So yesterday, Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church and author of several bestselling books including The Purpose Driven Life) rocked the Twitterverse with the following tweet:
I challenge any church in America to match the spiritual maturity, godliness & commitment of any 500 members of Saddleback.
Okay, so “rocked” may not have been the best word. Sure, there’s a few disgruntled tweeters and bloggers who’ve latched onto this and there’s those who’ve replied to Warren in a respectful, sometimes even humorous, way, but for the most part, it either went by unnoticed, or people just don’t care.
It also doesn’t hurt that Rick Warren removed the offending tweet. He has since replaced it with……
For 30 yrs our plan was to turn spectators into participators,consumers to contributors,an audience into an army.It worked!
Which leads me to think his original tweet was a touche of sorts.
I.E., Google “Rick Warren” and see what you get.
Sure, there’s plenty of sites that are harmless, but there’s also a plethora of sites demonizing Warren, Saddleback, his books, etc. On top of that are all the books and magazine articles that have been written in opposition to Warren and his books and ministries. And even if the good outweighs the bad by ten-to-one, it always seems as if the bad is more prevalent because they’re usually the loudest.
I’ll be blunt – when you add it all up, I wouldn’t have made it thirty years without saying something publicly.
I can see it now; maybe Rick Googled his own name (big mistake if you’re famous) or maybe he was confronted at lunch by a KJV-only fundamentalist. Whatever the situation was, I’m not justifying Warren’s tweet. I’m simply stating I can understand. When someone says or writes something bad about you, especially when that someone claims to be in your family (Christian), it hurts. Which brings me to two points:
- Christians (especially Western Christians) are some of the ugliest people in the world. As Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
- Questioning Rick Warren on his tweet is one thing, but I saw people BASHING him over that tweet – people who have Rick Warren quotes and retweets in their Twitter timelines. It seems that we put pastors on pedestals not because we think they deserve a place of honor, but so we can tear them down the first chance we get.
Why?
Where in the Bible does it say that pastors are called to a higher standard of living? James 3:1 talks about teaching, but it doesn’t say anything about living. Matthew 5:48 and 1 Peter 1:15 state that holiness is the standard for ALL Christians, not just those called to teach. Yet all too often we Christians think we can say whatever we want with no thought as to who we might offend, because of our anonymity and a “I’m not perfect” attitude.
We allow space for repentance in our own lives, but not in the lives of our pastors.
Why not?
