Last week I received a couple of fliers in the mail on the same day. As I was sorting through the mail for the recycling (credit card offers, charity solicitations, political ads, etc.), I noticed that these two looked quite similar.

Happy, Diverse Church Family in a Sunny Neighborhood

At first glance, I thought, “Why would a church send two ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ fliers to the same address, one for the wife and one for the husband?” But upon further review, I saw that both were addressed to me.

Then I looked closer, and saw that the fliers were actually for two different churches in the area. Both had apparently used the same mailer service and the same template.

A free book, or a free coffee mug? A Charybdian dilemma if there ever were one!

You would think that this website (which shall remain hyperlink-less–you can see the name on the scan by the map) would have some automatic notification when a church orders this service: “Warning: Another church in your area has recently used the same template with the same ethnically diverse group of happy people.”