I was sent the following email from someone trying to sell me a service….

Hi There,
I was sent you an mail regarding Web Listing hope you are found it.
This is an follow-up email for you, Interested in our proposal or not?

Let us know if you are interested, I am waiting here your valuable
reply.

I went back and read their original proposal to see if the same poor English was to be found there. It wasn’t.  Clearly, someone was hired to pretty up the original mailing, but the followup was done by the salesperson, if you will.

Not a good way to impress a prospective client.

Now.  I’m not interested in having my website be first to pop up on Google, as they were proposing.  Nothing about that interests me.

What does concern me is the way we in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ do the same thing this guy did and end up unimpressing the very people we are trying to reach.

–Think of the times you have seen church signs with words misspelled or signs announcing events that took place a month ago.

If you are in charge of the church sign and are weak in the spelling department, ask someone to help you. Do not ever–not ever!–post a sign with faulty spelling.

–Think of the church messages (sermons, etc) you have come across on television that were poorly produced.  Across the bottom of the television screen is scrawled the name of the speaker or a scripture he is using, and it’s misspelled.  Arrgghh!  Not good.

–Your church’s printed materials, your announcements to the community in posters and newspapers, everything should be classy and well done.

It does not have to be expensive. In fact, you can hurt yourself by overdoing the lavishness of the layout and the design.  Go for simplicity and readability.

It’s all about communication, and nothing else.

We are representing the God of the universe.  We are ambassadors for Jesus Christ.

We want our efforts to reflect well on Him.

We who would draw people to the Lord of Heaven and earth should look and act like we ourselves know Him and take our mission seriously.

Now, I remember the story of Dwight L. Moody.

This uneducated lay evangelist of the 19th century is said to have broken every rule for proper speaking. He did not say “ain’t,” but “hain’t,” which is several rungs below the traditional level for uneducated.  And yet God used him mightily.

But he is the exception.

I keep thinking of what people say after some awful singer rises in church to deliver a solo. She slaughters a good song and mangles every rule of proper delivery. As she sits down, the preacher thanks her and goes into his sermon. But later, over lunch, a church family gets into a discussion about her.  Some in the family were mortified by the sloppiness and  brutality of her singing, and do not mind saying so. But invariably, someone will defend the singer. “All that matters is that her heart is right.” Or, “She wasn’t singing to us. She was singing to Jesus.”

She was indeed singing to us.  In fact, she was singing for us (Ephesians 5:19 says so).  And if it was unworthy, if it was poorly done and an insult to music lovers everywhere, she would have served better by remaining in her pew.  Nothing that insults the hearer and debases the message of Christ should go out in the name of Jesus.

This is a huge subject, with lots of considerations. The point of it, in a sentence, is to give to the Lord an offering of righteousness.  He deserves our best, and nothing less.