The following happens between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

“Hello, this is Terry Storch.” It was great to hear Terry’s voice. If anyone knows blogging and can help me get to the bottom of this crisis, it has to be Terry. Among other things, Terry has co-authored the soon-to-be-released book on blogging for churches. His new book, The Blogging Church, will be released in January and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com for the small price of $13.57. You save 32%! (And, if you pre-order your copies through this link, you also help support the Morgan Family College Savings Fund.)

I didn’t have to say a word before Terry began to speak, “I know why you’re here, Tony. I know what you’ve been doing… why you hardly sleep, why you live alone (apparently I never mentioned Emily and the four kids to Terry), and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Tony. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.”

Then I asked, “What is the Matrix?”

Terry replied, “The answer is out there, Tony, and it’s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.”

I thanked Terry. I’m not sure why. He was absolutely no help…or was he? “It will find you if you want it to.” What did he mean by that? I hung up the red phone, and then there was a knock at my door…

The following happens between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.

“My name is Marcus Buckingham. The women find me irresistible. I know a lot about leadership. And, I have a British accent. I have hijacked the Simply Strategic Show. I will not release the show back to Tim and Tony until my demands have been meant. I will reveal my demands soon. I’d tell you now, but then you might not stick with this weak story line until Tony’s next post. That is all.”

For starters, it was a really bad, fake-British accent. It was even worse than the fake-British accent that the woman uses on our podcasts. Secondly, this raised security concerns with Dustin’s computer. (Dustin is the chief podcasting engineer for the Simply Strategic Show.) How could this bogus Buckingham guy hack into Dustin’s computer to hijack the podcast? But then, I remembered. It can’t be a problem with Dustin’s computer. He owns a Mac. Everyone knows Macs never have security problems and never crash.

All I knew after considering the circumstances I was facing was that this was a situation I couldn’t resolve on my own. I needed the input of someone outside of the triangle of death who I could trust. Someone who knows blogging. I reached for the red phone on my desk, and waited for that familiar voice on the other end of the line…

The following happens between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.

When I pulled up the IP addresses of the recent commenters, I found a bizarre pattern. There were comments coming in from Anderson, SC, Washington, DC and…Granger, IN. It was a strange triangle of death connecting the Beltway with the Bible Belt with someone in my own backyard who could easily borrow one of my belts if they have a 33 waist.

What did this pattern mean? Why these locations? And who on my team was the insider turned traitor. I packed up my laptop, kissed my hot wife and headed to the garage to get into my new-to-me Audi A6.

As I walked out the door, I knew this was going to be a day unlike any other I had faced since I began blogging. With that in mind, it was challenging deciding what music I wanted to listen to for the 2 minute and 23 second commute between my house and the church office. Given the magnitude of the recent moments, I decided to forgo music for something a little more creative and contemplative. I dialed up the Simply Strategic Show podcast on my iPod. When I pressed play, I was shocked to hear a man with a phony British accent give the following statement…

The following happens between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.

The alarm clock goes off. I jump up from bed with a spring in my step. I’m not normally a morning person, but today’s different. Something’s going to happen. There’s anticipation in the air at the Morgan household. I shower. I dress. And, I eat breakfast. Then, I head down to my home office to continue my Bible journey and catch up on the world at large. Little did I know, though, what was about to transpire.

I opened up my email account and noticed some unusual activity from the night before. Some might describe it as comment spam. Others may call it “chatter.” All I knew was that I had never seen these types of blog comments in the past. This wasn’t just the usual comment activity following one of my artfully crafted posts. No—there was something else happening. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew there was something highly suspicious going on.

With that, I raised the blog alert level to orange, and I traced the IP addresses of the latest people who commented. That’s when I realized this was no ordinary blog spam attack. My search revealed some startling findings…