In celebration of our newest book, You’ve Got This: A Pep Talk for Church Communicators by Kelley Hartnett, we’ve been talking about mistakes. Kelley shares one of her mistakes in the book, and rather than being ashamed, our failures are an opportunity to improve.
We asked for your best mistake stories, and we got some whoppers. The five best stories won a copy of Kelley’s book, and we’re going to share those winners.
The Sign Pointing Two Different Ways
Here’s one of our winners:
I was making directional signs for our new church plant that meets in a school. It’s located back in a neighborhood, so we needed signs to point from the main road. The signs came, but one side pointed east while the other pointed west. Whoops! My pastor got creative and cut some apart and glued the arrow on upside down until I could order new ones. -Monica Lebsack
Whoops is right. At least you had a quick solution.
That deserves a pep talk.
Thanks for sharing. It takes guts to share your mistakes.
How to Stop Signs Pointing Two Different Ways
We’ve talked a lot about stopping mistakes with proofreading systems and checklists. You absolutely need those.
But when you’re dealing with signage there’s an important extra step: See signs in context.
You must see those signs in context and proof them in context. That might mean going out to the road and standing there to make sure they’re pointing in the right direction.
That might sound kind of silly, but it’s not nearly as silly as a sign that points in two different directions.
We All Make Mistakes
Remember that we all make mistakes. Some are funnier than others.
Have a laugh, figure out how to fix it, and move on.
We all make mistakes. The best of us learn from them.
More:
Still need a pep talk? Check out You’ve Got This: A Pep Talk for Church Communicators. And check out some of our other mistake stories:
Need more help? Our Courageous Storytellers membership site has a number of resources to stop mistakes, including proofing checklists and how to vet proofreaders.
