During the past few months, I have had some interesting confrontations with a few people at my church. When they talked to me they all had an issue with my personal facebook profile. The first two people had an issue with a movie that I reviewed. Some of you know that I love to watch movies and use them constantly in my ministry. Some movies are better than others, but I never judge a movie by its cover and/or rating. One movie I was reviewing had a movie title that had a curse word in it. I reviewed the movie on flixster, and continued with the rest of my day. The next few days, I had two people at church talked to me about the posting and thought that it was inappropriate and could hurt me in my searching for a position at a church. Apparently, my settings on the flixster app, posted the movie review to my facebook page without me knowing it. So I thank them for their concern, changed my app settings, and removed the review off my facebook page.
Yesterday, at around 11:00 pm, I posted a link on a friends facebook page about a conversation we were having a few weeks earlier. The link was about a person who makes his/her living by doing something very unusual. This morning, someone from my church commented on my link, saying that the content could affect my future looking for a pastoral position. After reading the comment this person left, I agreed and deleted it. If it wasn’t so late, I would have used better judgment when posting things on a social networking site.
I tell these stories because it made me think about how much stock we put on material things, and in some cases the past. On facebook, I have seen people from my church or other church event, post something like, “This girl is so hot (with a picture of a female dressed provocatively),” or “Holy (expletive), you won’t believe what this guy did.” Now, I know that these poor people have been subject to either their facebook being spammed or hacked. This unfortunate thing happened to them because they clicked on a link a “friend” gave them or they were clicking around on something that they shouldn’t have. Now what if this person had a job and their employer saw this on their page and fired them because of the content. Would that be fair?
My former boss does not have a facebook page. The reason why he does not is because, when he was young, did some stupid stuff in college. One time, a friend posted a picture of him, with a drink in his hand, on his wife’s facebook page. The wife ended up removing the tag on the picture. My boss’ reason for not having a facebook page was so that the stupid things he did in the past, would not affect his ministry. Even though, it has been over 5 years since he graduated, he is afraid of how his past could affect him today.
I think it is sad on how much power a website has over people. If a church based its decision on not hiring me because of what I, or someone else put on my facebook page, then I guess that is not where I need to be. In my life I have seen, pastors look great on the outside, but in reality were a brood of snakes. My 10 year high school reunion is coming up. What if someone was taking pictures of me with my former classmates and everyone had a beer in there hand except me. Would it hurt my chances in finding a job because it was posted on facebook? Let us say that I my entire time there I was sharing the gospel to my class mates. Someone wouldn’t see that in the picture. They would see it and think,” this guy likes to hang out with people who drink. We don’t want this guy as our pastor.”
As Christians, and those who are in leadership at our church, I think we need to be careful in making judgments on people by looking at their facebook page. I also think that we need to be accountable to other people and have conversations with them about the content on their page. I am not angry or upset with the three people who have talked to me about the things on my page. I thank them for their love, support, and showing me how something could hurt my chances at a career. However, I also can see how we could be quick to judgments and make decisions on the things we see. Ultimately, we need to put more stock in the guiding of the Holy Spirit, then on facebook when it comes to decisions.
