Daniel Darling's Blog, page 15
August 13, 2020
6 Social Media Habits Pastors Should Avoid
“… And he’s a pastor!”
I hear this phrase almost every week about a pastor’s online activity—namely, their treatment toward another human being through harsh speech. It’s almost as if we get behind a keyboard or touchscreen and forget our calling as heralds of God’s Word, shepherds of God’s people.
Today there are many ways for pastors to disqualify—or at least embarrass—themselves, but few are as easy and fatal as social media. One friend of mine remarked recently that before looking for a church, Christians should check a pastor’s social media feed. That’s good advice.
Pastors—particularly when we have that label in our social media bio—can make or break the opinion of seekers or cynics when it comes to representing Christ well in our interactions. And a pastor who displays a critical spirit or ill will toward those not in their tribe can quickly discourage other believers on Twitter.
So what are some critical mistakes pastors can make on social media? Here are six of the most common ones we should avoid.
Read more:
Image credit: Christopher on Flickr Creative Commons
The Way Home: Paula Faris on why she walked away from her dream job
Paula Faris was the weekend host of Good Morning America, an anchor on The View and one of America’s top journalists when a series of trials forced her to reconsider her calling and walk away from her dream job. Paula has also hosted World News Now and America This Morning.
Paula joins me on The Way Home podcast to talk about her career in broadcasting, what it’s like to live out the Christian faith in a secular news environment, and her brand new memoir: Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling.
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Paula Faris is a television correspondent for ABC News and host of the ABC podcast Journeys of Faith. From 2014 to 2018, Faris was co-anchor of Good Morning America Weekend. She also was co-host of The View for seasons 19-21. Faris graduated from Cedarville University with a degree in broadcast communications. She lives with her husband and three children in New York.
New Book: Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling .
Twitter: @paulafaris
Facebook: Paula Faris
August 6, 2020
The Way Home: Tim Challies on how Christians should engage online
Tim Challies has been blogging on the Internet since the Internet first started. His blog, challies.com, was an early pioneer in Christian content online. Tim joins me on The Way Home podcast to discuss the way Christians should engage online and on social media, as well as the good and bad ways we approach the word “discernment.”
Show Notes
Guest Biography: Tim Challies is a Christian, a husband to Aileen and a father to three children aged 13 to 19. He worships and serves as an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a book reviewer, a co-founder of Cruciform Press, and has written a number of books including:
The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Crossway, 2007)
Sexual Detox: A Guide For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn (Cruciform Press, 2010)
The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion (Zondervan, 2011)
Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity (Cruciform Press, 2015)
Visual Theology: Seeing and Understanding the Truth About God (Zondervan, 2016)
A Visual Theology Guide to the Bible (Zondervan, 2019)
Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History (Zondervan, 2020)
Website: challies.com
Twitter: @challies
Facebook: Facebook.com/challies
Featured Resource: My new book, A Way With Words, focuses on how Christians can use their online conversations for good. In the book, I lay out an approach that applies biblical wisdom to our engagement with social media, an approach that neither retreats from modern technology nor ignores the harmful ways in which Christians often engage publicly. A Way With Words comes out in less than two weeks, but you can pre-order now here.
Jesus in the Bio But Nasty in the Timeline?
A follower of Jesus myself, I normally like to see those words on someone’s Twitter profile. Lately, however, I’m reluctant to scroll down for fear that this same follower has cussed out a politician on the social media platform or tweeted nasty things at a person they disagree with.
How can people who claim Jesus as Lord act so mean?
First, we often think that because we are fighting for the right things – justice, truth, righteousness — that it doesn’t matter how we say what we say. The Apostle Peter, no stranger to impulsive talk, has a tip for us. He urged first-century believers to “have an answer for everyone for the hope that lies within you” but to do this with “gentleness and kindness.” In other words, civility and courage are not enemies, but friends. The loudest person in the room or online is not necessarily the most courageous.
Second, we go off the rails online because we forget the humanity of the person on the other end of that tweet. That person we are calling out or punching at rhetorically is not a mere avatar to be crushed, but a person, made in the image of God. Those with whom we disagree are not the sum total of their opinions. James, Jesus’ brother and another leader in the first-century church, urges us to consider the imago dei of the other before we unleash a verbal assault.
Third, we often abandon kindness because politics has replaced religion as the primary driver of our discourse. We may have Jesus in the bio, but it’s the Republican or Democratic Party that is really in our hearts.
The collapse of religious institutions and the decline of church attendance have created a vacuum that politics is only too ready to fill. But politics makes for a disappointing god. It only takes and will never fully satisfy the longings of the heart.
How do we know we are worshipping at the altar of the 24/7 political cycle? When we make every argument a political one. When every aspect of life becomes read through a narrow ideological lens. When every criticism of our candidate is perceived as an attack on our hero. When we turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of leaders in our ideological camp.
As we muddle through the coming election season and a global pandemic that has divided Americans, Christians will be more tempted than ever to abandon civility.
Read more here at RNS.
July 30, 2020
The Way Home: N.T. Wright on Finding God in the Pandemic
Show Notes
Guest Biography: N.T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and one of the world’s leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the Chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. For twenty years he taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford University. His award-winning books include The Case for the Psalms, How God Became King, Simply Jesus, After You Believe, Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, Scripture and the Authority of God. Perhaps his most significant work is Resurrection of the Son of God.
Latest Book: God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath
Website: ntwrightpage.com
Facebook: Official N.T. Wright
July 4, 2020
Politics and the Pandemic
USA Today published my latest oped on politics and the pandemic. Here is an excerpt:
We are learning more and more about the virus every day and our responses are getting smarter and more targeted. And our best and brightest minds are working feverishly to develop vaccines and treatments to hold back this deadly contagion that threatens our most vulnerable.
But we cannot succeed if we are divided. We need less finger-pointing and more cooperation. We need our institutions to display greater transparency. We need leaders with credibility in a time of cynicism.
It erodes public trust when public officials shame one kind of public gathering and encourage another. It’s not very thoughtful when others confuse wearing a mask with an infringement of liberty. And it fans the flame of division when media outlets let bias and sensationalism shape their coverage instead of informing the public and reporting the facts.
What we need are leaders willing to speak candidly and take measures, not guided by social media chatter or media pressure, but based on the data in front of them and informed by human dignity. We need hope and realism, faith and science, courage and civility.
Read more
Why Words Matter to God
It’s a bit ironic that the human race’s descent into darkness began with the serpent’s own twisted misrepresentation of God’s words of instruction to His image-bearers. Words, after humanity’s fall into sin, can now be used either to injure or inspire.
This is why King David prayed that the words of his mouth be “acceptable” in the sight of God. In a fallen world, we often don’t even understand the weight of what we say or, in this age, what we type.
David’s son, Solomon, understood well the power of words. The wisest man in all the world often reflected on language in his proverbs:
There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing (Proverbs 12:18 ESV).
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
and those who love it will eat its fruits (Proverbs 18:21 ESV).
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. And, we might say today, the power of the thumb.
Words can create or destroy; they can uplift or condemn. They can reflect the Word by which God has spoken, or they can echo the whispers of the serpent. So powerful are words, the Apostle James tells Christian leaders that “no person can tame” them (James 3:8).
If Solomon saw fit to warn the people of God in the Old Testament of the power of words, and if James saw fit to warn the early church of the power of words, how much more today should God’s people heed what God is speaking to us about how we speak?
We live in a world with a vast and seemingly unlimited economy of words. There are more ways to communicate today than at any time in human history.
It may seem at times that stewarding our communication, especially the easy and free way we communicate online, is next to impossible. We might say with James, “Who can tame this beast?” But we should remember that those destructive half-truths in the garden were not the final word.
Jesus, God’s Final Word, has spoken a word over those who have turned to Him in faith. He declares His word that we are justified and we are transformed. Jesus has conquered that unruly, death-dealing beast, and has given us God’s Holy Spirit to help us tame our tongues and our thumbs.
This originally posted at Facts and Trends and is an excerpt from my new book, A Way With Words, releasing in August and available now for pre-order.
May 29, 2020
Three Reasons White Pastors Need To Start Preaching On Race
We have all watched, horrified, at the viral video of the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man arrested in Minneapolis. It is video evidence of a reality that most of our black and brown brothers and sisters in Christ have been trying to tell us for years. And a few weeks ago, an unarmed black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was killed by two white vigilantes after innocently walking through a construction site. It is clear we have a race problem in America.
Thankfully, this has spurred many evangelical leaders toward a renewed emphasis on racial reconciliation. But how do individual, local churches begin to embody this kind of racial reconciliation in their own communities? It must begin, I believe, with pastors—particularly white pastors—prioritizing racial reconciliation in their preaching and teaching. Those called to teach the Bible carry a weighty responsibility (James 3:1) to feed the people of God (1 Peter 5:2-4).
I didn’t fully recognize this until I became a pastor. It was while serving my congregation that I realized the influence of the office. Church members value what their pastor values. In many ways, they depend on their church leaders to help them understand what is and what should be important. Those of us who spend our working hours analyzing the news, reading theology, and learning from a variety of sources help filter these things for church members who are busy working long hours, raising their families, and doing their best to study the Word and evangelize.
For most white evangelical pastors, racial reconciliation hasn’t been a primary emphasis of their teaching. This may be for a variety of reasons. First, as the majority culture, white Christians don’t feel the sting of prejudice. It’s not that all white evangelicals are insensitive; it’s that many are not in proximity to racism or injustice. Because most of our friends are white, we aren’t forced to empathize with our minority brothers and sisters in Christ. Second, there is likely some fear of addressing race. Racial issues are delicate. Pastoral leadership is already a tightrope act; why stir up more trouble? Third, it could be that pastors might view racial reconciliation as a worthy goal, but not a gospel issue. Russell Moore reminds us that it is:
The church, the Apostle Paul said, is a sign of God’s manifold wisdom, to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph. 3:10). When God joined together in one church, those who are both Jewish and Gentile, he was doing more than negating the bad effects of ethnic strife. He was declaring spiritual warfare. When those who the world thinks should hate each other, instead love each other, the church is testifying that our identity is in Jesus Christ (Col. 3:11). We cannot be pulled apart from each other, because we are one body, and a body that is at war with itself is diseased.
So how do pastors begin to preach on racial reconciliation in a gospel-centered way? Here are three ways I’ve found helpful in my own ministry and in observing the ministries of others:
1. By Faithful Exposition of the Scriptures
The best way, in my view, to embed the priority of racial reconciliation into the everyday lives of our people is through the faithful application of the text. By this I mean through expository preaching. I’m a firm believer in the systematic, Jesus-centered preaching of whole counsel of God. The task of a pastor is to declare what God has already said in His Word.
Racial reconciliation is not something that has to be forced onto the text. In fact, if you are preaching systematically through Scripture and you do not preach on it, you might be skipping it. The thrust of God’s promise to Abraham and the promises to Israel are His desire to be made known among all nations. And almost every New Testament book embeds its presentation of the gospel with its unifying, reconciling power.
You can’t faithfully preach the Great Commission passages without stopping to acknowledge them as the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to build His church from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
You can’t preach Galatians without preaching on the racial divisions that flared within the early church.
You can’t exposit Ephesians without spending time on the gospel’s bringing together of diverse people into “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2:15).
You can’t preach through Acts 1:8 without seeing the gathering of the peoples of God as a sign of God’s promise to call a people to himself from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
You can’t do a series on the book of Revelation and not behold the majestic beauty of the diversity around God’s throne in Revelation 7 and 9.
Sadly, I’ve heard many messages from many “New Testament churches” that never touched on the priority of racial reconciliation found in Scripture. Why is this? It could be that we, as white evangelicals, don’t see it as a priority because we don’t see the problem of racial tension in our midst. It’s time pastors start seeing and preaching what is already there in the text. The heart of God’s people must be stirred to make this as much a gospel priority as Christ has in His inspired Word.
2. By Faithful Discussion of History and Culture
We’re not only reminded to preach on racial reconciliation when the text demands it, but faithful pastors should take the opportunity to preach on racial reconciliation either when the calendar reminds us or when a cultural issue is so big it becomes necessary to address it. My preference is to do this kind of topical preaching sparingly. The best way to address racial reconciliation and other cultural issues is to be faithful to them when they are specifically referenced in the text. This way your people understand that racial issues are gospel issues, not merely political or cultural issues. But exceptions can be made, as we do on issues like abortion with events like Sanctity of Life Sunday.
It’s important when we do a special emphasis that we still adhere to good hermeneutical practices and avoid a sloppy, proof-texting approach. It simply means we choose a text like Ephesians 3 and exegete it faithfully. (See here for a good example of this).
What a special Sunday like this signals, to the congregation, is just how important an issue is. It also sends a signal to our minority brothers and sisters that we are seriously thinking through, studying, and learning their heritage. Sundays like this might also be accompanied by resourcing the church through blogs, newsletters, and handouts. We might recommend good books to read on civil rights and encourage people to have meaningful conversations with people of other ethnic backgrounds. Your church might also consider hosting a roundtable with leaders from the community, maybe even a local civil-rights leader.
3. By Faithful Sensitivity in Application and Attribution
I’ve often found it is in the types of applications made during preaching that demonstrates pastoral sensitivity to the people. This is where pastors can offer leadership on an issue like racial reconciliation. When we talk of forgiveness of sin, perhaps we might not only name sins that are common: sexual sin, financial impropriety, and church gossip. We might also include prejudice, pride, and racism. When we speak words of comfort to our people during trial, we might not always include the same kinds of suffering stories. We might instead include a story from the perspective of a minority fighting oppression in the civil rights era.
My friend, David Prince, assistant professor of preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and pastor of preaching and vision at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky told me that white pastors need to reach outside of their own experiences when making applications from the text:
“The reason we don’t immediately think of racial issues is the same reason we read past famine in the Bible without thinking much of it. We are the dominant majority so we think of ourselves as the insiders and the norm. Loving our neighbor means counting others as more significant than ourselves. Awareness of and sensitivity to ethnic minorities is not some foreign social agenda–It is Christianity 101.”
Application is a subtle teaching tool. It personalizes, for the congregation, the abstract things we are preaching from the text. It sends a message; this is the kind of thing the Bible is talking about. We should be specific, original, and diverse in our use of application. This means we shouldn’t only draw from our white majority status, but from the experiences of minorities.
It also helps if we quote, non-white pastors and theologians and acknowledge their contribution to the shape of Christian history. This kind of preaching, however, has to be shaped by a pastor who has the curiosity to read outside of his tribe and experiences. White pastors should read biographies of civil rights heroes, histories of the era, and should engage in regular conversations with minority pastors and leaders.
This is about more than merely adding some diversity to the message. It’s about serving your people by cultivating a growing, learning, changing mind. You, as the pastor, will model for them what it looks like to work for racial reconciliation. And you will see your people, over time, begin to emulate what you display.
This is an updated version of a piece originally published by Facts and Trends.
My friend Trillia Newbell and I edited a Bible study for churches, families, and small groups called The Church and the Racial Divide. It’s a six session video series from evangelical leaders like Walter Strickland, Juan Sanchez, Russell Moore, and Trevor Atwood that sheds light on issues of race, culture, and the gospel, and equips small groups to take action. Learn more here.
May 20, 2020
Forgiveness in a Cancel Culture
Today, we can get the news quickly and react just as quickly. We can thumb a few sentences and press send, immediately expressing our thoughts to thousands or perhaps millions of people around the world. This kind of power isn’t just available to celebrities and politicians. Anyone can post anything on a seemingly unlimited number of platforms.
In many ways, this is a welcome new reality. When a natural disaster strikes, relief and aid can be mobilized sooner. When there is a tragic death, online fundraisers can be created and money can be raised in mere hours. Missing persons can be located when millions of people spread the word. And, unlike previous generations when many voices were not part of a national conversation, the barrier to entry to speak, to write, and to mobilize are much lower. Movements can be created faster and more voices can be heard.
But the torrent of information coming at us combined with the ease of instant communication can also be damaging. And our instinct to be right, to be first, to be heard is one of the reasons we often make mistakes. Because we don’t wait before speaking, we allow confirmation bias and the Internet’s hive mind to keep us from wisely evaluating both what we are hearing and what we are communicating. Alan Jacobs says that our “instinct for consensus is magnified and intensified in our era because we deal daily with a wild torrent of what claims to be information but is often nonsense.”
We also don’t realize how much of this “nonsense” is a form of entertainment, an intoxicating theater of the absurd. Read more here:
May 14, 2020
The Way Home: David Kinnaman on the state of the Church
David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, joins me to talk about the 2020 research on the State of the Church.
The decline of church attendance is well documented. What happened? Barna has committed this next year to empowering the Church with the insights and resources they need to reach the unchurched in their communities.
Show Notes
Book: Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon [image error]
Website: barna.com
Twitter: @davidkinnaman
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