes. Now, the facility was supposed to be turned over and some other group used it for their church at a certain time. They had shown up in the back and were waiting to get ready. The service was supposed to be Holy Communion but there wasn't time to go through the Canon after the extended sermon. So the Archbishop gave the closing Benediction and all they had that day was Antecommunion with a sermon. When he tells the story he calls it the unfinished Communion service.
