Be Careful That Your Pastor Is Your Pastor

The pastoral leaders (and others) in our lives should be the ones who have outsized influence on us in relationship to what we’re engaging online.

“I mean if he’s going to trade everything he said he believed for stuff he found on Google, then what can I do?” A pastor friend lamented that a member of his church had de-converted after getting himself sucked into an online rabbit hole. Replace the details of that specific situation, and I could tell you many more just like it, from personal experience. I’ve had friends, church members, and colleagues change their attitude toward our common beliefs and toward me and others personally, often without a conversation. Folks get themselves into an online whirlpool of some or other influence, conspiracy or ideology. It shouldn’t startle me any more, but it does: folks trust someone they’ve never met who puts videos on YouTube (or TikTok, or whatever) more than they trust friends and family present to them in flesh-and-bone. And that’s just the personal stories. Culturally, we hear stories stacked on stories of folks doing catastrophically evil things after being radicalized in some dark corner of the internet. It’s a thing, a thing that is, in big and small ways, wrinkling and ripping the cloth of our communities.

Of course, the influence of online content isn’t all bad, and neither is it escapable. First, isn’t all bad, or maybe even mostly bad. We can find the libraries of the world online, the best preaching, lectures and training. I have been profoundly and maybe even decisively shaped by online content and engagement. Heck, MySpace (shoutout to Tom!) and early Facebook were a critical part of developing my relationship with the girl I tricked into marrying me 15 years ago. Second, the online world isn’t escapable. We live in a world shaped by what happens online. I’ve said many times that “the real world” isn’t just the analog world. Rather, the connections and information we engage online are an aspect of our real lives. Online life is real life. So don’t hear me saying either thing: Not all online influence is bad, and we can’t reasonably escape the reality of its influence in any case.

With all that said, I want return to my first thought on the negative influence of online content and connections, and I’m thinking here especially in our churches. What brings this mind is the experience I had at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) this past week. ETS is the annual academic conference for academic theologians, scholars, pastors with PhDs, and PhD students to present research about biblical studies and theology. I presented a paper that was based on my dissertation, arguing that the multiethnic church should be one as God the Trinity is one. A couple of people who attended my presentation engaged with some thoughtful questions during the brief discussion time after the paper. I had some disagreements with them, but I also appreciated the comments and discussion, as they offered some good ideas. As it turns out, these friends run a ministry that engages topics like race, ethnic unity, and justice. They were attending ETS to hear the latest discussion of evangelical scholarship. After each day of the conference, they did a live video summary of the papers they heard. Now, I’m not writing this to argue for or against what they were saying specifically, or to critique them specifically. This isn’t about them or their ministry per se but about the more general issue of online influence. On their livestream, they made comments to their audience about being on the lookout for false ideas from the conference trickling down and influencing their audience’s pastors. They were issuing warnings to their audience to be aware of the teaching in their churches.

Of course, in a general sense, I have no problem with anyone reminding Christians to be aware and careful about the teaching they’re receiving. We must discern what is true and what is false, based on the Bible. We should always measure what our pastors are teaching us, and as pastors what we ourselves are teaching. The problem, though, goes back to the ways that we allow online content to have an outsized influence in our lives. Some have pointed to the intimate nature of many online videos, where the person is close-talking to the camera. It creates a sense of trust and closeness that inclines us to listen and believe. We seem to find content from a screen somehow more credible than content from a person, whether we intend to or not. Even though anyone with a smartphone can put themselves online saying anything, the medium somehow gives a measure of authority to the content. So when an online ministry or influencer says, “Be careful that your pastor isn’t being influenced by these ungodly ideas,” it can create in us a posture of suspicion toward the flesh-and-bone folks God has placed around us.

And that’s exactly backwards. The pastoral leaders (and others) in our lives should be the ones who have outsized influence on us in relationship to what we’re engaging online. My pastor’s heart sings when someone in our church asks me, “What do you think about Johnny Christian Online Teacher or Susy Christian YouTuber?” Thankfully, that happens fairly often, maybe as often as the whole “I’m leaving the faith/the church” due to the influence of Billy’s Online Discernment Ministry.

I’m saying all of this to offer a reverse warning: be careful that you’re letting your pastor(s) pastor you and disciple you. Yes, be discerning. Yes, test what they say according to the Bible. Yes, get yourself some good online content. But be careful, because those online influences can be quite influential. Those famous, platformed teachers can end up shaping our faith more than they should. Those YouTube channels can radicalize our worldview. Yes, they can draw our hearts and minds helpfully toward truth, but they can just as easily draw our hearts and minds into a whirlpool that spins us dizzy.

Be careful that your pastor is actually your pastor.