Facebook Postings

During his sermon this morning, Pastor Terry was talking about "authentic Christians."
(I'll pause to mention that I think that Pastor Terry is an exceptional preacher and you can listen to his sermon here. The service starts at about the 7 min mark. I don't believe that the messages are archived, so you need to listen to it this week.)
Towards the end of his message, he made a reference to Facebook and how confusing our testimony may be--posting scripture verses on one occasion and posting (or linking to) offensive blogs, pics or statuses on another.

Naturally, this got me to reflecting on my own posts, links and blog. I'm pretty sure that what I write reflects who I am and what I think without much pretense. I know that many of my Christian friends do not agree with my political views. But I'm not too concerned about those disagreements. I know that I been told that I can't be a Christian and vote for a Democrat. I know that there are probably pastors that will never ask me back to their churches after reading my blog even though I have never preached anything but the Word of God and Salvation by the Grace of God through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, Jesus.

When it comes right down to it, I'm not too concerned about offending Christians that are secure in their belief and certain of their salvation in Jesus.
However, I am greatly concerned of driving unbelievers away from a belief in God and away from a relationship with Jesus by sending mixed messages of God's love on the one hand and my personal judgment on the other. I do think about how my actions might affect my witness. I do make the occasional wrong call and need to backtrack and make amends. If you are not a follower of Jesus, I want to be able to talk to you about what you believe and share with you what I believe. You are the ones that I am most concerned about offending.

So here is what I want to know from my Facebook friends:

For those of you that are not followers of Jesus (and I know that there are many of you) -- Do the things that you find on my Facebook or Out of My Hat make you more likely or less likely to be willing to dialogue with me (or another Christian) about matters of faith? Or more importantly, do I post things that would keep you away from God? Away from Jesus?

For those of you that are fellow Christians -- Feel free to share your comments about how you feel about whether or not my posts, statuses or links are an asset or a detriment to my Christian witness. You won't hurt my feelings. I've been called out and criticized before so you won't be the first.

As always, if you want to keep your comments private, comment on the blog instead of on Facebook and mention that you want it that way. No judgment from me so there's no need for guilt or hesitancy from you. I wouldn't ask if I didn't really want to know.

John<><