You Might Want to Fact-Check Your Pastor’s Sermon

[rug]

Preachers love to drop statistics and historical tidbits into their sermons. Too bad so many of their facts are untrue.

July 25, 2014
by Bob Smietana

A few weeks ago, my teenage daughter laid down the law.

No more Tweeting in church, she told me. No surfing the web or sneaking a peak at a Facebook game on my phone. And most important of all — no more fact-checking the pastor’s sermon.

One of the dangers of being a reporter is that you don’t trust anyone. We live by a rule made famous at the now-shuttered City News Bureau in Chicago: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Reporters know that just because someone — even a pastor — says something is true doesn’t make it so. That can be a problem in church. Not so much when it comes to matters of faith — there’s no fact-checking those. The trouble comes with more mundane things, the anecdotes and factoids that pastors like to sprinkle into their messages.

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/07/25/you-might-want-to-fact-check-your-pastors-sermon/33257

Damn. I though the sign to turn off cell phones was simply courtesy.

[Scuba]

1. Emperical studies have proved that 79.24% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[cbayer]

2. Exactly. Why would anyone think ministers would be different.

[Starboard Tack]

3. No, I think it is only 79.23%

Yes, definitely. Plus, it has been empirically proven that I make shit up and present it as fact at least 99% of the time. And that is a fact.

[Jim__]

4. Or, you might want to grant story tellers a little bit of license.

Spicing up a story with some personal anecdotes usually makes it more interesting. If we get the gist of the story, maybe we don't really need to check up on all the anecdotes. It depends, somewhat, on what the price of just accepting it. Sure, if someone is asking for money on the basis of the anecdotes, then check on them. But, if they're just adding a little color at no real cost, we could just enjoy the story.

[cbayer]

5. that's pretty much what the author concludes.

He decides that fact checking is just a distraction that takes away from the experience he was seeking.

Fun read, though.