I said it straight, they heard it crooked!

Like many people today I have a Facebook page and I try to update my status regularly. Most of the time I try and put something that will make people laugh or at least make them smile. But it seems I can't because when people call you "Pastor" they expect your Facebook status to be a scripture or something spiritual. I have been told several times by well meaning people that as a "Pastor" my Facebook status should be up lifting to the people who read it. Kind of makes me feel like a preforming monkey dancing around entertaining the crowd " I'm here to make you feel good about yourself", Whoa I just had a Zoolander flashback.


So being the loving and giving person I am, I decide to sit down and write a status that would make people say: " Ahhhh what a Pastoral status that was" or something like that. Little did I realize that people don't always see things the way you do. I wrote this as my Facebook status:

I have decided to start an occupy movement of my own. I am going to occupy my life. I am going to occupy my life with following Christ, loving family and friends and trying to change the world by being as much like Christ as possible. During the occupation of my life I am not going to blame others for my life and ask them to give me things for which I did not work.The occupation of my life will not be to take up space and interfere in the lives of others but to help others along the way as they occupy their lives.


 I thought this was acceptable and from the comments I received it all was going well until a friend of mine liked my status and copied it as their  status and gave me credit for it. This is where it went strangely wrong. My friend has a friend whom I do not know or have never met got extremely upset at my post and started ranting about me on my friends Facebook page. Here are a few comments of the comments by one person.


1. McClanahan's Jesus sounds an awful lot like a good enlightened liberal rather than the 1st century Palestinian prophet. Maybe he should get to know the Christ he purports to follow instead of using innuendo to insult the very people whose company Jesus preferred to the respectable status quo of which McClanahan apparently belongs.


2. McClanahan is misguided, mistaken. The blunt version is that, wittingly or not, he is using the name of the Lord in vain. 


3. McClanahan is only using the name of Jesus to insult the poor and those who work for justice. That's the wrong thing to do, and I hope your he repents.


4. The plain fact is that Pastor Steve (whoever that is) misrepresents what it means to follow Christ.


5.   I don't need to know Steve's heart to know what he stands for. 


And I will stop there because you can see where it was heading.


My friend let me know what was happening on her facebook page so I thought I would check it out. Little did I know my comments would cause such a fire storm of controversy, at least for one person. Several of my friends were defending me to this person I do not know and I wasn't going to get involved. But I couldn't resist the temptation to add fuel to the fire. I know that doesn't sound very Pastorly.  After a few exchanges of Ideas and thoughts,  mostly him telling me how I was wrong, I finally contacted him directly and we are actually started having a conversation.


What I have learned from this is it doesn't matter what you write someone is going to hear it differn't than how you wrote it. Much the same way people hear it differn't than how you said it.
I believe there are a lot of people who are the same way with Jesus.They hear Him talk about love and they like that so they grab on to it and forget all the other things He had to say. They like the love and don't want to hear anything else about Him.  I have the love why do I need Grace or Holiness  or Rightoeusness?  When we do this I believe we make for ourselves a small managable Jesus that we can handle. Like the young man that attcked my staus, his Jesus was the Jesus that went around forgiving debts, feeding the hungry and slamming anyone who had money.


 Jesus is much more than the attributes that we like about Him, you can't only love just a couple of things about Him you have to love all of Jesus , yes even the points that don't sit well with you or fit into your way of thinking.  When we love only part of Jesus we miss the whole that He has in store for us. 


Next time I change my status it's going to be about puppies, Unicorns, rainbows or flowers, how can anyone not like those things?


Stay Thirsty for the Lord my friends
Pastor Steve


P.S 
Sorry It has been so long since my last post. Sometimes life gets in the way of life.