PHILADELPHIA — Add another temptation for the faithful to resist: Facebook.
The world’s biggest social network can lead married people astray, says the head of the Living Word Christian Fellowship in Neptune, N.J. So, in his Sunday sermon, the Rev. Cedric A. Miller will announce that married church leaders have to log out for good — or get kicked out.
This thinking runs counter to churches that are embracing social media to reach their flocks.
Although Pope Benedict XVI has warned that virtual friendships are poor substitutes for real ones, just this week the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, meeting in Baltimore, was urged to use new media to reach the young.
“If the church is not on their mobile device, it doesn’t exist,” said Bishop Ronald Herzog of Alexandria, La.
Miller’s counseling work, however, has taught him it’s not good to get chummy with old pals. It leads to infidelity and other problems.
“There’s a reason why your past is the past, and hopefully you have grown in the Lord, matured to not link up with a past that for many people is a Christless past,” he told the Asbury Park Press.
Miller’s wife, Kim, is also a pastor in the church, which has grown to more than 1,000 members since the couple started it in 1987.
