When I was kid, we used to have a time before Sunday School called “opening exercises.” There were no jumping jacks. Just some announcements, birthday and anniversary celebrations, and so on. However, the biggest thing, every week, was the light devotional shared by the Sunday School Superintendent.
These devotionals almost always contained some sort of mortality tale that was forward to the superintendent’s email that week.
It was, to put it mildly, a dreadful routine, and unsurprisingly, so many of these stories weren’t true. Sadly, there wasn’t a Snopes around to help us out.
Of course, there are so many untrue or at least questionably true stories and snippets that pastors and writers through out, usually sans context:
- The US divorce rate being 50% and/or it being the same for Christians and non-Christians
- The Christian faith of the Founding Fathers and other American figures like Abraham Lincoln*
- And anything involving blood moons
I can’t tell you how many times my job as a pastor requires me to pour through articles, videos, and, of course, the Bible, trying to figure out what is actually true. It hasn’t come up yet, but in this era of “fake news,” I’m sure I’ll have my work cut out for me.
And so will every other pastor out there who’s committed to presenting eternal truth to his or her congregation. They will be forced to answer, correct, even rebuke their parishioners, and many don’t have the resources to gather the information required.
That’s where you come, dear reader.
Church Tech Turned Research Assistant
Churches and pastors need help finding, sourcing, and analyzing data, and I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that’s what church techs excel at. Problem-solving is half of what we do, and the requires some deep analytical thinking. Combine all of this with our internet savvy, and we can be a big research resource.
I’m not saying that we need to be the ones bringing correction. Far from it.
That’s up to the pastoral staff.
Nor should we be the ones searching for windmills to tilt at. Rather, we should make ourselves and our skills available to our leadership, letting them know that we are wiling and able to resource the church with as much information and analysis as can be.
The Inherent Danger
Now, I know that this idea is fraught with danger. We don’t all agree politically, and the “fake news” hysteria is rampant on all sides. To be clear, I know that most of the people in my church don’t agree with me politically, and that’s ok.
They’re wrong.
I’m joking, a little, because we all think that we’re right, and I’m no different. However, what frightens me here is empowering our biases by engaging our skills. Please understand that we cannot feed the fires of division that threaten our nation and would threaten our churches, should we give it the chance.
Thus, when we offer our services to our pastor staff, it must not be as digital form of the Spanish Inquisition, nor as self-appointed arbiters of what is or isn’t going on in politics. We must do this as servants of God’s eternal truth.
Or we must not do it.
Truth leads us to God, leads us back home. Repeating the talking points of our preferred news networks is not to be elevated to the place of evangelism. Fox News does’t have the gospel. MSNBC doesn’t have the gospel. When we offer ourselves up to explore, present, and promote the truth, we must put the Truth, Christ Himself, above all of our petty differences.
In just over three and a half years, we may have a new president, but we will always have the same King.
*Though “Christian” in their upbringing and culture, most of these men, based upon their writings, were likely to be deists or theists. They certainly weren’t evangelical, born-again Christians, as they are often made out to be.
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