Back in the summer of of 1991 something happened and it is quite a story.
I went home from college to do an internship at my home church after my senior year of college. My internship was dealing with several areas in the church and the Senior Pastor told me he had something special for me to do. The special thing was to run a phone system that called homes, it was one of the systems that telemarketers use. I would program the list of numbers it would call and the time it would call. It could only hold some many numbers so I had to keep track of the numbers and the church wanted it only to call homes between 3pm and 8pm. It would give the gospel through an automated voice and then record everything that would be said by the person. It was quite amusing to listen too at times as you can imagine. People saying things to other people in the room with them like “It is some computer thing talking about God” or people not understanding what it is and responding with things like,”Why do you keep talking to me? Who are you?”. It really was quite amusing. But it was effective on occasion as I did go to the home of a lady that it called and led her to Christ and there were others I get to go share with.
On one day off I went water skiing with some friends and we got a huge storm. This storm knocked off the power, which meant I had to reprogram it, and I was in a hurry because I had a Bible study to get too and I was running late. Again it had to be programmed to run from 3pm till 8pm and so I reprogrammed it and then ran out. The next morning I got to the church to listen like I did every morning to the tape and see if I had any visits to make. As I began to listen I realized that something had gone terribly wrong – I mean I could tell it was terribly wrong. I programmed it from 3am till 8am. Think about this – it was calling people from 3am until 8am in the morning and giving them a gospel presentation. There were many angry people on the tape! You can not even imagine how angry people were and what the recordings were like.
As I stood listening to the tape, the Pastor’s wife was in the next room because she was the church secretary and she came in and ask me if what she thought happened – happened. I said it did. I was so embarrassed but I also laughed a lot as some of the responses to people who you could tell were awaken by the call but listened and answered the questions about their faith and the gospel. You can not imagine I am sure but it got even worse!
A few weeks later my I believe it was my dad who said to me,”Did you see what was in the paper today?”. I got the local paper out to read an article written by the consumer editor. It was titled “When God calls at 4 A.M.”. The machine the called the home phone number of the consumer editor of the local paper. Again – it was a seriously embarrassing moment for me in my life but it a funny story in many ways. In the article he mentions getting the call and then goes in to tell what the laws were regarding telemarketing. By the way, the message never mentioned the church so only a small handful of people ever knew that it was that particular church. This is just one of the many bone head things I have done in my life.
No questions today or “spiritual” point other than I just hope I put a smile on your face today.
