How NOT to hack Christianity [bad.hack]

Rule #145 of Hacking Christianity: if you are clergy, please don't pose for pictures of you partying it up in a nightclub both surrounded by women and drinking $10k bottles of champagne. And then, even if you do on the DL, don't get them uploaded to the internets. It's just embarrassing.

I'm not too concerned about him going to a nightclub or partying; that's a personal decision. The guy is a part-time priest and may understand that to mean he can put his calling on the shelf for a few hours. Or perhaps this is getting to know people in new places. That's not my understanding of a calling or well-thought-out evangelism, but I'm not gonna judge another's call.

However, I will be very interested to hear how this guy reconciles blowing thousands of dollars on a nightclub night with his call to ministry to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the stranger. Though he states that he does that sort of ministry already and earned all spent money through his business advocating for hemophiliacs, I'm not convinced such wastefulness is reconcilable with ministry.

For now, I leave you with a picture-perfect violation of rule #145 of the Hacking Christianity Guidebook. You are welcome.

Thoughts?

2 comments:

revjimparsons, January 6, 2009 at 6:04 AM: It's called evangelism!!! I mean where would Jesus be? The club is a frontier more clergy should visit, (not me, I dance like the white boy that I am) And the champagne, it was a bottle of water at the beginning of the night...I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me.

Keep hacking away...love the blog.
Anonymous, January 7, 2009 at 8:22 PM: Jim, I don't think it's evangelism. It's making excuses for bad choices.

Jeremy, have you thought about the implications of this for pastors on Facebook? I've thought about it too, and although I'm not doing what the priest was, I don't want to take down the pics of me in bars with my friends. They show me as I really am- a person who loves to have goofy fun with my friends. A lot of people might see me with a tall stein in my hand and think I"m a lush, but people who know me know that usually those are beers I barely sipped that were bought for me by others. It's hard to know what to do on Facebook, because taking everything down, editing my profile, ect., seems deceptive.