Stop Hiding behind God

This week I was in Los Angeles for some meetings, so this blog was written from wonderful sunny L.A. Between meetings and events I sat in my favorite place a Starbucks in Hollywood. While reading news online and seeing some on TV last night from my hotel room, I saw some things that I just feel I need to get out about two events that are related in a way. One was a TV news story and the other was a missionary story, both of which I looked up online. I’m going to put the two together and show you how some people use the tools God gave them and others make excuses in the name of God.

First, in my travels out here I knew of the news of a personal friend of mine, Kerry Gibson. He is a national evangelist for the Christian Motorcyclist Association and this week he has been over in Haiti on a mission trip to deliver motorcycles to remote pastors in that country. While he and his group were in Haiti, there was an outbreak of violence. The mission team has been in hiding in a hotel waiting for things to clear up so they can get out of there. I mention this to tell you that you can go to CNN’s website and read the story. However if you were in any way linked to your personal friends through a network like Facebook you would be able to get local updates from a personal friend who could just type it on his phone and the message would get to your friends and they would know what’s going on. I myself use several of these tools. For example, I use Facebook for updates so my friends and family know where I am in my travels. It’s also a way for me to inform old friends when I’m in town or maybe to list a place where I’m speaking that they could join me for a catch up, or just to get a personal hand shake or hug…

I mention Kerry and his situation because we are personal friends. I could have called his phone, or he called mine to tell what’s going on. But he used another form to get his message out and not to have to repeat it 100 times. Kerry and I could tell you a story from an event over the summer where I was leading a ride and my friend on the bike behind me crashed and passed on. When we got to the hospital, lots of people wanted to talk to me and ask me for my story. Rather than tell it a hundred times Kerry and I sat in a corner and I told him. He then gathered a group to tell all the story and save me from a thousand questions. So you see, Facebook could be that way to tell your friends a story rather than calling a 100 or 1000 people to tell of things happening.

I now tell this because last night a TV reporter here in LA mentioned a Los Angeles Times story of a pastor who is telling his church leaders they “MUST” give up their Facebook pages if they want to continue in the leadership of the church. His belief is that about 20 people in his church have marriage problems and they started due to Facebook.

Well I think this guy is a nut and the church leadership should ask for his resignation as pastor for being so DUMB. Sorry I just can’t help but feel this guy is an idiot to first tell this to his staff, and second to have a national news story tell about this. Clearly he is a pastor who just wants to be in the national spotlight. While I could see his view of how he wants to protect those other people in his church, the old days of pastors telling people to separate themselves from the world, to go live in their own private places in the mountains and wait for God to come back for us all are past. This is NOT God’s plan.

If you are a Christian, your job is to go and tell the world. Kerry and his crew are in “Go and tell” mode, and at quite a risk, I should say. I personally believe that the Christian pastors from 30 years ago in well-meaning tasks like the one who wants to ban Facebook from leaders in his church are the reason that so many Christians are being shut out of mainstream America.

Now, while discussing this story with a young man names Donavan at the local Starbucks this morning, he seemed to think that this pastor may have a good point in the relationships that are out there. Also Donavan mentioned how the social media is going to be the one thing that could put all of our, shall we say, “dirt” out there for the world to read. Imagine how your life could be tracked, a record of all you have done on display, with pictures to back it up.

A final note in this, it’s your freedom of speech to be able to post your life on Facebook. I post a lot about myself, my motorcycle road trips, even my business trips.

I want to know how you feel about Facebook, or any social media site. Do you think this pastor, or other spiritual leaders should be marked as crazy? Do you see the value of your freedom of speech? Are you using facebook for something constructive?

I put these questions out for people to think about. I have so many more thoughts about the ways that things could be used for good or bad. As a Christian I hate when a dumb pastor uses God to further his name by making such dumb demands, then using the media to get his name out a idiot. Christian stop building up churches and start spreading the true message that God sent to us in his son Jesus.

Live Love Rock on.