Even though I don't work in a church, it's no secret that I have very close ties to the church. I attended undergrad at a Christian university, so most of my friends are pastors. My wife works at our church. I volunteer in two areas at the church. So it's pretty safe to say that me and the church are like PB&J. (I'll let you make the call whether I'm the peanut butter or the jelly.)
Let's face facts: in many senses, the church is a business. Granted, it's a nonprofit, but the church has employees that get paid and work in 40 hour increments. Most pastors I know, since they work Sundays, take off a Monday or a Friday each week, so it's not particularly as if they're working this vast amount of overtime.
The church is also very reflective of the government in the way it gets its income. The government gets its income from taxes, and the church gets its income from tithes and offerings, which is very synonymous with taxes. Despite the fact that church leaders are hired and not elected like most government officials, the way each group behaves on social media is radically different.
And frankly, I think pastors can take some lessons.
Let's use the example of former Illinois congressman Aaron Schock. Schock, who was very coincidentally indicted on 24 criminal accounts just yesterday (11/10/16), misused government funds to live a very lavish lifestyle. Amongst buying concert tickets, private flights, and expensive cufflinks, Schock spent tons of money renovating his congressional office to look like something out of the PBS show Downton Abbey.
How did Schock get caught? At least in part, social media.
He was dumb enough to post pictures of some of these dealings to Instagram. One report I found noted that government officials were able to indict Schock by using the location metadata provided from the Instagram photos Schock took and posted himself!
I'm going to ask an obvious question, but I ask it to make a point: Why did people care that Schock was using money this way? An obvious question begets an obvious answer: they weren't happy he was using taxpayer dollars this way when they should have gone to other things.
So let's apply this same formula to pastors. Pastors, who are paid by the "tax dollars" (tithes and offerings), are expected to use the funds in a way that honors the desires of the "taxpayers" (church members). So, like Aaron Schock, it would be stupid to post pictures of beaches or frequent retreats on social media, right?
Well... that's exactly what's happening.
Okay, let me back up for a minute here. I want to be fair and say that this isn't the case for most pastors I know. A lot of my personal friends are great people, and they pretty much never post anything that anybody would bat a negative eye at. But still, it happens. I'm not looking to shame any specific names, so I'll keep it anonymous.
And here's the thing, too: I like a lot of these people despite the fact they are doing this. I just don't think they realize what they're doing. That's probably because they are surrounded in an environment of folks who act similarly and aren't aware of the outside perspective.
I share this post because it does frustrate me on a level, and I can only imagine its 10x worse from the perspective of some people. For example, I have a great job, but I can imagine there are blue collar workers out there making meager wages and never take vacations. When they see this stuff on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, I can only imagine how mad they get.
And that anger drives folks away from the church.
So pastors, I urge you as a brother in Christ to be careful. If you take a retreat to a beach, you might not want to post that to Instagram. If the church blesses you with a MacBook to work from, you might want to refrain from tweeting about that. I know you don't want to drive the flock away, so please, I urge you to keep these simple ideas in mind any time you post to social media.
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