A blog swarm started over the St. James United Church of Christ webpage the past few days. The church is located in Limmerick Pennsylvania. The furor was over the verse in the header of the banner - Luke 4:7.
While most bloggers took it as a joke, questions were raised so I wrote the church. The site has been online since April 2005. While I was waiting for a response, I received this from Rev. Chuck Currie.
The problem is solved.
Looks like an innocent mistake on the part of a web designer. Churches often use volunteers for this kind of work, of course, and sometimes things don’t work out well.
And then this from Rev. Chuck Currie:
I understand that the church will be offering a statement soon on their website explaining that someone hacked into their system and put up that piece of scripture.
Then this from Rev. James Roth of St. James Church in Limerick.
Thanks, friend, for alerting us of this embarrassment.
It has been corrected.
Now this from a gentleman named Art Gelwicks who says he is the St. James webmaster.
Clarification time:
1. There was no hack of the site. (I’d love to know where this rumor originated from.)
2. This was not a publicity stunt.
3. The quote used was from a Biblical quotation search engine and was taken out of context.
4. The webmaster (me) should have checked the full text of the quote before publishing.
5. AS SOON as we were told about the mistake we corrected it immediately.
This was nothing more than the case of a quote of text that was unfortunately missed in it’s full context by everyone who visited the site until recently.
As for the yoga and reiki workshops…those are real (old events but real). If you want to know more about how they fit into the church I suggest you contact the pastor.
All the headers from people seem to be in order and I acknowledge I got my exercise jumping to conclusions with the information I did have.
I make a decision and judgement call by zeroing in on ‘hack’ and ‘corrected.’
I haven’t changed my disappointment or ire over some of the things I’ve seen said online regarding this website and this church.
The information I put in comments at blogs was what I had at the time.
What isn’t in dispute is the header was a mistake.
There is no dispute in the fact the header was corrected quickly.
There is no dispute St. James Church put up a statement to bloggers.
This appears to be a internal communication issue that is best dealt with the United Churches of Christ staff at St. James and their webmaster and I appreciate the effort St. James has put out to clarify.
Since there seems to have been hurried communication over a short span of time, and a blog burst I don’t think I helped by fostering or seeking information, writing the church or especially by trying to ‘correct’ lagging information in blog comments.
Lesson learned.
Information travels quickly on blogs and online, most people don’t speak tech. (myself included)
Above is the information received here at BDBO in the order received.
I wish St. James Church and their staff well. The statement is up on their church webpage.
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.
Hmm. Who was the original blogger?
Other blogs stepping forward: The Christian Mind, Stand to Reason, Between Two Worlds , connexions , Wanderings of a Post-Modern Pilgrim
There is an article at Spero News updating the story
Published 2 years, 9 months ago
Search
Subscribe 
You are currently browsing the Bene Diction Blogs On weblog archives.
Related Entries
For blog design, Wordpress or MovableType coding or blog consulting, see cre8d design.
I still think the original post, at least the first one I encountered, 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.
BD, you obviously put a heckva lot more effort into trying to scour their website for Rev. Roth’s e-mail info than I did, and it certainly was a pain to do. As a website peruser, I think someone might suggest that it would be in order to put the church’s contact e-mail right there on the front page. Instead, the only address I saw was the webmaster’s address, and I did not try to e-mail him because, frankly, I didn’t expect him to be particularly useful in resolving the matter, i.e., I assumed that the webmaster just put up whatever someone told him to put up there and didn’t question it. Your e-mail response from him pretty much confirms that was a good read on that. Frankly, I’m also a little taken aback by a pastor who would allow a website for his congregation to go up without at least having provided some oversight/review if “approval” were an issue.
I agree with Rev. Mike. It wasn’t a pie in the face. It wasn’t vandalised. It was their own website. They created it, proof-read it, and put up the site. I am assuming that someone would have seen the reference and picked up as we all did.
I think them guilting me in my comments and in e-mail is a little absurd.
I commented to the webmaster in the other post at BDBO.
Thats it for me.
No more church websites, no more attempts to clarify, get facts from the source. How utterly stupid of me to play blog police. I’ve really had it with church stuff right now, it was not my issue in the first place and I regret wasting time on this and sticking my nose in. I’m angry, and I feel badly for the webmaster and the church at the same time. And I’m not happy bloggers that didn’t go off are being painted with the same brush.
That is making the same mistake bloggers made.
Darryl you are correct. It was public and comments are expected. Especially from blogs.
And Mike, you are correct, the devil is in the details.
I know intent can’t be easily discerned online. I don’t expect people to read my mind. I know the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I know good intentions aren’t worth spit sometimes. I do care right now my intent and actions were misunderstood, and others were, and I’ve had enough. It takes skills to communicate with church people I don’t have very well.
As a none technical person I fully understand how this could happen.
I’ve apologized, I’ve clarifed, I tried to stick to facts and use my journalist skills, even though this is my blog, because I believe we should do what we can to assist others.
I attempted show respect to the church and it’s staff and foster healthy communication in blog comments and put out good posts such as yours. What a fool.
This wasn’t about me, but I’m irked anyway.
Like I said, lesson learned.
Sorry for any part I added to the confusion. I was told first it was a problem on the part of the web designer and then that the site have been messed with. I’d rather it be a mistake than something done out of spite.
Yeah, it was a header mistake, and an honest one.
You aren’t responsible for my conclusions Rev. Currie, thanks for trying to help St. James.