Hey youth worker, the internet really is your resume.

I read a story this week about a youth worker who wasn’t hired for a job because their interviewer checked them out on Facebook and found out that they were a well-known ‘pot stirrer’ in online youth ministry groups.

The problem wasn’t that they were gratuitously ungracious (sometimes they were), but that they spent an inordinate amount of time engaging with online debates. They had posted enormously long-winded, detailed responses to a huge amount of comments. They had taken every piece of bait, swallowed every hook, and always ended up entrenched. Sometimes they had clearly just read something, jumped on google, and dressed up in whatever they found as if it was original thinking. It really wasn’t a pretty look and it ended with them losing their candidacy.

This is a real-life example of someone not getting a job because of their online lifestyle.

In this case the problem wasn’t necessarily being overtly toxic, but that their toxicity was clearly evident in the priority they had made of arguing on social media. They were spending hours in the daytime, during working times, battling on dozens of fronts. They needed to be right, they needed to appear informed, and they needed the last word in every situation.

I believe that there certainly is room for healthy online debate with well-reasoned points, and intellectually robust (or at least passionate) opponents. There could even be people called to that very specific work online, but – along with the potential employer above – I simply wouldn’t hire them to work with young people in my ministry.

Online toxicity, along with just general untamed gossip, might be the biggest killers in youth work candidacy today. I’ve seen plenty of it and I’ve been involved in it too many times to be altogether comfortable writing about it without squirming.

How we conduct ourselves on social media, and the things we abandon ourselves to online are never as private as our keyboards would lull us into thinking. As public ministers of the gospel we should strive earnestly to always hold ourselves with dignity, always give those we speak to the benefit of the doubt, and always talk to each other like the lost are listening. After all, they probably are.

I believe that it’s super important to be ‘authentic’ online, but we sometimes forget just how subjective authentic is in the eye of the beholders at the other ends of our screens. Our language, content, voice, passions, and priorities are open to so much more interpretation than we ever could imagine. We need to be authentic, yes, but for the sake of our relationships with the world beyond our avatars, we need to place that personal authentic identity on the foundations of Christlike love and sacrificial grace. That always comes first, no matter how ticked-off we feel, or how justified we think our position might be.

Feeling justified, or needing to be ‘in-the-know’, does not trump our Lord’s commandment to love each other – even our enemies – as ourselves.

Before we type in any public sphere then, we should ask ourselves whether we would let our children read it without our commentary, or let the lost see it without us present to defend it. Before we click ‘post’ we should always, at least, invite Jesus to inhabit it.

I really need to hear and remember this too. Left unchecked and unaccountable I believe that I would be the worst among us. So let’s all try to do better, for each other’s sake and the sake of the lost.

Let our lives paint one picture – and let that picture be Christ.

All the best lockdown buddies!