Typo in Hilton Head job listing has demons tearing up their resumes

Last week must have been a real letdown for demons.

The ambitious ones anyway. The hopeful ones.

The ones who gleefully updated their resumes and picked up their best demon suits from the dry cleaners as soon as they saw that Sea Island Chapel on Hilton Head Island was looking for a part-time pastor.

“A part-time pastor! A beach town! Oh this is so perfect! I’ll go in for the interview and I’ll charm the pants off of them, then they’ll hire me and then I’ll tell them what I am and then they’ll be like ‘Oh my gosh! I can’t believe how demonized demons have been! You’re so nice and good at golf! We’re so glad we met you!’ ... hold up. Wait just a second. What does this ad say? ‘Non-demon’? ‘NON-DEMON!’ Is this a joke? Why, this is discrimination! This is just the limit. How dare they!”

It’s not every day that a classified ad can give me a good 10 minutes of imagination fodder.

I also pictured the demon’s wife, Demona, comforting him.

“It’s OK, Monny. One day a church will accidentally hire you.”

Suffice to say, no one wants to hire a demon, least of all a church.

But it still took me a while to understand that a classified ad in last week’s Island Packet and on CareerBuilder.com contained a typo and not an actual job requirement.

“PASTOR Part-time Hilton Head Island bible centered, non-demon, traditional ...”

Yikes, I thought when I first read it. I wonder what the last guy was like. Talk about lessons learned.

Or maybe this church is just making it clear that they’re not into demons. Or that none of their members are demons ... which they know because everyone has had to state their full name and all the reasons they know they’re not a demon to the entire congregation for approval.

Interesting. Where would one even start in proving they’re not a demon? Maybe there would need to be a questionnaire to help guide people.

When is the last time you yelled at a stranger?

Cats ... lovable furry pets or something you put salt and pepper on?

Alas, none of my theories sounded right.

Luckily, a smart person helped me out.

“They meant non-denominational, Liz. It’s a mistake.”

Ah. Yes. That makes sense.

My lack of religion-based vocab words to draw from foils me again. Thank you, Catholic school, for teaching me that “nail polish is for bad girls” but not “sometimes people aren’t Catholic.”

I called the number on the ad so that I could let them know about the mistake ... but also to find out if they’re cool people.

Turns out they are.

Which is good because this typo was totally our mistake here at the paper.

Believe me, if I could insert the uh-oh sorry emoji here, I would.

Larry Roberson, who is on the board of trustees and the pastor search committee at Sea Island Chapel, had already taken care of business when he called me back.

The classified department fixed his ad with apologies and promised to run it again.

He, like me, got a chuckle out of the idea that a church would specifically note that they’d like a pastor that is not a demon.

“That would be quirky,” he said.

And yet it’s not the only unusual thing related to this church.

Sea Island Chapel is located in a building that used to be an Elks Lodge. Before the Elks, they used to meet at Island Funeral Home.

And before that they moved around a bit.

“The Lord blessed us,” Roberson said about their newest building, which they moved to in 2012 and paid off in full this past fall.

Sea Island, he said, has about 40 members and, according to its motto, is where “everybody is somebody and every member a minister.”

The church was one of 10 in this area that had been started by beloved Baptist minister Bob Cuttino, who died this past summer at 86.

After retirement, he had continued to serve Sea Island Chapel part-time.

“He was great,” Roberson said. “(In every one of his sermons) you learned something, and he touched your heart.”

The church, he said, is small and friendly and open to anyone who might be looking for fellowship and Bible-centered worship.

“We call ourselves nondenominational — not non-demon,” he said with a laugh, “because we have members from different backgrounds.

“We want everyone to feel welcome.”

This story was originally published February 26, 2017 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Typo in Hilton Head job listing has demons tearing up their resumes."