Humorous Story of a Small Group Leader

Last night, we hosted our family service group for a BBQ at our house.  Overall, the evening was great!  We enjoyed each others company.  We celebrated the birthday of one of our group members.  We talked about how God has made and gifted us just the way we are.  And we completed a small service project together.  Like I said, the evening was great, but it didn’t quite start out that way.

As the host family, we decided it would make sense for us to grill some chicken drumsticks, some hot dogs, and some hamburgers.  I had just finished the chicken and hot dogs when the first family pulled into our driveway.  So I proceeded to load up the grill with the hamburgers – all at once.  I quickly learned that this wasn’t such a great idea.  Within minutes my grill was in flames.  the grease from the burgers had ignited a nice little fire – or should I say nice big fire – in our grill.  I though for sure I was going to light our deck and house on fire.  Wouldn’t that be great?  I can see the headline now, “Small Group Leader Ignites A Firestorm” or “Leader Burns Down the House.”  Obviously, this isn’t the way I wanted the group to get started.  Thankfully, I was able to get the burgers off the grill and shut off the propane.  With the fire out, I was able to start over on the burgers at a more manageable pace.

As a small group leader (or leader in general), when have you been on the edge of disaster?  How did you recover?