Sunday, January 6, 2008

Let The Church Say Amen!



There is an inspiration for all things, blog rants included. Allow me to set the stage for this one. I had to regulate on a thirteen-year-old regarding her my.space.page. First and foremost I must say I don't understand my.space. I mean I understand it for kids, and young adults. I get that. I am clueless when it comes to grown folks. Each time I have asked, "why does a grown person need a my.space.page?" I'm told it is great for networking and business. Okay. I'll buy that. Granted there are many artists and entrepreneurs on the site, I would venture to say they represent a small percentage of the grown folk membership.

I am new to blogging and have found that I get a lot of enjoyment from it, so perhaps it's a similar experience on that site. Again, I don't know because for the most part I've only seen grown folks with photographs and music playing. Not the way I would choose to network with colleagues or potential clients. I digress.

So I began checking the profiles of her friends to see if they were truly children. Like blogging, I found myself looking at a profile and seeing a profile of interest there and checking that one out, and so on and so on. Kind of the whole six degrees of separation thing, right? Well about three degrees in I happen upon a pastor's page. Excuse me, not a mere pastor but a bishop. Trust me when I tell you we will deal with that foolishness in a minute.

Wanna guess what Bishop's wallpaper was???

Bentleys and Benjamins.

For real. For real, for real. I wish I was lying.

Now I don't know about you but I would be looking sideways if my pastor had a my space page. Let me find out he had one with bentleys and benjamins as a back drop and I would seriously need to consider moving my membership. Now I know a tiny bit of the Word and realize the man of God is due a double portion. I'm for that. We are supposed to support our pastor. The way I figure it that means if the average car price for your membership is say 25K, then the man of God should be driving something in the 50K range. I'm not sure, but I don't think I can get a Bentley for that.

I know I'm going to say somethings folks may frown at, but that's the beauty of blogging. This is my shit and I say what I want! It's a whole bunch of bullshit going on in some of these churches, y'all. I'm all for the separation of church and state, but somebody needs to regulate some of this foolishness.

Let me explain my position. When in the hell did folks begin to wake up one morning, accept the call, start a church, and declare themselves bishops? What is that foolishness all about? My understanding is a bishop is a spiritual overseer, supervisor and leader--of several churches. How can you be a bishop when you have a membership of ten and eight of them are your kinfolk? Let me clean that up because it really has nothing to do with numbers, I'm not the Mega Church kind of girl myself. It has everything to do with experience and training!

Stay with me now (I know the lingo too!) I may be very skilled, gifted even in any number of ways. As much potential and natural talent as I may have, I cannot wake up one morning, declare myself a physician, teacher, engineer, CPA, or cosmetologist and begin practicing as one. All that shit is regulated!

To all the self-proclaimed bishops, prophets, prophetess, and the like, please sit down! I'm not denying what may be your calling, but there is some prep time you need to put in. There is certainly much prestige and sadly financial gain to be had, but keep one thing in mind. Just as the man or woman of God is due a double portion, there is surely a very high price to be paid for [mis]leading God's people.

14 comments:

Eb the Celeb said...

I agree with you on the church story but not on the myspace thing... I think the problem with myspace is all the children out there... I have to check my lil cousins on the daily with the crazy pictures and I love whoever this week.

I think that myspace is moreso for the college age and young adult age... but its becoming non existant anyway since facebook has stepped on the map.

Facebook is more the social network for the professionals. Not as much non-sense goes on there because a lot of the networks are employer based. The only reason I joined facebook was because my company was building a widget for it and wanted some employees to try it out before it launched.

But I am guilty of having a page on both sites. Although on both I have my page private and all my friends are people I actually know. I cant stand the people that just accept friends just to accept them. No one has 8,950,452 friends... its just not possible

Myspace has been great to get back in touch with people I havent seen since high school. Instead paying for one of those sites like classmates. We are actually organzing our 10 year reunion on myspace so it has really helped everyone get back in touch.

So for that I am happy I have them, but am definitely not one of those people that log on everyday and is changing their pages every 5 seconds... I tend to only log on when I get sent an email that someone has sent me a mail or left a comment on my page.

The [In]Urbane Goddess said...

Eb,
That is a response I can understand, thanks for your perspective.

"No one has 8,950,452 friends... its just not possible"

This comment has made my day!

Afrodite said...

Seeeeeee, I'm not even into church like that but I agree. Actually, a guy I used to go to jr. high school with is a pastor/bishop and he has a Myspace page. What the feez?

The [In]Urbane Goddess said...

Afrodite,
And if you went to Junior High with him I would venture to say that makes him early to mid twenty? You can be a fine pastor with a bright future, but a baby bishop? Uh....no.

kellieashley said...

I opened a MySpace account and closed it the same day...wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it. Not sure what a Pastor would be doing on there either. Pastor Jones announcing his MySpace account during Sunday service...his link in the church bulletin...what in the world?

The [In]Urbane Goddess said...

JazKel,
Can you imagine that in the announcements!? :-)

B said...

Now, I must admit...I live in a state of disturbia 24/7 but a pastor on MySpace may have to take the cake for today. Seriously....that's insane. I'm a teacher with a very clean MySpace page and feel a bit ashamed for that! Now granted I don't have "fire me ASAP" material on my page, it still feels a bit beneath my profession; being that I'm supposed to be teaching the future.

Lord, help us all.
Bishops on MySpace *pshhhht*....the doors of the church are open. *And I'm walkin' out....hehe*

Naturally Sophia said...

I don't like myspace. I think facebook is much better although i don't have an account on either one. I think I was first turned away from Myspace afte seeing Stone Phillips expose' on pedophiles on Dateline using myspace to meet teens.

so damn random! said...

I'm so over my myspace page but can't seem to delete it... I can't believe the "Bishop" had the audacity to put that on there. It's bad enough you driving a bentley, when people can't pay they rent but now you wanna throw it in our kids faces!

It seems as though anyone can carry that title of prophet or prophetess. Next thing you know the Bishop will intruduce to his congregation the "Messiah" Jackson... lol

The [In]Urbane Goddess said...

So Damn Random,
Messiah Jackson truly had me laughing loudly out loud! I know folks walking by my office think I'm insane. Thanks for stopping by!

Anonymous said...

I have a Myspace. It is all about research working this young people. Mine is private but those little idiot box let everyone and anyone look at their profile. It is dangerous for kids (2-28 yrs. old). I guess no one knows about electronic foot prints. Goof balls.


The internet has been in their lives since there were born so it is all about a new generation. I roll with it.

Now, the ministry stuff. My mother is a ordained baptist minister. Her calling and acceptance was a long, hard, taxing road. Her Pastor made her put in work, leading a prison ministry, theology classes, sermon critiques. It wasn't a joke.

I see everyone now is a Pastor and Mrs. Pastor. Is the new thing to be His and Her Pastors. *Mason Betha and Twyla*

Everywoman said...

I signed up for a My Space page - mainly to keep tabs on my younger sisters and see what they are up to - because someone needs to. I found myself strangely compelled to browse around and see what other folks had going on. Saw some folks I went to school with. It seems like a form of voyeurism. Anyway, I'm with you - I'm not really sure what grown folks are doing here. Especially seeing some of the time and effort put into these pages.

Anonymous said...

hay hay

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work.