Gossip and the Apostolic Church

Adding to the rumor mill

In his best-selling memoir, my hero Anthony Bourdain wrote about something he’d do when he arrived as the head chef in a restaurant or if he’d gotten new staff. He’d give little pieces of misinformation to different crew members and see how that information would travel, which nuggets went around to others, which were embellished, and which ones stayed secret. It was a way he’d find out who he could trust.

Last year in Michigan, I thought about trying something similar—major emphasis on thought about.

I wanted to start a series of rumors, strategically inject them into the Apostolic Church community, see how they spread, and see which ones came back to me and if they’d been changed at all.

To be very very very clear, I did not do it.

I could never be that manipulative and dishonest. But I thought it’d be such an interesting social experiment.