This is Steve

No scathing rant today, just something that strikes me as funny. My wife is doing some temp work cold calling churches. I know sales people aren't well received in this world, but I'm learning that churches aren't much different than average folks when it comes to cold calls. Pastors have been known to actually swear at callers, be generally abusive and hang up. I know these calls can be annoying, I dealt with them for years when I was in the church. But I never lost sight of the fact that, when someone calls a church, they expect to be talking to a Christ follower. Anyway, this call was just funny, and a bit indicative of how oblivious a pastor can be.

She called the number listed for the church and got this message, "Hi, this is Steve, please leave your message after the tone." Assuming she had a residential number instead of the church she called one of the other numbers listed. That, too was a residence so she moved on to the third number given for this particular account. This time she got a real person and shared her scripted information. She then mentioned that the primary church number seemed to be a personal phone. The lady on the other end asked my wife to repeat the number and assured her it was the church number but went directly to the pastor's voice mail if no one answered. She was sure the pastor would want to know that his message didn't contain any information about the church...in fact, no indication it was a church at all. As a courtesy my wife redialed the number and the pastor picked up and it went something like this:

Pastor: "You just called here."
My wife: "Yes, I did."
Pastor: "You didn't leave a message."
My wife: "I thought I was calling a church but the voice message sounded like a personal phone."
Pastor: "I'm the pastor of the church."
My wife: "Your voice message just says, 'This is Steve' and doesn't indicate that I'm calling a church."
Pastor: "I know. I'm the pastor of the church."
My wife: "Thank you, very much, pastor. Have a nice day."

The man never seemed to catch on that anyone outside his small circle of parishoners and friends who knew for certain they were calling the church would ever know they'd reached a church. There was no information that would have helped them connect with that church if they were new to town or visiting. Like my wife, most strangers would assume they had reached a wrong number and move on to another call. Apparently, "This is Steve" was all the information Steve thought was necessary to share about his church when people called. It makes me wonder if anyone new ever makes it into his church. It makes me think about all the ineffective ways churches present themselves to strangers.