Around four years ago, I was browsing that cesspool that used to be called Twitter, and read through an incredibly long comment thread started by a well-known, very influential Christian.
He mentioned….something…..about a gay friend.
(It was four years ago. I can barely remember conversations I had last week. I’m doing my best. It was a heartfelt post about his friend. That’s all I remember clearly.)
A couple of comments in, someone pointedly mentioned that over the years he’d been repeatedly asked about his position on LGBTQIA+ people in the church, and that he’d never answered those questions.
He responded “That conversation is divisive, and the kind of conversation I’d rather have in person over coffee than on Twitter.”
A bunch of people, including other influential Christians, put his feet to the fire: “No, answer it publicly. The queer community deserves to know what you think.”
I think these folks had a point.
At the end of the day, if you’re a public figure of any kind, and you have an opinion about a topic that involves someone’s trust in you, their well being, their mental health, and even their lives, the most kind thing is for them to know what you believe.
And to know as soon as possible.
Lest you hurt them later.
Broken trust from someone can hurt worse than never having trusted them.
That said, I totally understand wanting to have tough conversations over coffee instead of online.
I understand the anxiety of being misheard or misconstrued publicly on the internet.
I’m in no way a public figure.
Very few people follow me online.
When I say anything on the internet, It’s normally read by a hundred people at most.
Sometimes more, but usually not.
And yet, of those 100 people, a select few follow me religiously and put a lot of stock into the things I say.
Anytime I say something on the internet, I think about the fact that it doesn’t involve:
nonverbals,
question and response,
tone,
a conversational atmosphere,
or a face to look at,
and that people reading might misunderstand me because of those things.
Sure, there’s a back and forth conversation that happens online, but it’s faceless and it’s a lot more heated.
And it includes everyone.
And very few words at a time.
When I think about this influential Christian who wanted to talk things over in a coffee shop, I understand his fear of being misunderstood by saying what he believes to thousands of people in very few words.
A few times, things I’ve said on the internet have gone a lot further than I expected.
One in particular caused a small fight in a denomination and in two colleges.
Once something is said on the internet, what happens with those words becomes entirely out of your control.
There’s so much more control over coffee, one-on-one.
I wrote a blog post once.
It was about an incredibly divisive topic in the Christian world.
I knew the possibility that I’d be misunderstood or misheard.
So instead of writing 280 characters, I wrote 17 pages.
I made sure to cover every possible question or pushback that someone would possibly have.
I defended every possible concern with all of the scripture, tradition, reason, and experience1 that I possibly could.
Even with all of that effort, after I posted it I received a bunch of comments pushing back on it.
Anytime I re-post it on a social media page, I receive multiple comments attacking me.2
Almost always, I receive one or two heated messages within five minutes of posting the article online.
The post is seventeen pages long.
Nobody on planet earth is going to reflectively read and absorb seventeen pages in five minutes.
They saw my thesis, formed an opinion, and that was that.
If a seventeen page post with hundreds of hours of reading, conversation, and effort behind it is misheard, then you can be damn sure a single tweet will be misheard as well.
It’s so, so, so much easier to have conversations about heated topics over coffee.
So much easier.
All this to say, I totally understand this dude’s desire to have the LGBTQ conversation over coffee.
However, coffee conversations often take a long time to schedule.
And it’s much slower to have a coffee conversation with everyone.
Pastors, public figures, and influential people gain the trust of people really quickly and easily.
And by the time a person finally has a coffee meeting with that pastor/public figure, and finds out what they really feel about a divisive (and very personal) topic, it can result in hurt feelings and broken trust.
Years ago, I wrote the following on Instagram:
Much of my work time is spent in coffee shops (and hospitals, where I am right now). People are a whole lot more likely to chat over coffee than in a church office, so local coffee shops basically function as a second office for me.
I often forget how traumatizing a coffee invite from a pastor can be for so many folks. "A chat over coffee" has frequently been used by pastors as a bait-and-switch to corner people for debate, or to tell them why they aren't living Godly lives.
When I started listening to my LGBTQ Christian friends' stories years ago, I heard about this kind of bait-and-switch over and over and over.
Coffee with a side of trauma.
I ache over the possibility that I've caused some of that trauma.
I probably have.
As I continue to grieve over the loss of friendships and relationships because of being LGBTQ affirming, I'm reminded that many of my LGBTQ friends have experienced considerably worse.
At the hands of people like me.
Over coffee.
Coffee and Trauma.
Grateful for (and frankly amazed by) my queer Christian friends who kept going, who continued to seek after God, despite some of us who hurt them so badly.
The fear of being misconstrued is real.
I get that.
Believe me, I do.
As a chronically anxious person with a (very small) platform, I’m very aware of the fear of saying potentially divisive things on the internet.
I’m also aware that Twitter is the worst, and if there’s even a slight possibility that something I say could be misheard or misconstrued, it’s almost certainly going to happen.
But I also think that for the well-being of the people that our words can impact, it’s probably better to be honest up front.
(None of this is to diminish meeting with people over coffee. I’ll always value one-on-one meetings over coffee. And I will happily drop everything to get together with someone over coffee at any time)
Tangentially related: a friend of mine told me that I should make a dice-driven Choose Your Own Adventure-ish game or book called Coffee with a Pastor: A Horror Story.
Sometimes the weirdest ideas are the best ideas.
I’ve been working on it. No idea if I’ll ever finish it.
My favorite was when someone told me that I should go after my doctor for prescribing me Lexapro, because my meds were making me confused and making me forget about “what scripture says.”
Cool comment. Good talk.
This is why I swapped out my 17 page arguments for little poems. They’re harder for people to argue with somehow. 😆