Here's the thing about humble pie…
Blogger's Remorse
Have you ever written an email and just as soon as you hit 'Enter' you wished you could get it back? That's the way I felt when I clicked 'Publish' for my last blog post titled, "Dangers of Church Marketing - Rebuked". Not because I changed my mind or my position as a pro-church marketing advocate, but because my tone seemed more like an attack.
You may be wondering why I didn't realize that BEFORE I published the post. I did, to a degree. The last words I typed was the "Note to reader" at the beginning of the post. Even that indicates some sense of remorse. Once the post was live, I tweeted @evancurry to tell him I had posted a response to his two-part blog post so he wouldn't be blind-sided. It would have been much more considerate if I had first alerted @evancurry by email with a preview of the post.
The Beauty of Twitter
I immediately asked @kerrybural (The Resonate Group and Ministry Marketing Coach) to read the post and give me some feedback. Now I've never met @kerrybural personally, but having read his blog, Facebook, and tweets over a period of time, I knew three things:
- He was the type of person that WOULD reply,
- He would put THOUGHT into his response, and,
- I could TRUST his opinion.
"Unnecessarily Crass"
He summed it up in the very first line of his email, "The tone of the post seems unnecessarily crass." He was exactly right. And although that's acceptable in the blogosphere, it can be harmful. "Crass" is defined as being without refinement or sensitivity; stupid. That's how I felt after hitting 'Enter.' And that's not who I intended to be or want to be in the future. So while it's perfectly ok to disagree, I need to apologize to @evancurry for stepping over the line.
The Future
I'm going to give it another shot. During the next week, I will revisit the topic of church marketing and instead of shooting others down, I will lay out my position. I feel very strongly that whether one agrees with it or not, every church is already marketing itself. The problem is that a majority of them doing it poorly.
So needed to eat some humble pie, and , to be honest , I'm quite accustomed to it. But this time it tastes quite good and I feel much better hitting "Publish."
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David A. Moore
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