“When in pain, pray. When you worry, worship. When in grief, share it in your small group.”
The Facebook post, sent in the early morning hours Friday by famed pastor Rick Warren, was short on words but deep in meaning. Since the suicide death of his son a week earlier, the pastor of the sprawling Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., has indeed been sharing his grief.
But his “small group” includes not only his parishioners but nearly a million Twitter followers, as well as those who read his Facebook page.
Over the past seven days, Warren has written about his son’s struggles with mental illness, talked about forgiving the person who gave his son an unregistered gun, cited Bible verses that give him comfort and even taken on Internet “haters” who said they “celebrate your pain.”
Some pastors said they’ve never seen anything like it, a prominent religious figure leading an ongoing digital sermon about loss in 140-character Twitter bites and brief Facebook posts.
“He’s inviting others to grieve with him. Inviting others who are suffering to learn with him,” said Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
Greg Laurie, another high-profile pastor who runs the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif., said Warren was “modeling how faith works in the real world.”
“He told me once Twitter was the best form for him because Rick thinks in sound bites. For him to use the platforms is a natural way to express what he’s going through,” Laurie said.
Warren has been on the cover of Time magazine, gave the invocation at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 and founded one of the nation’s largest churches (its main south Orange County campus sees 22,000 parishioners a week).
But this week, he has shied away from public appearances or media statements, choosing instead to control his own message on his own terms.
His Twitter post the day after Matthew’s death was written in the condensed and hash-tagged form required in the social media world. “We pray ‘Thy WILL be done on earth AS IT IS IN HEAVEN’ since in heaven God’s Will is done #always. On earth, it’s done rarely”
At least one follower, responding to a string of messages assuring that Matthew was in heaven, shot back with a refrain commonly used by critics of conservative Christians like Warren. One of them read: “That is against what Rick Warren & his church believe!! He says gays and suicides are in hell.”
The note was typical of a broader Internet conversation about theology sparked by the suicide. Warren didn’t directly respond. Instead he typed several more posts, giving thanks, quoting Scripture. But Monday, he gave a nod to the critics:
“Grieving is hard. Grieving as a public figure, harder. Grieving while haters celebrate your pain, hardest.”
By Wednesday, as the pastor remained out of public view, he wrote how good it felt to hear about a follower’s 4-year-old daughter who had asked to pray for “that boy Reck Lauren.”
Warren responded: “Your tweet made my day.”
