Written by T. M. Suffield |
Monday, November 1, 2021
It is easier—more comfortable, less effort, and less vulnerable—to engage with church content on social media platforms than to do so in person would be. While using the platforms to their upmost could be a helpful step into church for many—and enough so that I think it’s worth engaging in some fashion—the conversion will be hard, and harder the more you’ve suggested what you’re doing online is church. Also, plenty of people will feel the draw the other way, to disengage from meeting together and to use the online ‘alternatives’ instead.

This article in the New York Times describes two tools that Facebook are developing for churches. Firstly, a subscription service, “where users pay, for example, $9.99 per month and receive exclusive content, like messages from the bishop” and secondly a prayer service “where members of some Facebook groups can post prayer requests and others can respond.”
As my friend Duncan put it to me:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptise them and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you. But make sure to put the really good teaching behind a paywall.
Friends, Scientology is not our model. The fact that senior leaders of a number of churches didn’t immediately smell a rat means something’s gone wrong with their noses.
I won’t speculate what their problems may be, but this is a terrible idea. So terrible it surely only needs to be laughed at. What we offer we offer for free. Yes, we ask for people’s money, that’s how all churches exist and continue to run, but these are generous offerings in response to what they received from God.
Or in the crassest terms, if you really want an extra £10 a month from someone, teach them the really good stuff. God might inspire them to want to give it to you.
Praying to commercial gods
I’m more concerned about the prayer tool, because it sounds like something we might conceivably use. But why are Facebook doing this? After all, Facebook is not our friend. People who used to work there have been surprisingly candid about their intent to ‘exploit a vulnerability in human psychology’.1 The old adage that if it’s free you’re the product rings true. Facebook are an advertising company, which they make no bones about.
I am concerned that if I input my prayer request I will be bombarded with adverts on their platforms for services which will fix my problem in some fashion. I may even be deceived into thinking this is a message from the Lord. Can the Almighty move an advertising algorithm to my benefit? Yes. But that doesn’t mean he did.
Imagine the most painful situation. A couple struggling with the deep feelings of shame and the ongoing heartache of infertility summon up the courage to input their prayers online. Adverts from fertility clinics, potentially offering all manner of unethical options, abound. At best this is confusing, most likely asking for prayer seems to have deepened their pain.
Even in a more run-of-the-mill situation, do I want an advertising company knowing my deepest thoughts? Their business is structured around knowing as much as they can about me in order to sell me things.
Or, if people are aware of this, do we want them to be afraid to ask for prayer because of how Facebook might use it?
It’s quite possible that many of the tools they’re developing will be useful to gospel ministry. Have a look at my previous post to for some initial thoughts about tools in ministry, and how to approach those questions.
Connection-makers
Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg is quoted as saying “Faith organizations and social media are a natural fit because fundamentally both are about connection.”
Are they? It’s the sort of thing that sounds very reasonable in an executive’s mouth, but let’s pause to hear the nonsense. Is Christianity fundamentally about connection? Is church? It sounds like it could be true enough for us to nod along, but it’s not actually true. It’s truth-adjacent, if you will. It isn’t wrong, but it’s not what the message of the crucified carpenter king is about at all.
“I died on the cross because I really want you all to love each other and get connected.”
Not Jesus, thank goodness
Let’s not accept the premise. Are we given ‘connection’ with God by Jesus work on our behalf? I suppose, but much better I’m given sonship, friendship, and a table richly laden. I’m adopted, not simply connected. By the Emperor of the cosmos, the Potentate of Time. As the meme goes, “you and I are not the same.”
A Centre of Gravity
Here perhaps we reach for a bigger lesson. Is there nothing that cannot be online? Is there nothing that cannot be subsumed under totalising social platforms? Sometimes it feels like there isn’t anything left. But it’s a lie. Most of what makes life good, from the Lord’s table to gathering around my table, is not online.
I appreciate that there will be some who would beg to differ, and that they have often been driven to online places that understand them from deep and lasting hurt. I can only sympathise and gently suggest that while I’m sure those spaces have been very helpful, there is better promised.
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In the 2005 interview, Zimmer said, “It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of ‘thank God the war is over’ kind of thing. It wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back, she said. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded.” Three months earlier, Mendonsa had been at the helm of the USS The Sullivans during the Battle of Okinawa and dragged survivors and the dead from the water. Nurses helped save many lives.

The end of Western civilisation as we know it could come down to this: either the masses will get so utterly sick and tired of all the crapola being forced down their throats by the loony left, or the Woke brigade will triumph and we will all be toast. Things really are moving in that direction.
And the way things are now going, pretty soon even celebrating things like the end of WWII and the defeat of Hitler and the Nazis will be declared to be illegal. Consider a quite recent episode of this woke insanity which has caused a massive uproar on the social media – and rightly so.
One of the most iconic photos of all of WWII was about to be banned by the Veterans Affairs Department in the hyper-left Biden administration. But in this case people power meant the government had to do a very quick backdown. But it was not the first time these clowns tried pulling off stuff like this, nor will it be the last.
The picture itself is one of exuberant celebration. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese officially surrendered, bringing this wretched global conflict to a close. One young sailor, George Mendonsa, gave an impromptu celebratory act by giving a young Jewish dental assistant who was passing by a quick hug and a kiss. The rest is history.
However, in our current climate of political correctness, this is now seen as a great evil – one that must forever be purged from the history books. But when ordinary Americans got wind of what was about to happen, they instantly rose to their feet and spoke out. As one media account puts it:
The Veterans Affairs secretary has reversed a department memo that aimed to ban VA displays of the iconic “V-J Day in Times Square” photograph of a Navy sailor kissing a strange woman on the streets of New York at the end of World War II. Secretary Denis McDonough acted hours after a copy of a memo from a VA assistant undersecretary requesting the photo’s removal from all VA health facilities was shared on social media. The memo had said the photo “depicts a non-consensual act” and is inconsistent with the department’s sexual harassment policy. 
Claims of her being basically sexually assaulted have been around for some time. The Me-Too movement has played this up, among others. The woman in the photo, whose married name was Greta Zimmer Friedman, did say that the kiss took her by surprise, but she did not regard it as an attack on her person.
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Numerous denominational institutions, conventions, seminaries, and churches alike are facing a reckoning for their failure to proclaim the oracles of God and safeguard Christ’s sheep from savage wolves seeking to devour. 

A recent worldview survey was released from The Barna Group detailing what many have been saying for years: there is a fundamental issue in the church and it stems from the pulpits. The results of this report are particularly damning, as they indicate only 41% of lead pastors, 28% of associate pastors, 13% of teaching pastors, 12% of youth pastors, and 4% of executive pastors actually hold to a comprehensive worldview. Taken on the whole, just under 2/3 of pastors embrace a form of syncretism, which is the blending of various belief systems together as one. In other words, purported ministers of the Christian faith don’t actually hold to the Christian faith, but an eclectic grab-bag of ideological, philosophical, and theological ideas that are fundamentally at odds with one another. The impact this has upon the congregants cannot be overstated.
When one considers past reports, such as The State of Theology from Ligonier Ministries, it is little wonder why so many Christians are embracing heresy condemned by the forebearers of our faith. It is little wonder why so many lead lives opposed to the faith they profess when those in leadership model a life of unbridled hedonism, a rejection of the Word of God, and an embrace of various competing worldviews and philosophies that run counter to the Christian faith. Many have no concept of how the Word of God applies to every aspect of life because they have never been taught how it applies to all of life.
Don’t misunderstand me to be saying that there is a reasonable excuse mankind can give in times of such ignorance; the onus is still upon us all to know and love God. Yet when the shepherds do not shepherd—or when they mislead the people to place their trust in false gods, false doctrines, and false practices, surely, they shall bear greater culpability. Afterall, Jesus did have much compassion upon sheep without a shepherd. Jesus did, in fact, vehemently oppose those who created many obstacles, burdens, and hurdles, for the people of God to jump through. Christ likewise despised those who twisted the truth, calling them sons of their father, Satan.
Shall we collectively scratch our heads in wonder and wring our hands in frustration at why is the church in such shambles?
Occam’s Razor would lead us to believe that these shepherds are not shepherding. And yet if these men are not shepherding, the question must be asked: precisely what is it that they do?
You see, it is the shepherds who will be held to the strictest account by God for their failure to teach sound doctrine (Ja. 3:1). It is the pastors who will be judged by God for their ineptitude to guard the flock from perverse doctrines and the carnal depravities of evil men. They are to be men, fierce men, building upon the foundation laid by Christ, and yet so many are keen on cutting corners and running roughshod through those actually seeking to edify the body. Rather than building upon the cornerstone, they have all but rejected it, crudely piling on the straw and fluff of competing, but blind, dumb, deaf, and lifeless gods. To borrow a phrase from Ezekiel, these shepherds are lifting up dung-gods before the people, smearing excrement on the pulpits and even the people of Yahweh.
Rather than lift up those sacred truths of old, they hide the Law of God behind the wall of the sanctuary. There is little cry of, “Thus saith the Lord!” Instead, many pepper their sermons with newspaper clippings, humorous anecdotes, and not-a-few out of context Bible verses so as to save face before the undiscerning ones. They preach canned sermons written by other men, lifting up the silver screen as if to find the shred of Christ “At the Movies,” as they ask the rhetorical question, “Are you not entertained?” Well do they tend to the goats, belittling, demeaning, defaming, and unhitching from the very Word of God as if to say the Christian faith is religion a la carte. You can form a quasi-Christian worldview and flourish, so they say. Many teach that you can compartmentalize your faith neatly in one part of your life, as if the Sovereign One does not demand wholesale allegiance, slavery even, to Christ.
The litmus test of the faithful minister of God is his integrity, yet we have all but abandoned the very inspired Words of our Lord when it comes to the qualifications listed for such men. Many find themselves in the crosshairs of the apostle Paul, who he condemns in Romans 2, for though they teach that others should not steal, they steal. Though they teach that none should commit adultery, they commit adultery. And though they proclaim that all men should flee from idols, they rob temples, raise up the high places once more, and neglect to teach themselves of that which they shout from the pulpits. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of them.
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