Original April Fool's Day post Mikey's Funnies is a clean humor email list - one Funny sent every weekday. Subscribe Free!

Mikey's Relevant Thot for the Day:
Real friends are those who, when you feel you've really made a fool of yourself, don't feel you've done a permanent job.

From Eric: "Happy April Fool's Day to you too! I hope you can share quotes from 'outraged' subscribers."

Of course, Eric!

This prank did mushroom into something a tad bigger than I expected. I haven't pulled one of these in a coupla years, so I wasn't sure how (or if) it would work.

I got hundreds of replies, so there's no way I could read all of them. I basically scanned them for agitated unsubscribe requests (only got a handful) and to get a sense of the different ways people responded.

There were many flavors of responses, but these, by far, represented the vast majority:

"I'm hoping, REALLY hoping, that the item you posted today was an April Fool's joke!!! If it ISN'T, please provide a double dose of humour the next day to make up for it!!!!"

"WOW! I'm so hoping that since this is April Fool's Day, this is a joke? Otherwise outrage is a calm word to use!"

"Hmmm. You being outraged on April 1st. Interesting...sort of like the time you were fired on April 1st and in my daily devotion that day I told everyone I was being sued by my ISP for sending out too many emails and was selling my house."

One other person, remembering my "I got fired" prank of two years ago, said, "Maybe you could have laid yourself off."

Some folks figured it out as they were typing out their reply, like this one:

"Oh, please Mikey! This has got to be a joke! (ah yes, April Fool's Day, I just remembered!). Hopefully our churches haven't gone down that road yet! Thanks for the 'wake up call' anyway. A little outrage-induced reflection is probably good for us all."

Some even figured out other clues, like: "You did NOT enclose your subject in double quotes which is what you always do when something is serious. That alone should have tipped me off as to the 'funny' nature of this particular email...!!! :)"

Some are even making practical use of the prank: "All I can say is 'hook, line and sinker!' You got me. Well done. However I plan to use this in a teaching on James chapter 2."

And for those who were also suckered in, the vast majority made the theologically correct connection to James 2, like these:

[from China] "We share your outrage about this. They must have forgotten to read James 2:1-4. We are Christians living out our love relationship with our Father overseas. These kind of churches run contrary to the message we have to share and end up confusing the people of this world who are already distracted by wealth and status. May the Lord mercifully convict them of this wrong path."

"I have never responded to any of your emails before but this one reminds me of James 2:1-7. I teach and preach tithing faithfully and biblically that's why our church is in a nearly million dollar expansion and we have over half of our money. We're just a small rural church but our people are faithful, strangely, our younger families who struggle are the most mature with their money. God does reward those who trust Him...but if I'm not mistaken He has problems with showing partiality (Romans 2:11). For God does not show favoritism."

More responses to being stung:

"Jesus wept... and I might throw up."

"Perfect 'funny' for April 1st. Gotta admit, you had me for about 5 minutes there. I'm just now picking myself up off the floor after laughing myself out of my chair."

"And a happy April Fool's Day to you, too! (You did get me, at first. Sigh - age does not cure gullibility!)"

"oh gracious. i can't believe i fell for that. if that's the smartest thing I do all day, i'm in trouble."

"I am SOOOO gullible...and I KNEW it was April Fool's Day! I'm goin' back to bed."

"That joke this morning was cruel and unusual. I was very irked and started quoting bible verses to myself in open rebuke at this horrendous scriptural violation. Well done."

And from this a pastor: "Whew, you had me going dude! I was about to order up my recliners from the furniture store."

"You little rascal! You had me going there. Outraged and thinking of the appropriate scriptures that tell us this is not good! Then I remembered the date. Good one! Trouble is…it was believable, to me anyway."

"Thanks for the April Fools joke. You got me. I reflected on it and discovered the reason you got me is because a situation like that wouldn't surprise me today. Then it wasn't funny."

"This got me, really…to my annoyance. We decent North Europeans tend to believe that in America everything seems to be possible, no matter how weird it may appear."

"funny boy! I had passed that story on to my fellow pastors, elders, and Dad so they could share in my outrage. Ya done good."

"You're kidding.....I passed this on to my pastor...Yikes"

Some requested my source before sending it to their entire address book:

"I was wondering what your source was for that e-mail about Skyboxes, etc. Before I pass it on I would like add the source to it. And pass it on is something I definitely plan to do."

"Oh Man!!!! You almost had me!! I was just about to hit "send" to forward the "article" onto my pastor and church deacons, one of which is my husband!! Then I realized...wait a minute...it's April's Fool Day! Good one Mikey...I swallowed it hook, line, and well almost sinker!"

Others went into sleuth mode and started doing their own research (thank the Lord for Google!):

"An April Fool's for all of us?? I did a web search for the article you referenced, thinking it must be an April Fool's hoax. (I've been a subscriber to the funnies for several years and I know how your mind works sometimes...heheheee...scary, huh??) When I did the web search, I came up with something very interesting... 'Lark News.' I'm not sure if the tears running down my face are from laughing so hard or from crying so hard. If Lark News is a major joke, then it's hilarious...if it's not a joke, then it's very sad. Anyway...here it is..."

"Are you sure this is not an April fools joke? I have sent it to the CC in Fresno to get an explanation. I did check Urban Legends but did not find anything."

"Either this is a really clever april fools - in which case kudos because you got me! Or someone got you - reminds me of the 'Harry Potter author worships demons' article a hysterical Church member sent me that was from 'The Onion'! In any case, the really sad thing is that even though this is not a true story, we might believe it because of the similarity of other crazy stunts churches pull that mix consumerism and Christianity."

The responses that made my day were the folks who did the search and found out the source was a satirical news site and assumed I was duped too - even begging me to rush a correction out:

"QUICK -- YOU NEED TO NOTIFY YOUR READERS THAT THIS ARTICLE YOU SENT IS NOT REAL."

"The story is not factually true; it is satire. It comes from larknews.com originally. The site, according to christianitytoday.com, posts satirical news stories…"

"You almost had me as I checked out your Not So Funny 'outrage'. After discovering that the website you took this from was a satirical site I was going to write to you to let you know your error. However when I saw the date on your newsletter, it suddenly 'clicked'. So thanks for the spoof, good job!"

One of the best results from Friday's April Fool's prank is how it was used in churches, like this one from Pastor Douglas: "I shared the story with my congregation at the beginning of the message. It was a good illustration of what I have told our members for years...membership doesn't have it privileges - membership has its responsibilities! I now have people asking about the recliners for our church (LOL) and a few have expressed a willingness to show up for all the services, Sunday School, Bible Study, small groups...if they'll get triple "miles" (LOL). Thanks for the laugh and for the new website (Larknews.com) to check out."

From Pastor Dale: "The April Fools funny was great. In fact, I used it Sunday as an introduction to my sermon on 'Easter Laughter' -- it made for a great lead in to what I think is the greatest 'April Fool' joke of all time: the one God played on the devil on Golgotha on dark, dreary April around 30 A.D. I could tell from the expressions of my parishioners that they got wrapped up in the 'breaking news' -- and loved the gotcha at the end. Thanks for the great sermon fodder."

And from Pastor Larry: "I have a blank page in my Sunday bulletin that I put funnies or news articles, sermon notes, etc on. I put the article you sent on that page. So the only problem I had with your joke is that I had to retype the bulletin and add 'Happy late April fools day' at the bottom."

And, yes, there were those who did not see any humor in the prank:

"Mike, I am sorry but I don't think that joke was funny. I had just forward that to a lot of people in my church. Now I am very embarrassed."

"Your not too funny joke was distributed as if it was truth as found in James. You've done a lot of damage to the Gospel. You're the fool."

"I am so disappointed that you would send out something like this about the Church, which after all, belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. What a slap in the face to His church, to pass around a story that pretends to be true."

I think we need to remember the distinction between the Church (big C) and a church (little c). The satirical piece I sent was about fictional churches (little c). And, as we are all well aware, the church is subject to human flaws.

I understand that there are people who just don't get the use of satire, defined by Mr. Webster as such:
1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

Jesus was an expert user of satire to make a point (see Matthew 23), and, as one author says, "No doubt, this caustic ridicule of their follies brought both embarrassed laughter and steaming anger from the listeners... However, Jesus limited such caustic satire to the hypocritical [religious] leaders instead of using it to embarrass humble truth seekers."

While I did want to mess with your head and hopefully make you at least chuckle, my hope was that it would cause good, stimulating thought and discussion, much like what happened with this reader who responded honestly with this, "I don't get it [the article]. That all sounded good, didn't it??? Getting more people to come to church, or am I missing the point? I am 17 years old so maybe that's why I don't get it. So could you please tell me what's wrong with the 'Not so funny' funny. I know you meant it as a joke and stuff, but what would have been bad about it."

Moving on now. Thanks to all for your fun responses. Those who asked to be unsubscribed will be before tomorrow's Funny. I'm sincerely sorry to those who were offended by this. It certainly wasn't intended to offend.

Mikey