Removing Anti-UBF Articles

Posted on by

Earlier this month, a senior Korean missionary forwarded me a copy of an email sent from the director of the UBF Internet Committee. This person had found a negative article about UBF on the Urban Dictionary website. I checked out the article right away and found it to indeed be negative and full of emotion, but also containing some facts.

The article was posted on the internet sometime in 2008, so I don’t know why the email was just sent with such urgency this month, 2011. The article is gone the last time I checked. But it is interesting to see how fearful and defensive UBF leaders are of negative words. Here is the email, with the email addresses and names dashed out.

It is also interesting to see this leader sending out “mass emails”. I was rebuked for sending out “mass emails” as I left UBF.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: ——@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 5:29 AM
Subject: removing anti-UBF articles from the Internet
To: ———

Greetings, servants of God,

Generally I don’t like to create mass emails, but in this case I would really like your help urgently.

It has recently come to my attention that there is a popular website among young people called “Urban Dictionary.” According to a Wikipedia article, the site gets about 15 million unique visitors per month, and 80% of the users under the age of 25. It is a very important website that many American college students are accessing every day.

This “Urban Dictionary” contains lots of “street slang” terms that young people currently use. Much of it has dirty language, but it is nonetheless very popular. There is an article in it on “UBF” and on “University Bible Fellowship.” These articles are extremely negative. They would definitely drive curious young people away from our ministry if they use this resource to try to find out about us. I think it is a very important issue right at the start of our new school year college student outreach ministry.

The only way to remove these articles is if enough people mark them as “Dislike” by clicking on the “thumbs down” icon on the upper right hand corner of the article. This can be done only once on each computer. Once an article is very unpopular with a strong majority of “Dislike” votes, the editors remove it from the “Urban Dictionary” website.

Would you please go to these articles “UBF” and “University Bible Fellowship” and mark them as “Dislike”? It will help us to remove their poisonous attacks on our ministry.

Also, please use discernment in circulating this email. (In my opinion it is not good for many of our young people to be exposed to the negative attacks of these “Urban Dictionary” articles about our ministry.)

Perhaps if many of our UBF co-workers in Korea were to also go to this “Urban Dictionary” website and vote “Dislike,” it would make the articles even more unpopular.

Thank you for your help.

In Christ,
—————-

4 thoughts on “Removing Anti-UBF Articles”

  1. In case anyone is wondering, here is the Google cache of one of the two articles that were removed from Urban Dictionary:

    Note: Anyone who knows even a little about Google can do a search for “ubf urban dictionary” and click the “cached” link to find these articles.
    ___________________________________________

    University Bible Fellowship. Evangelical Korean-American church, headquartered in Chicago and Seoul with chapters in all major cities around the world.

    UBF targets “lost” undergraduates to turn them into evangelists themselves. College students who are lonely, depressed or in trouble are attracted by their warm welcome, Christian faith, and supportive UBF community. A new-comer to UBF is called “sheep” who is usually at a troubled period of their lives and can be easily molded into UBF ideology.

    UBF members are are expected to follow strongly hierarchical Confucionist Korean traditions as well as very conservative Christian values. After about a year or two of attending meeting and performing some UBF activities and acknowledging “meeting Jesus personally” the new-comer is now called a “Shepherd”.

    Most “sheep” leave after a couple of months after learning about the closed-mindedness the group. Other people may stay in order not to hurt the feelings of the their UBF “shepherds” who gave them too much attention. Strict obedience to the values of the group is expected. Among the ve…

  3. When I was in UBF Peter Kim told once on the leaders meeting that good job done and now anti UBF sites appear on the second page while seeking in google, not first page. I was so shocked that times… It was big argument for me to start investigation.

  4. Andrew, yes the same was reported at staff conferences here in the US. I remember the Internet Committee reporting how the good ubf websites rose to the top of Google. In fact, I helped do that! I used to spend hours clicking on all the good ubf website links! I repent of that now :)

    Also this is no longer true. If you search just for “ubf”, you will get anti ubf material on the first page. Also Google now has a pop-up of choices when you start typing. If you type “ubf”, you immediately see “ubf cult” as a choice. According to Google analytics for my blog, many people are clicking on that choice.