Visibility, Vulnerability and Going Viral

I never thought I’d be one of those people who goes viral. I mean, I’m ME. I’ve worn the same “12 Cats of Christmas” sweatshirt for a few days and I sometimes enjoy Totino’s pizza and have Audiobooks of romance novels. And if I ever imagined myself going viral, I had kinda hoped it would be over a cutesy tweet about the 1994 Little Women movie or a meme that brought together Harry Potter and progressive theology *just perfectly* or when I shared a picture of my cat rolling with a felted donut of catnip. 

But it happened to me on TikTok in early December. I had been on TikTok for a year and a couple months, and finally was developing a community among #progressiveclergy from a bunch of liberal wings of USAmerican and Canadian denominations. I had made about ten videos, each getting less than 100 likes and views. So I did a duet with a video of a teen girl asking questions to Christians...and that did it. Apparently, progressive Christians naming that not all the stories in the Bible are 100% historically accurate, but some are meant to be allegories really riles folks up. And then throw on top of that being LGBTQIA+ affirming and accepting the science of evolution and being a woman pastor. So. That made folks angry. 

I was Facetiming with one of my best friends when I started getting all these notifications from TikTok and I realized that thousands (yes THOUSANDS) of people were watching my video, liking and commenting and following me. And in the course of hours, I had 500+ comments, a lot of them really nasty and mean, and my followers had gone from 50 to hundreds. Woah. I was not prepared. 

And then that same video is just floating around out there in TikTok land, keeping going and garnering more attention in waves over the past month.

I share this not to brag, but to reflect on the experience of going viral and what I am learning. I was alarmed at first. People called me mean names, threw 1 Timothy at me because they don’t believe in women pastors or preachers, tried to proselytize the people in the comments who were expressing a feeling of safety and belonging. 

Visibility is hard for me. Perfectionism is something I have struggled with for a long time, as well as the flipside of being an Enneagram 2 who likes to please people and be helpful. I am nowhere near perfect and I am learning day by day to be more honest with myself and with others about my imperfection. But something about the visibility of social media really freaks me out, especially when it’s on a platform like TikTok that is harder to control. On Facebook or Instagram or even Twitter, to some extent you can control your audience...and TikTok is just new for me and so I’m figuring it out as I go. 

I must realize that visibility and vulnerability don’t hold a lot of real-life consequences for me, though. I am an educated, middle-class white Euro-American USA citizen woman. The level of marginalization I experience on a daily basis is not nothing, but I am incredibly privileged compared to lots of creators out there on TikTok. (As for my small part, I am trying to like and follow BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ creators and give more visibility to their work). I am learning the balance between sharing publicly and keeping privacy, for myself and for my church.

So what if people call me mean names online? So what if people don’t agree with me? As a progressive Baptist woman minister, I know that there are lots of people out there, many within Baptist denominations, who don’t believe I should be in ministry or don’t believe I am a “real” Christian. I’ve been kinda sheltered over the past few years, living in a (broadly) liberal city and spending most of my time with politically and theologically progressive people. I am learning, through being visible and vulnerable on TikTok, to embrace this experience as a reminder of the widely varying practices of Christianity and, I hope, to be one small part of the #progressiveclergy and #progressivechristian tags online that spread a message that there are other kinds of Christianity out there that are not bigoted. Conservative Christians have controlled the image of what it means to be a Christian in the USA for long enough, and there are other people out there, myself included, who have a very different understanding of what it means to follow the Way of Jesus. 

Another thing I am learning, as my insecurities pop up and tell me that I shouldn’t be making videos or that I’m bad because I’m people don’t like me, is that my internal anxieties pale in comparison to the struggles people are going through as they comment “I feel safe here” or “I wish I’d met a pastor like you sooner” or send me Instagram DMs. There are folks out there, maybe reading this right now, who feel bad about themselves because of something a Christian said to them, who worry if they will be going to hell because of their identity or their secret thoughts, who don’t feel comfortable asking questions or doubting or wondering about the nature of God. And if folks are reaching out to a total stranger (me) and courageously sharing from their hearts, they deserve to be listened to by a compassionate ear and affirmed in their being. And that is the center of my ministry: to remind everyone (YOU) that you are not alone. You are enough. You are good. You are beloved. 

Let’s chat. 

(Please comment below! I’d really like to keep learning and adjusting my thinking as I spend more time considering how I show up publicly.)

Are you on TikTok? What do you like about it? What concerns you about the platform? 

How do you think about visibility and vulnerability?