E-mail Etiquette

"To Forward or Not To Forward?" That is the question. And there is no simple answer. We all get them every day; those clever poems, the cute pictures, the global warnings, someone's 'epiphany du jour'. And everybody knows that the very last line is, "Forward this to everyone in your address book."

First things first - some of it just belongs in the recycle bin. As Christians, let's not be passing along poison to our friends. "WWJD?" is always a good principle. How would I feel about reading this from the pulpit on Sunday? Simple truth of the matter is that your e-mail Outbox IS your pulpit. We ought to reflect Christ in everything we do. If you are going to send stuff out, let it be worthy of your Saviour's reputation. That is a subject for a whole article in an issue to come.

Use some discretion about who you send this trivia too. Some people (God bless 'em) read and cherish every single e-mail they can get and wish they had more. Most e-mail programs have a feature for creating mailing lists. Put these people all on a list and by all means send them everything worthy to send.

For some people, you want to send everything that is spiritually uplifting; make another list. Some people are offended by religious content. Please resist the temptation to send them a deluge of God mail. Make another list. But please don't put me on any of your lists. There are some of us who just don't have time for 30 trivia or humour e-mail messages every day. I most often delete anything that comes to me via some mailing list. But sometimes I get a forward and the person tags it with a note, "I read this and it made me think of you" or "I thought you would enjoy this." Wow, someone actually thought of me when they sent this. That is a whole different thing. Most often it is a special encouragement for me and I will take the time to respond.

One final thought for now. If you are going to just type or cut-and-paste several addresses into the address field of the e-mail, please use the "Bcc:" field so that your list of e-mail addresses isn't shared with everyone who gets the e-mail message. Once again, "Creating E-mail Lists" is a subject for a whole article in an issue to come.

Back to Newsletter