Talk about trying to shield the flock from the dark and scary world:

Didn’t Jesus dine with sinners and publicans and let a prostitute wash his feet? And Warren here in the 21st century is calling for church members to be isolationists? The New Testament Jesus was no such thing. This is what turns a bunch of people off from the church: the attitude among Christians that they are somehow different or morally superior to everyone else and the general practice of only mingling with like-minded people. I know believers who, in fact, are not this way, but they seem to be a dwindling minority. When I was believer, I didn’t leave my non-believing friends because of their corruptible influence, and in fact, that had no influence on my decision to drop faith. I was perfectly capable of doing my own thinking. Of course, Warren’s email seems to prove that Saddleback is full of people who don’t have that capacity, so as a measure of damage control, the pastor felt the need to sever ties between his sheep and the rest of the online world.

I wonder, Rick, if some of your church members might have actually taken the Great Commission to heart and befriended some non-believers and trouble makers with the expressed intent of witnessing to them, or at the least, reaching out to them in Christian kindness. In a world apparently bound straight for hell, a believer’s witness — that’s church talk for a Christian comes across to fellow believers and non-believers — should be the last thing on his mind. The first thing on his mind should be reaching people for Christ. Twitter and Facebook, it seems to me, could be powerful tools for the church to be able to reach a massive audience, yet, we see here again an example of how insecure church leaders are about their own faith. If it was so self-evidently true and if the evidence were so strong, why be so defensive all the time? It just permeates a sheer lack of confidence.