Stan Purdum

Virtually everyone who has ever prepared a worship bulletin or a church announcement list has made an occasional embarrassing error in print for all to see. The blooper I like best was made by a church secretary as she was using her computer to prepare a worship bulletin and announcement page. Included in a list of workers for an upcoming event was a parishioner named Mary, who was mentioned several times because of various tasks she was supposed to do.

As the secretary was typing, she received a phone call informing her that this Mary was not going to be able to help out after all but that another member, Edna, would be taking her place. Rather than go back and type “Edna” over every place where it said “Mary,” the secretary simply used the replace function in her word-processing program and had the computer replace every “Mary” with “Edna.”

Imagine the secretary’s embarrassment on Sunday morning as she sat in church looking at the printed bulletin and discovered that the pastor’s sermon title now read “The Angel Comes to the Virgin Edna”!