Confrontational, Corruptible or Conversational Christianity By E-mail? 

by  John L. Simson, Communications Chair, First United Methodist Church of Cortland

Presentations of Christianity on the Internet ether seems to run from the sublime to
nearly slime.  My aunt said she was not forwarding any religious message where the "payoff" message mentioned luck or impending doom, depending on how many times you forwarded it or deleted it.

Sometimes people share religious art or an illustrated Bible verse with such advisories about how rewarding it is to share with certain numbers of e-mail addresses.

Then, there's the "in your face with a can of Mace" approach, as I tend to call it.  It begins with an advisory that people tend to pass raw humorous items around the internet but not many Christian-themed material for concern of what someone at the other end may think.  Attached to the message was a story of two men dressed in black entered a 2,000-seat church sanctuary, then suddenly brandished machine guns and demanded who was willing to take a bullet for believing in the name of Jesus.and the filled church suddenly emptied of people except for about 20 shuddering souls and the pastor who never-the-less stood their ground.

The two men then put away their guns and left saying that they had removed all the hypocrites and false-claimers and the true believers remained in the sanctuary.  For, after all, that is what faith is and always demanded, being true to death.

Sometimes I wonder what messages we are sending an unbeliever when we use these items.

The trouble is I know of a man who ran, too.  It was not a bullet but a cross he recoiled from. He had been called a "rock" of faith -- Peter the Apostle. Peter had running shoes before he had walking shoes to share the faith, or standing-to-witness shoes contemplating his own cross.

I plead guilty to forwarding some messages because of some feeling of concern what "Christians" might think if I didn't.  I don't say forwarding thought-provoking Christ-themed message is wrong, but the sound bite mentality we live in. By offering their inner voices about "Good News," individuals can better approach non-believers.

I thank God for leading me to church here in Cortland after I moved from Oneida for gainful employment at Rubbermaid in 1993, and I was on a four-day weekend shift 7 PM-7 AM. I had been working night shifts and for a few years had not been attending church.  I was making better money than the previous job I had but I found something missing in my life. I was rising, working, eating and sleeping and not doing much else. I was just a cog of machinery.

When I entered the front door of the old church at 39 Church St., I told myself and God I needed to be here, and a still, small voice said, "You're needed here."  I felt that internally, and almost audibly. 

Then I found myself trying to be a "back pew hider" after joining the church January 4, 1994, but volunteering to be a trustee and working on a committee to oversee the work to buy a new plot of land and to help in the construction of a new building.  I volunteered time in the church office and was able to represent the church due to a Saturday night worship service the same time as the May 13, 2000 Centennial of the City of Cortland. 

I found out that the church was the oldest entity within the City of Cortland, because it had preceeded the County and the community of Cortland, being visited by a Methodist circuit rider in 1804, a good four years before Cortland County was carved from Onondaga.

From that grew an appreciation of church history and I began a four-year quest to write
the complete history of the church.  From that, too, came a Bicentennial Committee and the greatest two-day celebration of a 200th birthday ever done, even if I do say so myself.  I'm still not finished. I only got through the first hundred years and it has taken another year to get into the spirit to go after the rest of the story.  Thank God for the opportunity to show I am one of the people needed to make this church work.   I hope each person finds God's job jar and where his or her talents are needed.

Like a church history book we need to learn how to tell our faith stories.  Those are
the words that may help more by reaching out and sharing a piece of yourself.


John L. Simson