A Scandalous Tale - Sex, Social Media, and Ministry

What happens when you put over 600 women in closed Facebook Group and ask them to talk about their most intimate issues? You learn:

1. The Church and Christian communities have been far too silent on issues of sex, women’s health, and relationships.

2. We all struggle in these areas. The specifics may change from woman to woman, but we are all trying to figure out how to balance our faith and our flesh, trying to be good stewards of each.

3. Shame has been the leading contributor to the lack of education, self-destructive behaviors, abuse, and the inability to celebrate this great gift of sex.

4. How laughter heals and eases us through the hard lessons.

5. The power of having others invest in your well-being through a kind word, prayer, and tangible support.

6. The joy of discovering your story can help another on their journey.

7. That when you give people a tool they already know how to use, they will create something amazing with it.

When the Scandalous Ladies Facebook Group took off on May 29, 2016, we had no idea what we were in for. The group exploded from three members to over one hundred and fifty in less than three hours. In eleven days, we broke three hundred and fifty, and we are still growing. The pace has slowed a bit, but growth isn’t measured in numbers alone.

During that time, we have had over a dozen women make connections with counselors, eight couples have gone into marriage counseling, and hundreds (that’s right, HUNDREDS!) of women have reported that the overall quality of their marriages have improved. The tales of new found freedom and joy in being a woman are told daily, and the friendships being formed have transformed lives.
Our network and combined resources have helped one woman get out of an abusive relationship and into a safe home, another family is being helped through a hard financial time, and the women of Scandalous gave sacrificially in a successful effort to remove girls from a life threatening situation overseas. Even the men are voicing their praise, as their wives have opened new dialogues about sex and proposed they explore some new adventures between the sheets – or other places!

And we do not show any signs of slowing down anytime soon! Since May we have started a Scandalous Moms group, and this month we launched a public page where men can join in the conversation. Soon we hope to launch a series of international (yes, that’s right! International!) conferences and retreats.

I am sharing all of this with you for two reasons:

1. Yes, would love your involvement and support! Ladies, consider this your personal invitation to join the Scandalous Ladies Facebook Group, and to take part in the discussions on “A Scandalous Faith”, our public page.  Men, we need to hear your voices so join us on the public page too, and please, don’t be shy. We want your insights and opinions that is why we started “A Scandalous Faith.

2. I want everyone to know what a powerful tool social media can be, and I want my Christian and Church friends to pay attention.

Within the Christian community there has traditionally been a huge push for outreach and ministry within our communities. These are admirable and needed aspect of fulfilling the mandates of our faith, but let’s face it, we tend to over complicate things. We focus on big events, massive (and often top heavy) programs, or other ways that we can address the masses with some sort of impersonal ministry machine. We stop looking at people as individuals and meeting them where they are. Instead, we get lost in the program and the structure, defending the machine instead of stopping to value the person the machine is supposed to serve.

This is why I think Scandalous works. You can’t talk about sex, sexuality, and relationships without addressing the person. Our machine is secondary, it is the tool we use to meet people where they are. It doesn’t need to be protected, it does not eat up all our resources, and it serves only one function – it connects us with the people that we are here to serve. For us that machine is social media. It is free, we all have it, we don’t have to teach our people how to use it, and we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We used the tool at hand, and made it serve our purposes.

We took all the things that church people like to complain about when it comes to the internet and flipped it on its head so we could use it to our advantage. Impersonal? Yes, but reinterpret that into anonymous and nonthreatening. Too much sex? Oh, yeah, but maybe that is just one way people are saying they need to talk about these things. Crude humor? Sure, but maybe that is how people express their discomfort as they try to establish a dialogue. Eats up all your time? You bet, but maybe it is because people are looking for something to invest their time in that really matters. Hate filled speech and drama? Absolutely, but maybe that is because there is no place else they can express their need for passion.

We didn’t invent this formula for how to have vital and thriving Facebook community. We stumbled into it by asking people to do one little thing – tell their stories. That is it. Tell your story, let us know that we are not alone wrestling with these major life issues, help us understand how you cope, how you survive, and show us how we can be important in your life. Maybe that is just a place to vent, maybe it is providing a safe space to ask the questions you can’t ask anywhere else, maybe you need someone to laugh with you, or maybe you need someone who is willing to cry with you too.

People will tell you what they need, but you have to be listening. They are saying need community. They need to know that they matter, that they are more important than the cogs of some ministry machine. They need some place to invest, to know that they have the ability to make a difference, and that their experiences matter. And that is all we have provided. The women and men who have joined us on this journey are the ones who have made it work. The amazing team of men and women who have so selflessly devoted their time and energy to fanning this spark of an idea into flames have done little more than provide a place where others mattered – really mattered, not for the numbers that can be tallied on a spreadsheet, but rather for the strength each brings to the table for the rest of us.

We in the Christian community need to stop lamenting over a lack of resources or our inability to get people through the doors of our buildings. We need to go to where the people are, and right now that is social media. But beware, you can’t treat people like projects or offer help in the same manner that you would pitch peanuts to a monkey at a zoo. You have to be willing to give, not a program, not an event, and not some pretty little prepackaged Christian band aid, you have to give yourself. And you do that by giving them your story – your successes, your failures, your humiliations, and your victories because that is the only way they are going to see not just you but the God we serve, the God redeems all things.

It is time we stop being afraid, that we stop hiding behind all the glam and glitz of programs, and using them as an excuse for not being present in our communities or blaming the internet for keeping people away from the good we are trying to do. It is time we showed up. The online community is a community, a very real and thriving community that has extended an invitation to us, so now it’s time to remember your manners and show up. We did and were welcomed with open arms.

Love Is Not Enough - A Response to Rage After the Orlando Shooting

Rage, hatred, venom, and bile – the contents of my Facebook feed this morning. As I sat there trying to skim past the vitriol spewing forth from news sources, churches, the LGBT community, friends, family, and strangers, I realized that it was unavoidable. Our country, our world, has been consumed by frenzied wrath orchestrated by hate-mongers who co-opted the shooting in Orlando as their own personal soap box for whatever cause they deem significant.

Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is supporting a cause that is greater than yours. Everyone has religious, political, moral, or social outrage that needs to be addressed, and it can only be satisfied by your total subservience and homage to their wrath.

And as much as I hate the destructive power of anger, I could feel it sweeping over me. The temptation to rise up, match their rage with my own, demand that they be silent before my more righteous cause, and in doing so merely add my voice to the ever rising din of fury.

Overwhelmed and sickened by it all, I shut off my phone and tried to pray, but all I felt was anger. So I prayed the only thing I could, “God, I need to see this from your perspective, because mine is too small.”

As I sat there trying to subdue my own churning feelings, thoughts began to form. Hurting people hurt people, cliché but true. Unhealed hearts cry out for vindication because they believe healing is impossible. Unredeemed scars fester with bitterness because they are seen as pointless pain. The powerless find power in their victimhood, and the scared lash out because they believe there is no one defend or save them from their terror. The tormented find their identity in their torment and allow their tormentors to define them. And the insecure justify their actions by the fear of those who challenge their stance and the affirmation of those who share in their insecurities.

What is the answer? Vision.

A vision of hope, a vision of healing, a vision of restoration, of deliverance, and purpose. A vision of who they are in the eyes of God, a vison of his love, protection, mercy, and grace. A vision of significance that exceeds personal agendas and political wrangling. A vision that allows us to know that we are more than who we have claimed to be and more than who the world wishes us to be. A vision that cuts across the boundaries of you and I. A vision that exceeds the confines that this world or even our own flesh places upon us. A vision that inspires and empowers us to dare to dream again, to fight again, and to simply be again.

We have lost that vision. We have polluted and degraded it until we are nothing more than creatures of our own making. We have defined ourselves according to titles and traits that are beneath us, and reveled in our right to do so.  We have cut ourselves and the cried because we bled, blaming another for actions, and refusing to take responsibility for the damage we have inflicted on ourselves. We surrendered our God given identities then scream because another dares to call us by the name of the beasts we have become. For while we hate truth, we are more than willing to use it as a knife upon another if it will make them look more like our disfigured selves.  Misery does love company, even if it is that of an enemy who shares in the pain we feel.

So we rage, we scream, we whip others into a frenzy to enjoy their company.  We justify our anger by pointing to the anger we have engendered in those around. We incite, and we riot with the incessant tapping of keys upon our keyboards. Hiding from reality even as we seek to define it for another with our words of hate.

The temptation that faces us all is to deny seeing this in ourselves, not the opposition, not those we have labeled as foe, and not those who dare to hold a view contrary to ours. For we can do nothing to alleviate or rescind their guilt, that is a task we must all face alone before our God. We must all find that place where we learn that our protests mean nothing before him, and our excuses are meaningless in light of his holiness. That place where we embrace the truth that we cannot vindicate or justify our fear and hate because another has allowed these things to rule in their hearts. Instead, we are to serve our King and Lord, refusing to let him be dethroned from hearts by the wrath of another.

And despite what we have been told, love is not enough. It never was. For love is an abstraction wit no real meaning apart from the one who embodies it, and our duty as believers is to embody that vision, the vision of the Father’s love for us and to the world. We cannot do that from a place of fear and rage. For if fear and rage is all we offer then how are they to see a Father who loves, a Father who forgives, who heals, and restores? For surely, they reason in their hearts, we have received none of these great gifts if that is all we have offer another. And I do not want to offer the world another lie upon which to cut themselves.

Shunning Social Media - Why it might not be as holy as you thought

One of the biggest temptations I have to fight is the urge to slink away into my dusty old books and hide among their comforting pages. My life would be simpler if I resign myself to digging through ancient texts, unraveling the Greek and Hebrew of obscure Biblical passages, and drowning in historical documents that you have never heard of – even as I write that the idea pulls at me with an almost irresistible force. No more Facebook squabbles, no more Twitter drama, and no more messages from people I do not know asking me about what the Bible says about their sex lives – but above all, no more finding out just how idiotic my friends can be and my love for them could stay unblemished and unchallenged.

And while it is a grand thought, it is a thought that I cannot surrender to.

Believe it or not, I do have a life off-line, and part of that life is talking to people who are or who will soon be entering into the ministry, and I have found that these friends can be divided into two groups:

1. Those who shun social media.
2. Those who use social media.

And the second group can further be divided into two sub-groups:

1. Those who use social media as a mirror.
2. Those who use social media as a tool.

My friends who shun social media all give me the same reasons: they want to be more focused on the people who are physically present in their lives, they don’t like the drama of it, there is so much garbage out there, it is a waste of their time, it is a distraction from the things that matter, and there is no need to add to the noise. I will admit that these all sound like valid, even holy, reason to stay out of the fray. After all, life is hard enough without inviting a few hundred bickering people into your life, but are they really good reasons not to be involved in what has become an almost universal experience for our culture?

I don’t think so. As social media becomes the most prevalent medium through which ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and even experiences are shared, I believe that if we are to be in touch with our community we need to be going to where the people are and that is social media. For me, social media is the bushes and hedgerows of our day. It can feel as if it is a big impenetrable mass of conflicting and thorny opinions run amuck, but that is where I believe we are called to be. That voice crying in the wilderness, if you will, because let’s be honest, it can get pretty wild.

Another thing about all those reasons, is that if we look closely at them they are focus on one thing – personal comfort. The only possible exception being the first one. However, even that one, to my mind, is suspect, because one of the major problems often discussed among those in ministry is “how do we reach more people.” The answer is pretty obvious, you go to where the people are, and the majority of folk aren’t hanging out in the pastor’s office.  The great, and often ignored, thing about social media is that when someone shows up and you have that chance for a face-to-face encounter, then you have the power to step away. It is a matter of personal discipline, not computer or phone’s fault if you fail to do so.

However, simply being on social media is not enough. Too many good Christians fail to utilize it in an effective way, and I am not just talking about getting your message out, I am talking about using it as a tool to learn about the world we inhabit. Unfortunately, most people fail to do this. Instead, most people use social media as mirror to affirm that the world is filled with people who are just like them or people who hate people just like them.

The thing is social media is what you make and if you want to be self-affirming, personally validating experience, it can be. It is all up to you. For instance, Facebook operates on algorithms that dictate what appears in your newsfeed. If you are only reading conservative Christian news, then eventually that will be all you see. If you only follow pages that share ideas that affirm your own, then you will never be confronted by those who hold idea counter to yours, and consequently will continue to be isolated from events and ideas that are impacting your church and community.

This is why I follow a number of pages whose agenda and bias I disagree with and sometimes even find offensive. My newsfeed run the gamut from reactionary Christian sites that almost make ashamed to be affiliated with the title Christian to ultra-leftist sites that bash my faith with glee. Facebook is so confused by me that in one day suggested posts ranged from where to buy a burqa to pole dancing classes to an article on Atonement Theology, and that is the way I like it. But even more importantly, this is what I have designed it to be through intentional engagement with a world beyond my ideas and beliefs.

For me, social media is a tool, not just a mirror. I use it to know what is going on in the lives of people I love. I am able to be a part, even if it is just virtual presence, in the lives, births, illness, deaths, loves found and lost of those who would never pick up the phone to call.  I get to connect with friends who live down the road, but are too busy to tell me that their kid is excelling at karate, and I get to engage in meaningful conversations with friends from around the globe who share my faith or challenge it. Consequently, I have the opportunity to grow as a person and believer as I share my faith, explore ideas, and hopefully help others do the same.

Not everyone will use social media to the extent that I do, and I am not advocating that you do. I was intentional in building a network that would allow me to reach past my little corner of the world and move into global arena for a reason, but not everyone is called to this level of participation in our electronic world. I can respect that, but limited engagement is not no engagement. And we have been called to be engaged, to be a part of our culture so that we can impact it in meaningful ways, so that we can be wise and aware of the world around us. We can’t do that if we block out the single greatest means of communication available to us today, and that is why I believe everyone who is involved in ministry – at any level – should be part utilizing this as strategic resource.

Now, I know that in many ways this post is preaching to the choir and you, my reader, are probably already using social media as tool I described. So share this with someone who could be benefit from considering what I have shared, and when you do ask them this one question – can you imagine what Paul would have done if Facebook was available to him?