« Caught Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman Last Night | Main | Hey... Give Me Back My Sermon! »
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Church Spam
Pastor Jeff brings up the subject of 'church spam' over at his blog... church spam is, of course, unsolicited emails from churches. I know I get some of these as well... Pastor Jeff writes:
Now, I hate spam because I hate scams of all kinds, but this actually takes the cake! A friend of mine sent me a copy of an email he received from a church he’s never heard of telling him about a new sermon series.
For some reason, I’m ok with direct mail (because the advertiser is paying to have the mail delivered), but I really don’t like unsolicited email (aside from the inconvenience, the recipient is the one who’s paying to receive the ad in the form of fees to the internet service provider).
Forwarded by Michael Estes/Administration/SUPNET on 10/13/2005 09:03 AM
- “North Park Church”
- mail@postalads.com
- Subject: Has your Identity been Stolen?
- Please respond to r.2367.8254890@postalads.com
IDENTITY THEFT
A weekend teaching series at North Park Church
We can lose our identities - a sense of who we really are. Join us October 16th as we kick off the four-week series, “Identity Theft”. We’ll explore how we can recover if we’ve been “Robbed by Relationship,” “Mugged by the Mirror”, “Stolen by Success”, or “Pickpocketed by the Past.”
- ROBBED BY RELATIONSHIP - OCT 16
- MUGGED BY THE MIRROR - OCT 23
- STOLEN BY SUCCESS - OCT 30
- PICKPOCKETED BY THE PAST - NOV 6
North Park is one of Carmel’s newer churches, committed to serving families, loving kids, and communicating the hope of God’s message in creative ways.For more information, go to www.northparkwired.com
email: info@xxxxxxx.com
If you would like to sign up for periodic informational emails about North Park, click here. North Park Church - 500 E. Carmel Drive, Carmel IN 46033 If you no longer wish to receive messages from North Park Church please press here.
FOR DISCUSSION: What do you think of a church sending out unsolicited emails? Have you done it before? What has been the response?
Add Your Comments and Ideas now...Pass this post on to a friend now...
Subscribe to RSS Feed | Get Email Notifications on New Posts
October 19, 2005 | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451dafb69e200d83491e18a69e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Church Spam:
Comments
Just provide a link to unsubscribe. That's what every other decent organization does as a courtesy to remove e-mail addresses of persons who do not want the information. I don't see the point of getting bent out of shape about it, though. Marketers do this all the time so why should a church be singled out as ineligible to distribute information via e-mail? If you want to get a law passed to prohibit everyone from doing this, go for it. Until then, it's perfectly acceptable action. Maybe I don't like the clutter of junk mail, but I just dispose of it the same way I do SPAM.
Posted by: Dean | Oct 19, 2005 1:29:52 PM
That church's Web hosting provider should be contacted about the email. Maybe if they temporarily lost their Web site, they would think twice about being so annoying again.
Posted by: Michael Rew | Oct 20, 2005 12:34:17 AM
This was definitely a poor decision by the church. Though it might not be technically illegal it is socially unacceptable. We should always strive to take the high road in spreading the Gospel.
Posted by: Jason Fletcher | Oct 20, 2005 6:31:27 AM
What if one person came to know Christ or one person's life was renovated because of that series that found out about only by the e-mail. Just a thought.
Posted by: J.P. | Oct 20, 2005 12:27:45 PM
J.P.: If it is that important, then send a ministry team to the person's door.
Posted by: Michael Rew | Oct 20, 2005 12:31:35 PM
Ironically, they stole this series from Willow Creek. August series, maybe?
Posted by: Tony Myles | Oct 20, 2005 2:29:32 PM
