Trying to Tell the Truth

In Journalism, sometimes it helps to have lots of erasers

As some of you may know, our family has spent nearly the last year struggling with a very painful church split. As our church has somewhat of a "storied past", this split has made it, in modest ways, into the press. Having this mess aired in public has been painful, to say the least.

But what has been even more painful yet has been the ways I have seen the press, in several different forms, completely flounder at nearly every attempt to tell the story of what has been going on. I have followed the misreporting and miss steps of these various reports quietly now for some time. Events of the last couple of weeks have brought me out of my quiet place. Its time to speak up, and to tell things as honestly as I know how.

And so, here begins an attempt to set the record straight, in at least a small way. This may take several posts to accomplish, but I think it is worth it. At the end of the day, what I hope results from all this is the beginnings of a movement to unity within the Body of Christ. The saddest part of all of this has been how press reports have served to spread completely erroneous information and further the divide in our congregation. The ugly result of all this has been my experience on this day.

The Last in a Series of Boo-Boos

The most recent article, and the one that will possibly have the widest effect on the way our church is perceived by many is this recent web article, which will soon be in the print edition of Christianity Today magazine. After having this article emailed to me by several friends, and a couple of business clients, and then discussing it with several friends, I decided to attempt to actually contact the writer, in order to clarify some errors and to express my sadness over this whole affair. It is so sad that our dirty laundry has been aired-out, and even sadder that some the laundry that is out on the line now, is not even our laundry.

More on errors, and my conversations with folks from Christianity Today soon.