Saturday, February 14, 2009

a new look

most everybody reading this knows that, historically, i have not been an especially well-dressed guy. i've had some decent suits, but anything other than that was... underwhelming. there are plenty of reasons for this. i am not naturally concerned about wardrobe. i don't have a good sense of what goes well together. and i've never been inclined to spend much money on clothes. over the years, that hasn't been a huge problem. the students i worked with no doubt noticed, but either they didn't care or they were just too polite to say anything.

of course, serving as a pastor alters the equation. i'm in front of people a lot. and i'm the most prominent representative of an entire congregation. i was overdue for a change, but all of the problems listed above still applied -- not a good prognosis for transformation in that area.

enter my bridge small group. i'm sure it felt like a delicate subject to broach. but they found a way to do it kindly and have a little fun with it. so just over a week ago, they e-mailed to tell me that we'd be having a special dinner party and fashion show at our meeting. what i didn't realize was that i would be the model! so after a delicious ribeye dinner, i got to try on some clothes and peacock on the fashion runway. well, i didn't shake it quite that much, but there was a modeling soundtrack provided by host g and flash photography by the all-but-professional y. all we needed was the lights.one thing i had to get used to was clothes that fit; i have worn my shirts and sweaters a bit large for so long that clothes that fit often feel tight. there were also style questions. since i really haven't given much thought to a look, i wasn't always sure what i liked.
even so, we had a blast together. i tried on clothes that they had picked out, and they gave their opinion on what worked and what didn't. the critical moment for each outfit was the voting: should i keep the outfit or not? along the way, i also got some helpful hints on fashion, along with a whole new nice-casual look (technically, i didn't have a nice-casual look before...).i made my fashion debut at a church valentine's dinner last night, and will try a second outfit at church tomorrow. hopefully, the new look won't be so dazzling (or just plain shocking) that people can't remember what i'm teaching from the bible!

5 comments:

Bora said...

1. very snazzy!
2. how nice of your small group!
3. how fun!
4. you are super skinny!

gr8god said...

hi bora,

thanks for the comment. yes, it was wonderfully generous of my small group, and fun to boot. i like those folks a lot.

as for being super skinny, i'm roughly the same size i was when i left berkeley, nearly 5 years ago. unfortunately, i'm not in as good a shape, a problem i am hoping to address this year.

Michelle said...

very nice and creative too! lookin' good!

Anonymous said...

Wow. Smart and well-dressed. Finally.

Anonymous said...

Hey don't you mean ALTARS that perception? ;) Pretty snazzy looking! ;)