Gossiping Christians: Act Your Age, Not Your Shoe Size

Twitter is a great social network and can be used for many things.  Friends keeping in touch, like-minded people sharing information, a marketing forum or an electronic bulletin board.  I know teenagers and college students act badly on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, but I expect more from adults.  Especially Christian adults.

Gary Lamb, Twitter and C3 Church

Last year Pastor Gary Lamb was involved in a scandal that ended up with him losing his pastorate, his wife and many friends.  He admitted what he had done, apologized and moved on.  Recently, however, Gary announced that he is in the process of starting another church.  He put together a team, tweeted and blogged about his new endeavor.  He explained what he planned to do and why.

Does Gary have the right to start a new church?  Yes.  Is it too soon for him to start a new church.  In my opinion it is, but I don’t know.  Should he start a new church in the same community?  I believe that’s a bad idea because there are too many open wounds that still need tending.  That said, what Gary Lamb does is his business.  If he is out of order, God will deal with him.

Cyber Stalking and Harassment

I am intrigued about what happens in the life of a pastor who steps down and begins over; so about twice a month I look at Gary Lamb’s Twitter page.  When I looked yesterday and saw he was starting a new church, I also began to see the chatter about him and his new church.  Some of the tweets were positive, some were negative and some were down right malicious.  So I began to follow the trail.

I could not believe that people had created fake ID’s so they could send malicious tweets about the church and about Gary’s personal life.  To me, the magnitude and malice of the tweets are the equivalence of cyber stalking.  The people sending these tweets are not unsaved, unchurched people.  They are Bible totin’, scripture quotin’ believers.  Since when did Christians begin to think that we have the right to stalk and harass someone because we don’t believe in what they are doing?  Oh, I forgot, we do it all the time!

When I was a child,

I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me (1 Cor. 13: 11).  These people need to grow up.  Their actions are childish at best and un-Christian at worst.  If they don’t like what he’s doing, they shouldn’t attend his services.  If they want to criticize him, they shouldn’t do so behind the mask of a fake identity.  If they think their friends are making a mistake by attending his services tell their friends why they believe he may not be qualified to lead, but not all the gossip that goes with it.

There’s a way to criticize with love.  Jesus showed us how.  These people should try it, they might like it.

Tweet This Post 

Tags: C3 Church, childish Christians, Gary Lamb, gossiping Christians, Twitter, Twitter gossip