Odd Beginnings
or 'Why I started posting to TikTok'
About 16 months ago I started getting a certain restlessness. I was wrestling with a profound disconnect between my faith and my position as an associate pastor. I saw the world changed rapidly, as the church I served wanted simply to insist these changes didn’t apply to them. I preached on racism, and what I viewed as the church’s role in the anti-racism movement, and received quite a bit of pushback. I preached on the importance of welcoming LGBTQ+ people as they were, with similar pushback. Some of this was my fault, of course. I’m not from Southwest Minnesota, and in retrospect there are ways I could have spoken about those issues with more tact.
However, the idea that the church should have nothing to do with the justice movements in the world, well, that troubled me. It troubled me because for the church to have a future, it must be a voice for the marginalized. God has called upon the church again and again to be the voice for the voiceless, a force for good in the world. It must be a forerunner of morality, or else the Holy Spirit will find somewhere else to fulfill Their mission. When the church is cowardly, God will look elsewhere.
I found myself in the position of a coward. One who was desperately trying to do their small part in leveling the hills and filling up the valleys, and utterly failing. One who wasn’t sure how to spread the Good News when my preaching was labeled ‘socialist’, as if that was a dirty word. Knowing what I do now, there were ways I could have worked with that congregation. There are better ways to engage with a community that’s mired in it’s own self-inflicted trauma, but I didn’t yet know those better ways. Which is part of the reason the former President of the congregation told me I ought to not preach on justice anymore, if I wanted to have a job.
While his threat was rather crude, there was some accuracy to it. It’s not useful to continue preaching to a group that has closed its ears. This was the disconnect: I wanted to preach on God’s desire for social justice & I was in a church that could not stand such a thing. I looked elsewhere, and stumbled upon TikTok, oddly enough.
I assumed that I was too late to the trend, it was already starting to lose its novelty when I started. But I started, and made many mistakes, and began posting with some regularity. It became a release valve for me, a place where I could talk about the world that God wanted without having my livelihood threatened. It felt like a small miracle of sorts!
I start this newsletter for a similar reason. TikTok is a lovely platform, but a fickle one, and quite frankly isn’t a great place to have a nuanced discussion. Since there are a handful of people who are interested, I wanted to start a monthly newsletter where I can dive a bit deeper. Also, there’s a perennial threat that TikTok on the whole will be banned in the US, which would put quite a damper on my online presence. So, here I am. Starting again! What a joy.
Here’s to following the Holy Spirit, and remaining continually uncomfortable.