Getting Wrapped Up in a Story

February 14, 2006 by

Whew. This whole Satan tagline and hackers story is pretty crazy. Turns out the tagline was a legitimate mistake. The hackers thing–not true. We’ve received comments from the church’s webmaster and I just called the church to confirm. No hackers.

What is wild about this story is the way a ton of people (myself included) have jumped on board. One thing we bloggers are good at is jumping on a story. While some bloggers love to espouse the fact-checking virtue of bloggers, many of us just don’t do it. I trusted another blogger and went with the hacker story, and that was just dumb on my part.

But beyond the whole hacker sidestory, the pastor of St. James UCC pointed out to me that this all could have been avoided if the original blogger who noticed the wrong quote had just let them know instead of broadcasting to the world. He compared it to seeing pie on a friend’s face and telling the whole room before you tell your friend. Sometimes we’d rather point and laugh than actually help somebody fix something.

And we’re all guilty of that. So my apologies to St. James UCC. Church marketing often sucks, but that doesn’t mean we should just stand around and laugh.

Post By:

Kevin D. Hendricks


When Kevin isn't busy as the editor of Church Marketing Sucks, he runs his own writing and editing company, Monkey Outta Nowhere. Kevin has been blogging since 1998, runs the hyperlocal site West St. Paul Reader, and has published several books, including 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading, The Stephanies and all of our church communication books.
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9 Responses to “Getting Wrapped Up in a Story”

  • patrick
    February 14, 2006

    great post. entirely.


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  • matthew Smith
    February 14, 2006

    Patrick,
    Great appology. Don’t see those every day. Its a good reminder to think about why we are in churches in the first place – not to have them look good, but to be humbled into loving, and loved into loving. Thanks for the reminder for all of us.
    Matthew


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  • Bene Diction
    February 14, 2006

    I put up the line of communication I received at my blog including today.I gave you what I had at the time, thank your for clarifying and contextualizing.


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  • Dan
    February 14, 2006

    “the pastor of St. James UCC pointed out to me that this all could have been avoided if the original blogger who noticed the wrong quote had just let them know instead of broadcasting to the world. He compared it to seeing pie on a friend’s face and telling the whole room before you tell your friend.”
    Not sure I quite buy that. I think we may be letting them off easy, especially when you consider some of the other content on that church site.


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  • kenny
    February 14, 2006

    So glad to read this post. From the beginning when you started blogging about this I had wondered if anyone took the time to actually point the mistake out to the church. Glad to see it was resolved.
    Nice apology – St. James UCC should be satisfied.


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  • Darryl
    February 14, 2006

    I still think the original post at Between Two Worlds was fair. Even honest mistakes are fair game for public comment.
    Some of the resulting comments were less gracious perhaps. But we can all learn from this and, I hope, move on now.


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  • Jordon Cooper
    February 14, 2006

    But beyond the whole hacker sidestory, the pastor of St. James UCC pointed out to me that this all could have been avoided if the original blogger who noticed the wrong quote had just let them know instead of broadcasting to the world. He compared it to seeing pie on a friend’s face and telling the whole room before you tell your friend. Sometimes we’d rather point and laugh than actually help somebody fix something.
    That isn’t a fair comparison. It is their website and they were the ones that posted to the site. If there is a comparison, they were the ones that put the pie in their face and wandered out into the street with it. I am not sure why we had to e-mail them privately…


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  • Barry - pmPilgrim
    February 14, 2006

    In my usual wishy-washy way, I have apologized for my part in this. But the deeper issue is, as was pointed out by others, someone at St James missed a boat, too and we are in this together. Many people never noticed it because it IS the slogan (although unspoken) of many church programs.


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  • Chris
    February 15, 2006

    I did exactly the same thing on Monday afternoon, and by the following morning
    realised I had made a fool of myself. Lessons learnt:
    – Believe the best in people until proven otherwise
    – Be careful when you open your mouth. Your foot may be waiting to enter it!
    And these lessons’ worth have been borne out by the quick and gracious response from Kevin. Thanks for getting the comments fixed, guys!


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