In celebration of Kelley’s new book, You’ve Got This: A Pep Talk for Church Communicators, we’re talking about mistakes. Check out our ‘We All Make Mistakes’ Contest to share your story and enter to win a free copy.
Years ago at Life.Church, we created in-depth annual reports. In March 2011, after many painstaking hours of collaboration from multiple teams, we sent the files for our official 2010 report off to the printer. We couldn’t wait to hold the physical product in our hands.
As soon as the reports hit the campuses, a volunteer spotted an error. In our mission statement, no less:
Lead people to be to become fully devoted followers of Christ.
Thousands and thousands of those annual reports were delivered to all of our locations, 13 of them at the time. I can still remember the adrenaline rush of panic that accompanied the only thought I could form: “Nooooooooooo!”
Passing the Proof
How in the world did we mess up one of the most memorized lines of text about our church? Actually, that was just the problem. We had so many sets of eyes on that piece, but no one truly read that part. We saw what we wanted to see, not what was actually there.
While plenty of people could have caught the error, I should have caught it. As the only communications person on the project, the responsibility was squarely on my shoulders. And clearly, I failed.
Practically, one of the biggest lessons a mistake like this can teach us is to really read the copy we’re proofing. For our team, that means we do our best to read things aloud before they go out. I’m amazed at how many errors we catch that way.
I wish I could say this has been the only epic failure in my role, but unfortunately, I’ve got plenty more where that came from. And that’s the larger spiritual lesson here—as much as we strive for perfection, it’s not going to happen. We’re fallible humans. So we aim for excellence, learn anew with each misstep, and keep an emergency stash of chocolate on hand for just such occasions.
More:
- Have you ever made a mistake? Sure you have. Well, you’re in luck. You can enter our ‘We All Make Mistakes’ Contest and enter to win a free copy of You’ve Got This: A Pep Talk for Church Communicators by Kelley Hartnett.
- More mistakes? Read about Kelley Hartnett’s mailer mishap and Seth Muse’s porn star poll.
- Read the book: You can also just go buy a copy of You’ve Got This, because it’s worth reading.
Barry Brown
February 12, 2018
Hey, Lori,
It’s funny – there’s a mistake in the “More:” section: the link to Kelly Hartnett’s mailer mishap is going here:
s.com/2018/01/make-mistakes-mailer-mishap/
It needs to go here:
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2018/01/make-mistakes-mailer-mishap/
That incorrect link is on a couple of pages, not just this one.
I feel the website coordinator’s pain – it’s easy to do that!
Kevin D. Hendricks
February 12, 2018
Hey Barry, You passed our test! Nice wor—OK, I’m joking. That was a total mistake and it’s completely my bad.
But the beauty of the web is that I can fix my mistakes, while Lori’s typo will live in printed infamy. Doh. I fixed the broken link here and on Seth Muse’s post from last week. If you see a broken link anywhere else, let me know and I’ll take care of it. Thanks.