Dear Parents
Posted on July 6th, 2005 by catalyst into the Uncategorized categoryHere is the letter that City Bible sent to all parents warning them of myspace.com. I love these types of letters and thought you might enjoy reading it as well.
Dear Parents
We hope that you are enjoying the beginning of your summer and warm weather that the Lord has blessed us with this week! I am writing you to inform you of something that you may or may not be aware of concerning a web site called “myspace.com”.
Myspace.com is a BLOG. In simple terms it is a site where anyone can post information and pictures of themselves. After the information is listed other young people can post comments like a bulleting board and direct comments to that person. Young people are using this site to communicate with their friends and “have fun”. The problem is that the site contains material that is questionable. The web site has no filters or controls over what can be posted or written. On this site you will find nudity, bad language and content that is inappropriate.
It has come to our attention that young people from youth ministries and Christian schools all over the area have posted pages. Portland Christian School recently in a letter informed their parents of their concerns for the site and several youth ministries have done the same.
We feel that parents should be aware of the site and know if your children have pages on the site. If your child has posted a page we feel that it would be wise to have them remove it. Although they may be innocently commenting and communicating with their friends, they are only a couple of clicks away from inappropriate material.
In Christ,
Pastor Doug Lasit
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July 6th, 2005 at 10:00 am
This makes me feel old. My parents got a letter warning them about DC Talk, Amy Grant, and *GASP* Gospel Gangsters.
July 6th, 2005 at 10:36 am
This is silliness. How about instead we encourage parents to parent their children? Maybe the kids will actually learn to make healthy choices about where they surf online? No, wait, sorry. I forgot. CBC parents need to be told exactly what to think about everything, and God forbid we allow teenagers to exercise their Constitutional right to freedom of speech. If someone really wants to find “smut” on the internet, it can be found in a few clicks regardless of if/where you blog.
July 6th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
You can’t force parents to parent their children. I for one would appreciate any heads-up and help from the youth pastor at my church when it comes to my children’s safety and what they are looking at. To an non-internet-savy parent, a note like that might help open their eyes.
Also, as far as constitutional rights, as long as my child lives under my roof, his “constitutional rights” are filtered through me.
July 6th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
If you need the church to help you monitor your child’s internet activity, then you’re probably not a very good parent.
July 6th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Here’s another heads up for you.
Watch out for any site that begins with “www.”
If they’ve gotten that far they are only “a couple clicks away from inappropriate material”.
You’re welcome.
July 6th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Hehehe. Exactly. Why call out myspace.com as the only example? There’s “questionable material” all over the internet.
How about a comprehensive list of all websites that might contain anything you don’t want your child to see? How about sending out a letter with all the movies they shouldn’t watch and all the music they shouldn’t listen to as well? (Or have they already done that?)
July 6th, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Actually, CBC is going to adopt any children I have so that they can lead lives of purity and total church involvement from unused PBC dorm rooms.
July 7th, 2005 at 2:01 am
Wow. Nothing like a little milieu control to make the elect feel more select, eh?
This is actually quite a complex matter to me. First, I don’t necessarily differ with any concept that, if one is to belong to a group and conform to thier mores, that one should obey a code of conduct and/or behavior.
But it should be one that is informed by thought and intellect. This policy is based on sheer unreasoning reaction.
It’s notable to me more about what it says to me about the issuer of the message than the message itself. I’m under the impression that, with this group, inculcation and communal behavioral reinforcement is key. Again, this is not a good nor a bad thing, but merely a function of life in any given community, and the evil and/or good thereon depends entirely of the use of the function.
I hear a community who preaches internal strength so deathly afraid of anything outside of it that it’s got to demand compliance to a code that members ought not to have to be advised to do…if the milieu was sufficently well-adjusted.
They’re afraid, in short, of losing control. It’s not about whether or not the congregation is healthy, enthusiasic, vital and growing; it’s about whether or not everyone is obeying.
Loyalty must be instilled, not demanded, else it’s absolutely worthless.
Either you’ve provided your flock adequate tools to survive and cope in a worldly world, or you haven’t.
July 7th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
SJK,
Well said. You’ve hit the nail precisely on the head: for CBC, it’s not a matter of people learning how to be healthy, informed citizens, it’s a matter of people doing what they’re told. I can’t really decide what’s scarier: the fact that the people (read: affluent, predominantly white men) who are doing the telling seem so reactionary and paranoid, or the fact that 8500 Portlandians are dancing to their piping without question.
Yes, kids are probably posting naughty pictures and naughty language on sites like this….but not only is it true that a kid could get to “inappropriate material” elsewhere, it’s also true that what they’d find elsewhere is likely to be a whole lot worse. No, we can’t force people to parent their children, but trying to centralize “house rules” via the youth pastor is only going to encourage further apathy — feeding a mentality that says “the church will tell me what to do”. Why would anyone bother to think for themselves in that kind of environment, when letting someone else do the thinking is so much easier?
If a parent has determined that a kid is old enough to be surfing the internet on their own, the kid damn well should have a sense of what is ok for them to be looking at. If they look at it anyway, making them get rid of their myspace.com account isn’t going to do anything….the parents already have a lot bigger problems on their hands if the kid won’t apply and follow the moral rules they know on her/his own.
The alternative, of course, is to convert City Christian Schools into a boarding-school program. Then Doug could watch over the kiddos 24/7. Better yet, why don’t they just build a compound so all members can just live there all the time under the leadership’s watchful eye? Everyone could wear identical outfits (black silk jammies, days of the week underpants, and matching Nikes, perhaps? Or maybe bunny slippers, to prevent escap…er, I mean callouses) and liquidate all their pesky worldly assets for the church’s use. There could be videocameras everywhere, a V-chip in every television, and integrityonline on every computer. All aspects of life could be determined by Hank and his crew, right down to the kool-aid.
July 8th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
“Opiate”
Choices always were a problem for you.
What you need is someone strong to guide you.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow,
what you need is someone strong to guide you..
like me, like me, like me, like me
If you want to get your soul to heaven,
trust in me .
Now don’t you judge or question.
You are broken now ,
but faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
What you need is someone strong to guide you.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
Let me lay my holy hand upon you.
July 9th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
um, in the rules of myspace, it says that posting nudity will cause your account to be deleted. Unless the church considers bathing suites to be nudity. Better not go to any swimming pools or beaches. oh no!
November 20th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
While we are at it, how about we just build a little island so that all Christians can go there to live in harmony and forget about the evils of the world.
The problem I see, is this. Here we are telling parents to isolate their children from this that and the other thing. You CANNOT hide your children from the bad things in this world forever. All that will end up happening is that kids like these will grow up totally naive of what the real world is like. Then they will have a huge shock once they go to college, get a job, move to a new city. I don’t have any sort of solution to any of this, but I think isolating your children from the world is just creating a new problem.
It seems to me that stuff like this happens because Christians want control. They want to be that perfect Christian that never does anything “bad”. And if they can’t do it, maybe they can get the next generation to be perfect.
I’ve got news… it will never happen! As Christians we should understand that we are not perfect, and we never will be perfect. We understand that we sin, and we cannot make ourselves stop sinning. Show me any person, and I will show you a habitual sinner. We all do it. It is uncontrolable. You may not sin the same way the guy next to you does, but you will always continue to sin in some way.
However, the reason we call ourselves Christians is because we realise our faults. We realise that there is no way we could make it into heaven on our own. And therefore, we accept help from a guy named Jesus. That fact in and of itself is the only thing that separates us from anyone else.
The way I look at it is this. God put me on the planet and gave me this life to live. I’m going to live life to the fullest possible. I know ahead of time that I am going to make mistakes. All I can do is keep pressing forward and trust that Jesus has my back.
Think of this. If you always go out of your way to avoid evil in the world, you are doing nothing but letting evil control where you go. I implore you, do not isolate yourself or force others into isolation. Do not let yourself be controlled. Instead, live life… yes, you may see bad things along the way, but it is up to you to not let those thing effect you.
Anyhow, I’ll stop ranting, this is just my opinion.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:43 am
I think the whole compound idea is great or the island! But then again what fun would that be…we would have nothing to rant and rave about.
Besides the kids could be on worse sites….and they most likely are.
PS..Im on myspace.com…Amen
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October 31st, 2006 at 6:33 pm
MySpace is a dangerous, DANGEROUS place! Unsavory characters abound!
For example, BTBeauty put up a MySpace page and the next thing you know, she’s friends with Judah Smith!!!
November 1st, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Now I get it! Last summer a friend who still attends one of the mfi churches in boise told me her pastor was talking on the dangers of myspace.com so he decided to set up a blog that they could all visit instead. I was wondering whose idea this was . . . I know, but that’s beside the point.
Anyway, when she told me i was like ‘duh–kids are going to quit blogging on myspace and go blog on your pastor’s space. like that is going to happen?’ He calls it Godspace.tv, a place for Him; but it’s a place where he posts sermons and lets people post prayer requests under a tab called ‘communicate with God’(his picture is right above that). The first blog(sermon)entry was May 1,2006 and the last entry was June 1,2006. It’s interesting that under communicate with God there are prayer requests beginning Apr 8 and the last one is Oct 24. It’s not bad that he’s set up a blog but where are the bloggers? I don’t see the young people on there. And if you are going to offer a place to receive prayer requests, wouldn’t it be polite to at least acknowledge something? The last visual sign of life was June 1 2006.
November 1st, 2006 at 7:34 pm
I need to add that myspace.com is also a huge network for musicians of all ages. It’s a place where indie artists and mainstream artists post their songs, get heard, get downloaded if they want, find out they aren’t the only ones with music which can be both encouraging and overwhelming, depending on the day. For some it’s the only website they can afford. It’s a phenomenon because it is changing the whole structure of the music industry today!
And concerning Doug Lassit, he’s the one who informed one of the youth pastors over in boise that boise had finally made the cbc blog when i and ‘free at last’ begin to post here. so he’s obviously not a stranger to blog sites. but i suppose you guys have known he was one of the lurkers all along.
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:12 am
MySpace.com is OK for music, but man it makes an old rocker feel older with all the young kids on there.
The music streaming works OK after the kiddies go to bed or while they’re in school, but from about 2PM to 9PM here, music streaming is spotty at best. And there is good reason to be concerned over MySpace content - until I figured out the privacy settings, I regularly got offers from S.E.X.Y.B.A.B.E.S with web cams, etc. And my page has a picture of me AND my wife. So it ain’t like people couldn’t see that I’m a geezer - a married geezer. 
For indy music, check out Garageband, IACMusic, Soundclick. No 4 song limits there.
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:02 am
Yeah you are right about that. It’s not a perfect forum but it’s still help changing the way music is done.
I dismantled the use of html on comments on my profile bcz of the dorky pictures people send along with comments with all the glittery goo and stuff. AND they take up so much space. Yea, I’m with ya on the s.babes thing. At least you can click deny and be done with it. But i could see where it could be a door for a person to get hooked into that darkness. Another thing is the time factor: if you are mature enough to manage your time wisely on there and here and anywhere internet -wise it can be a good thing. Otherwise it could be a real time consumer. I can see where a person could let it be too much of a thing in their lives.
It’s interesting that generation church is blogging now. Blogspaces aren’t going to go away so I suppose they talked their superiors into letting them try to be relevent to this world. They probably said yes after J showed them all that was written on him here. !!
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:06 am
I’m not.
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:28 am
That goes without saying Scrupe!
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:22 am
TCR –don’t blogs usually refer to a two way conversation? Oh yea, that is how they like it. We talk you listen –even in the blogasphere nothing changes. Once again wierdness.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:12 pm
cloistered bubble of communal weirdness.
November 4th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Myspace is free. Church membership is not.
Get that Doug???