Picture this: You’ve just been asked by your ministry/leaders/management to either take a blog post down or change it to correct something in the post that they deemed inappropriate or wrong or that doesn’t “jive” with them.
What do you do? Do you lash out without apology? Do you get all angry and huffed up thinking that they just don’t “get it”? Do you take it down? Edit it? What?
I had this situation happen yesterday with this post here. Apparently some people has misinterpreted the blog post, especially the image, and believed that the pin represented the exact location of the new campus and my management had started to receive inquiries about that location.
I was asked to either edit the image or make it explicit that this was not the case. I was asked to do something. Thankfully, this wasn’t as big of an issue so I quickly corrected the blog post and added a bolded FYI to it so as to be explicit that this was, in fact, not the location of the new campus.
Whew. But, it could have been worse.
Here’s what I’ve learned in the past year about handling things like this in ministry; I don’t say these things to prove at any stretch of the imagination that I’ve “figured it out” or am perfect here but as an encouragement to you to consider my thought process at the time:
- Respond quickly, at least to the initial inquiry. Tell management that you’d like to speak with them more about it, change it, or something, but respond quickly; let them know you got it.
- Stay humble. Your management has a reason for confronting you about the content you published. They are probably more experienced than you in terms of the ministry (and the impact on ministry) that your content could affect.
- Take responsibility. You’re the one that published it and they’re the ones having to deal with the aftermath. Take responsibility, own the issue, and move forward.
- Submit to your leadership. Unless there is some obviously wrong with your leadership, I’d suggest just submitting to their authority, wisdom, and discernment. It’s just a blog post.
- Act responsibly and close the situation quickly. The good and bad thing about social media is that it’s viral: Every single second counts. Once the decision has been made do it. Don’t wait.
- Thank them for the opportunity to be corrected and grateful that you have leadership that’s willing to pull you aside and correct you.
- Learn something from the situation that it doesn’t happen again.
Something I’ve learned is that living a life attempting to avoid making mistakes is pretty useless; I’m going to make them. But learning to handle the issues wisely and with civility and grace is an entirely different matter, and is definitely more important.
What are your thoughts?
[Image from HCKsyo]