7 Ways Social Media Makes Pastoring More Difficult

Facebook can be very helpful to pastors. It helps us to know how to pray. It is a great avenue for communicating your message, making announcements, establishing connections, helping people to laugh, and a host of other things.

It’s also a headache.

Here are 7 ways that Facebook makes pastoring a little more difficult:

1. Expectations. Your beloved Aunt Gertrude just died. You post of your sadness on Facebook. And only Facebook. Your Pastor doesn’t call. He doesn’t send flowers. He doesn’t respond to your status update. Nothing. What a jerk!!!  Or, is it possible that he simply isn’t on Facebook all the time? Maybe he didn’t see it. Social media has upped the expectations for pastoral response.
2. Faux problems. People vent about really silly things on Facebook. And they often do it in language that requires a Rosetta Stone program to decipher. All you really know is that person X is fed up with people Y and that they need to mind their own business. So, when a pastor is scrolling through his news feed and sees these little spats what is he to do? Does he call and make sure everything is okay—only to find out that the status was really about the pain of getting onions on your McRib when you clearly said “no onions”?   Continue at Julian Freeman