Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How NOT to be Toxic on Facebook | An Interview with Thriving Home's Polly Conner

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Can we use Facebook to represent Jesus? Does it always have to be toxic? https://thrivinghomeblog.com/ (Thriving Home)'s Polly Conner walks us through her own social media journey, from growing her following to using her presence to (non-weirdly) share Jesus with others. She gives guidance on how we can all represent and share Jesus with others winsomely by building bridges and being authentic. Also! We are starting the Ten Minute Bible Talks https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (Facebook page). We want to turn your questions into podcasts, so check out the page, vote on your favorite questions or share your own. Keith and Patrick will also be on there regularly to interact - so we hope we can get to know you wherever you are! Follow us on Facebook today: https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/) Want to hear more from Thriving Home? https://thrivinghomeblog.com/ (https://thrivinghomeblog.com/) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. This week we're launching our 10-minute Bible Talk Facebook page. So if you've ever wanted to talk to Keith or I, or just help us shape the show, this is your chance. For example, I'm really excited about this. We are ending our series on Luke. It's been a long, long, long series, but a great series.

And next we're going to be starting a series called Questions You're Asking. If you go to our Facebook page, you can share any questions that you want us to actually answer on the podcast. And we've also got polls. Maybe you're someone like, look, I'm never going to go on there and ask a question. Well, we've got polls with different questions we've heard. So you can go on there and you can vote for the question that you like best. The thing I'm most excited about is Keith and I, we're going to be on there to chat with you, to share extra content. And so we're really hoping. I mean, it's weird having a podcast where you don't even know who's listening to it. This is our opportunity to get to know you, to hear back from you, to make sure that this podcast, is connecting with your life. So do me a favor really quick and click on the link that's in our show

notes to go to our new Facebook page. When you get there, just vote on one of these questions that you're excited about us to answer. Or you can leave your own. So go follow us and hopefully we'll be able to connect some online. Now, here's the interesting thing. As Keith and I are moving more into the world of social media, which probably says something about the two of us, it's made us both reflect on the fact that we want to make sure that we represent Jesus online well. and we want to think hard about how we share Jesus online. It's a question I think every Christian needs to ask because more and more of our lives are happening online, especially right now in the middle of coronavirus, and the world's newest, biggest mission field, it's not an island, it's not a country you've never heard of,

it's the wild west of the internet. So to help us think through this faithfully, I probably shouldn't talk about it as someone who knows very little about social media. Instead, I wanted to invite my friend, Polly Connor, onto the show. I've known Polly since I was in college. I think you were out of college when we met, right? I think so. I don't know. Too far back to remember. But it was through Young Life, which is a ministry that shaped my life and your life as well. And Polly, how many years did you spend doing high school ministry here at the crossing? Here at the crossing, I did high school ministry, I think a total about five years. So a co-director with a couple different directors. They're in transition. You outlasted a lot of men. So Polly did that here at the crossing where I'm a past. And her husband, Austin, is also a close friend of mine and him and I worked together for seven years. He's a pastor here.

But after she left high school ministry and had three kiddos, she's done a lot of really interesting things. She's the co-author of two cookbooks. And the most recent one is called From Freezer to Cooker. My wife and I've used that. We like using our slow cooker. We've learned some recipes from you. And those books grew out of her blog, Thriving Home. Now, Thriving Home is a blog that she co-authors, co-leads with her friend Rachel Temeier.

She also co-wrote their books together. And they've also got a pretty large social media following. Now, I don't say these numbers because I'm probably just embarrassing Polly by saying them. I just want you to know that we're talking to someone I think who actually knows what she's doing on the line. Their blog is not small potatoes. They get over 4 million page views a year. They've got 16,000 fans on Facebook, 14,000 followers on Instagram and over 20,000 email subscribers. So they're obviously doing something that a lot of people are interested in. And they have a online social. media presence that's obviously engaging people and they're Christians. Now, what I like about what you guys do is that you don't have a quote unquote Christian blog, but I think you do a really good job of representing Jesus and sharing Jesus. So I like hopping right into salty questions. Polly begged me not to ask this question first, but I wanted it to be interesting for the listeners. So here's my first question. What's the biggest mistake? What's the biggest mistake that you think a Christian can do on social media? You see them all. I joked on, I don't want to come out swinging without people hearing me say something nice first.

They want you to like them before I ask you a hard question. I got to build some credibility. But anyway, I would say overarching mistake I see Christians do is that they speak more about what they're against rather than what they're for. And I think if Christians were to speak about what they're for, more than what they're against, they would build a lot more common ground. They would build a lot more relationships, a lot more credibility, and how to help unbelievers realize we have a lot more in common than not.

That's really good. I think Facebook in particular right now, but it's all social media. It has become so polarized and toxic. And it's easy to get sucked into that as a Christian. And you start sounding more like a political activist, left, right, center, wherever you are, than a follower of Jesus. It's really hard to build bridges. How have you tried to build bridges with people online? Well, I think it's worth saying, Thriving Home is primarily a food blog. And so it's a tricky balance for us to know how much Christian content versus food content, because people come to us through search engines, through Pinterest images, and they come for a recipe. It's a little jarring to their experience if they land on our site and all of a sudden see a bunch of Christian stuff. So we have to

be pretty winsome. We have to be thoughtful. And I think a lot of that just happens naturally on social media more than our website. So social media is a little more of a place that's informal, get to know the person behind the blog. And so that comes out more. I'd say on Instagram stories is probably the main place that I share what I'm reading, what I'm thinking. They get to know that we're Christians probably through that a little bit more. Yeah. So someone might come to you through the avenue of a shared interest, which is a bridge, food. We all need food. I want to know how to make a great freezer meal. I want to know a good slow-cooker recipe or whatever else that is that they come to your page for. Hey, we've all got needs. And that can be a bridge to getting to know you and Rachel,

which then becomes a bridge to finding about the person who's shaping. your life more than anybody else. But it's interesting. You said that it's easier on social media than on the blog. So maybe share with us, how did your social media presence start? How did you grow that? Because did you have something when you started the blog? Were you guys on Facebook and Instagram? I mean, just in our personal accounts. And I would say our social media grew as our blog grew. And kind of the way social media works, it's a little bit of a snowball effect. It's kind of like the more followers you have, the faster they come. Just because it's just credibility. People look, they land on your account, see that you have a large amount of followers. They're like, oh,

these people have something incredible to say. I might hop on. So we've seen that the more followers we get, the faster we grow, ironically. And I would say, too, we really saw spike in growth with our social media when we started publishing cookbooks just because we got exposure to a new audience. And we're on all sorts of different podcasts. We just were in different media outlets. And so people started just finding us to see who we were about, who were these authors. And so we definitely grew in that way through the cookbook. And with that came a lot of pros and cons. There's definitely a love, love, love that we have the influence and the ability to reach people in their homes, not only just with food, but it was pretty humbling

to realize, wow, people are actually reading the books we recommend. And people are actually going to the websites that we recommend because we've built trust and credibility with our recipes and we've provided a quality product and so they just trust us. And so having that positive impact is really rewarding. And on the flip side of that, there are some cons to having a large social media following. And as you can imagine, the bigger that you grow, the more criticism you get, just because it's the internet. People love to be haters on the internet. And so we aren't exempt from that by any means. So we feel a little bit more under the microscope. We have to be a little bit more careful what we say, the jokes we make. We still want to be authentic and true to ourselves and

open up our lives of people. But we also have to realize we have a very wide audience at this point. and people are very quick to tell us things they don't agree with or that we are doing wrong or what we should do differently in our lives. So it's been an interesting experience. Speaking of which, I've got some ideas for you. Oh yeah, let me take your nose. Okay, so a lot of people listening to this, they don't have the amount of followers that you have. They've got a smaller presence. But you said earlier that you've been able to, in some senses, share more about Jesus on social media

because that's a place where you're sharing more about yourself. And that's one thing I really like about the posts that I've seen you do, is that you're pretty open and honest about your life, your family, the good, the bad, the ugly. It's not just a Instagram photoshopped version of family, which I really appreciate. So what would you tell just the average person who, again, they don't have a ton of followers, but they're saying, yeah, I want to represent Jesus. How do they do it? How do they use their lives and what they're sharing about their lives to represent Jesus? Right. And I feel like that's a tricky question because I think everyone has different convictions on what they want their social media to represent.

So some do feel fierce convictions that it should be really preaching the gospel and really overt about what they believe. And then some, I guess my approach is a little bit more. It's just a natural overflow. And so my ministry in my life is I'm hoping that my relationship with Jesus is thriving on the ground level. And social media is just a natural overflow of what's happening there. So I would hope my ministry is much more powerful with the people around me, my neighbors, my family, my friends. And social media is just another outlet for that as a tool for that, not the purpose. place. I do ministry. And I would argue you probably should look like that, that your ministry should

be a little bit more interpersonal relationships and not primarily held on your Facebook account or your Instagram stories. I think what you're saying is really helpful. You're saying if you're not really following Jesus in real life, you can't get online and start faking it and convince people. Exactly. If you're trying to follow Jesus in real life with real life people, your neighbors, your friends, your kids, your spouse, then when you talk about your life on an Instagram story, or when you think about the kinds of things that you want to share on Facebook, there are going to be things that are going to point people to Jesus because your life is actually already reflecting Jesus.

Do you have any stories of how maybe sharing things from your personal life led to opportunities to talking about God, whether that was on social media or with people who responded? Yeah, I think that's been one of the really cool things about this, is that it has given us the opportunity to naturally share the gospel in what we believe in a very non-threatening way. So, for example, I really floundered in early motherhood with toddlers and babies at home. I almost said me too and then realized I wasn't a mom.

You can't say that. So I stayed home full time and it was hard. It was really, really hard for me. And so I really have a heart for the struggling moms out there. And so I wrote a blog post, a word to the struggling mom. And while it wasn't overtly Christian, it wasn't like the Bible says this, so believe this, I wrote it in a way that was speaking truth and speaking God's promises, but not. in a overtly Christian way. And I mean, we continue to get comments from that, messages from that,

like, this is what I needed to hear. And we do, I mean, it wasn't like I'm ashamed of the gospel. It wasn't like we were shying away from saying it. And there were for sure parts in it where I shared what I believe. But we have seen posts like that really, really impact people and get them through hard times. That was when I wrote. I wrote one about our youngest child had acid reflux. And I even pulled together some Bible verses that helped me through that time. And I just kind of said, If these help you here is what I used. It was just a natural, this helped me if it helps you here it is. So we weren't trying to shove anything down to anyone's throat that wasn't ready.

Again, we're a food blog. People weren't there for Christian content. They're not there for devotional. But we oftentimes just living our lives in front of people and sharing authentically the good and the bad, we have a chance to share what we believe. And that's why I think also social media, it's so important to be authentic to not, yes, we want to see your vacation pictures. We want to see your happy marriage pictures.

But I think it's also really powerful when people share the stuff that's not so great because that is such a cool opportunity to share what you believe in those hard times. What do you believe when your kid is sick in the hospital? What are you clinging to when you have a parent passed away? What are you going to go to when you find out your spouse has cancer? So those are the really those are the gems and the beauty of social media, I think, of you can share the good and the bad. And you can also share those really what your beliefs are when things get hard. because people really watch that and they tune into that. And I think that has a lot of power. I think what you're saying makes a ton of sense because, I mean, earlier you brought up the point,

we need to build bridges with people. And one of the best ways, although it's a really difficult way to do it, to build a bridge with someone, is to share your hurts and to connect. Because, like you said, motherhood was hard for you in those early years. And there's a lot of moms, perhaps all of them. And it's true of dads as well. She would say the exact same thing. Those early years are really, really challenging. I'm still in the middle of them, so maybe we can have a counseling session after this. But that created a bridge for people. And then you were able to say, because you'd already been authentic and opening up your life, well, here's the thing that helps me.

And I feel like that's the really critical step. Because I think you're right. People tend to end up in one of two polarities. One is the I'm always going to just be preaching and hammering home, my ideas, and I'm right and you're wrong. And on the other end is I'll never talk about it. I'm never going to bring it up. And I think the way you're bringing it up is a really natural way.

hey, this is a natural part of my life. This is what's helping me. Why wouldn't I offer it to you and help you? Now, even if you don't have a big following, anybody on social media gets negative feedback. You post things that people find offensive or they don't like, and it's really hard to respond well to that. How do you guys respond to that negative feedback? Well, we've gotten a lot of practice lately, which is, like I said, the more we've grown and the more of a public figure you become, you start to get just kind of funny emails and messages. So, for example, we had the opportunity to go on the Hallmark, Home and Family show in January, which was a really cool opportunity. And we were so nervous and we did a cooking segment.

We felt great about it. And then we opened our email the next morning. And we have an email from someone who, a whole paragraph about how much we touched our hair while we were cooking. And she counted the amount of times we touched our hair while we were cooking. Wow. That's really nitpicky. Yeah. Oh, I gosh.

Someone you don't know. No, someone we don't know. Someone who tracked on her email after watching the segment. So, I mean, my knee-jerk reaction is to be like, are you kidding me? You have enough time in your life to, like, slow it down. Do you even know a recipe we may? I mean, I have more of a tendency to want to go off on people. So it's a good thing that Rachel is a partner in kind with me. And I'm married to a very husband that also is very, very measured in his words, because I'd get myself in trouble with these people. But I think a big principle that I abide by in social media is don't say anything that you wouldn't say to someone's face. So if someone told me to my face. I touch my hair too much. I'd probably like, take a breath. Okay, thank you for your feedback. Would you prefer it if I touched your hair? Would you like to go on the Hallmark Show? That would you do. So I think a good principle in general is to don't say anything on social media that you just wouldn't say to someone's face. It's really easy to hide behind a

screen. It's really easy to be critical behind the screen. But if you wouldn't say to someone's face, don't do it. Don't do it on social media. And same thing with the positive stuff. I mean, if you're not someone who's bold enough to really tell someone about Jesus and what you believe in person, maybe you shouldn't be doing it behind a screen either. I think it goes both ways. Yeah, I think that's really good. So a related question to that, that's when people are just unkind to you and say things that they don't have to say. And again, I think that happens to everybody on social media. But what do you do when you offend people? Maybe unintentionally. I mean, I suppose sometimes people do it intentionally. But what do you do then? Yeah, and I've done that. Again, more than Rachel,

because I'm a little more chatty on social media than she is. So I say things. I'm like, oh, pull it back, pull it back. For example, we had, I'm really into the Enneagram. I really enjoyed. I've benefited a lot from it. And I was, yeah. What are you?

What do you think I am? No, I'm a type three. I was going to guess a three. I mean, anybody who's being relatively successful in social media is probably a three. I feel like I can spot threes from a mile away. I'm like, yeah, you're a kindred spirit. Anyway, and they were a Christian follower, and they were very offended that I followed an anagram.

They thought they went on and on about. about why we shouldn't. I mean, long, long messages. So I don't know if that's maybe necessarily maybe offensive, but they felt offended. And so I think the first thing, again, this is hard for me and unnatural for me to do, but I've learned to do over time, is to be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. And I really have to tell myself that because a lot of times if there is a criticism, sometimes there's a hint of truth behind it, maybe not with the anagram. But if I said something too snarky or make a joke about how my kids are so hard and someone's offended because they haven't been able to have kids. So I have to be quick to listen and

realize that person probably has a story and they have hurt and they have pain. And this is a human I'm talking to. And so really slow down. Think about what I said. Think about if there's any hint of truth to what they're saying and be quick to apologize. I think I've just had to learn that too is realize I may not agree, but I'm sorry if you hurt this way. I'm sorry, whatever it may be. Be quick to apologize because there's really no, I just don't find any huge benefit in trying to get in a theological debate over social media, it just never goes well. Yeah. I see very few debates go well. And I see very few people convinced for whatever reason. I mean, emotions run really high. There's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of judgmentalism.

Do you have a rule? Do you give yourself a gap between I got a critique and I respond? Or do you just, like, how long does that take you? It just depends on who it is, what they say. I mean, to be honest, there are some that we just ignore. Like, some are just so just out. There might be some wisdom and just ignore. Right. I think there's some, you can just tell the type of person who's just out to pick a fight versus someone who genuinely has been offended or hurt or concerned or has a genuine criticism, whether you agree with them or not. So it just takes discernment and just wisdom to know, just to remember, these are people. And so I would very much like to ignore all the criticism and just like delete, turn away and move on. But it's good for me to remember this is a person behind this email. And they just, deserve to be treated with respect and they deserve a little piece of our time, most of the time. I think it goes back to your earlier principle when you're saying, don't say something to someone online that you wouldn't say to their face. It feels like the other half of that is when they

critique you and they say difficult things, don't treat them like a non-existent person. Like imagine as though they are in front of you right now and they said that thing and how would I respond? And I think in the moment, a lot of people would do what you're doing and say, okay, I would try to find the thing that I can own where maybe I did have some shortcoming here and try and own it and try to apologize and build a bridge and move past it. And I think, again, it's just such a better representation of who Jesus is. I mean, when we think about what Jesus did on the cross, he's taking our sins, he's taking things that he certainly did not deserve, certainly did not earn from other people, and he's putting it all on himself. And I feel like if we want to do well

on social media, it sometimes means dying to ourselves over and over and over again because you want to have the fight, you want to punch back, you want to say, well, if you thought about this for two seconds, you wouldn't say what you're saying right now. I think one thing that's been helpful for me when it comes down to, if you peel back one layer of thriving home, you figure out we're Christians really fast. We mentioned in her biographies that we're married to pastors. You can see we worked at church. So it's very easy to figure out where Christians are very fast. I think one thing that helps me is pointing these people to better resources than I can provide. So if they have a question, I don't serve as the bad guy. I'll maybe send them to maybe something in the crossing that they've written about it or gospel coalition website. Find another legit website that can articulate better than I can show why I believe, but I don't have to be the bad guy necessarily. So resourcing these people outside of my own knowledge and my own time has been really helpful too. So I don't get into these debates. I think that is one pitfall. I see Christians also get into is they feel like they have to be the defender of all truth and righteousness.

on social media. And it's like, okay, one, most people aren't really out there to be influenced and they aren't open to your side. They're just there to pick a fight because they're bored. And so I've just found when someone is trying to pick a fight over our faith or something, we send them elsewhere with what we believe. And so that way, the burden of proof is not on us. We're sending them to better places. I really like that. And I think that sharing things is a great way to, I mean, it sounds weird to put it this way, but it's a great way to serve to minister to other people. I mean, again, a lot of people who are probably listening to this, they're on the side of, I've never shared about my faith on social media in any way.

If you went to my Facebook wall or my account, there wouldn't be much on there. Maybe they've got a verse hiding somewhere in a profile or liked one at some point. Not to start, but I think what you're bringing up is another great step is, okay, maybe you don't feel like you can articulate your faith the way you want to, but you're online. There are tons of people have articulated your. faith the way that you want to. Do it much better than I do. And you can share their stuff and you can say, hey, this really helped me. I was struggling with this and this thing has come alongside me to get me into a better place. That for sure was, for example, with an eagram critique. I did some research.

I found a great article on the Gospel Coalition website and it actually helped, it gave words to what I was thinking and feeling. And I just passed it on to her. I was like, I validated her concern and then shared a little piece of what I thought. And I said, maybe read this for some more thoughts about it. So again, I just feel like that's helpful a lot and a very non-threatening way to not bend and to not water down your face. I think it's really good. And it doesn't escalate the argument. Because if you wrote back and said, well, here's my 10 reasons. Even if you just copy and paste that article and she feels like she maybe can have a debate with you, whereas she goes read an article by someone else, well, that's not you. And so I think it defuses things. That's really good. Okay. So one last question to close us out. For someone listening to this podcast, and again, maybe they're going into that camp of, I haven't really talked about Jesus much on social media. I haven't even really ever seen my social media as a place to care for others, to share Jesus with others. until listening to this. How would you recommend that they start taking some steps forward? Like I said earlier, don't feel like this has to be, you're not failing Jesus by not posting verses on your Facebook feed. You're okay. But.

I'm just imagining you're getting to the great judgment and your Facebook wall pops up. There was no evidence here. I only count three Bible verses. There should be at least 10. Oh my gosh. Yes. I just want to lift that burden off people. This is not natural for some. people and that is totally fine. I guess one way is, again, that authenticity piece. And sometimes you might be the only Christian someone might know. So for us, that's especially true. We have a lot of followers. I'm going to put a lot of money on a lot of them aren't believers. And so when I put stuff, again, Instagram stories are kind of the place I hang out most. So for example, a couple of nights ago,

I was recording me just assembling a very simple recipe, which our audience really likes, because we have busy families that follow us. They just want to see, how do you get dinner on the table? And so I was recording just me kind of putting together a very simple recipe. And I had kids fighting in the background. One like ran through half naked. One like, I mean, was enrolling a roll of paper towels. I mean, it was just chaos, right? And so it was very tempting to just be like, and that's not going to work. We're going to have to do this one in a quieter time. But I was like, well, you know what? People need to see this is normal for us. This is normal life. I'm a human. Yes, I'm a pastor's wife. Yes, I've worked for a church. I'm also very, very human. And our family is very messy and loud. And. squabbily at five o'clock, just like yours is. And so I think just living your life in front of people has power, whether you're overtly sharing about Jesus or not. I think people watch to see, how do you respond to the kid's squabble? How do you embrace the chaos? Are you getting flustered, or are you just kind of embracing it and going with it? So even though you don't have to overtly and explicitly be like, well, I'm trusting in God in this crazy moment, like people see that

and can absorb that. And also just you can normalize Christians a little bit for them. So I think just being authentic with where you're at, whatever's natural for you. Don't do things that aren't natural for you on social media, just in the name of Jesus. Don't feel like you have to do that. You don't have to be resharing and posting and all that to be a solid Christian online. Do what's natural. And then I think anything you do post, just filter it through the fruits of the spirit. Is it born out of love, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control?

I think that's another good filter for me of is this going to reflect fruits of the spirit. And if it's not, it's probably not more sharing. That's really good. I'm thinking about how many people, especially in younger generations, I mean, if you look at the statistics, many younger people in America now have hardly ever been to a church, which means that they probably know Christian people, but their idea of what a Christian is has probably been shaped more by television and memes than reality. And so we need to fight not to become a stereotype and not to fit into a stereotype. So even if you do make your own clothing and that's fine, just don't post it on it. I'm just kidding.

We don't want to fit into a stereotype. And your point is saying one stereotype are self-righteous Christians. You think that their lives are perfect all the time. And you're showing, hey, I'm a follower of Jesus. It does not look like having a perfectly perfect life all the time. And if your life looks like me and I'm saying that Jesus is helping us walk through this, maybe the same thing's true for you in your life. And you might have the same benefits if you were following him.

Well, thanks so much for being on the show. I learned a lot from you today. And I'm going to try and apply some of that in my own. meager attempts at social media. Baby steps. But where can people follow you? How can they hear more about what you're doing? Yeah.

So our website is thriving home.org. And then from there, you can just find all our socials if you want to hop on those and join us there. So we'd love to hear from you and let us know you found us through this podcast. Thanks so much for listening. I said this earlier, but our series going through the Gospel of Luke is about to be wrapped up. And we want to do a series on the questions that are already on your mind.

So you go onto our Facebook page. You can do it right now, and you can share your questions, or you can vote on some of the questions that we've already got running in some polls. So I think this is really cool. We might turn your question into a podcast. I also think it would be a great way to connect with Keith and I. Like I said, we'll be on there. We want to talk with you. We want to get to know you. So pop on there, send us a message. Let us know who you are. The link is in our show notes, or you can just search for 10-minute Bible talks on Facebook. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.