Pastor: Online confession 'Good for the Soul'

COOPER CITY (FBW)—The concept of a dramatic confession is not new. An individual sits in a dark, two-sided booth with a small sliding door where they catch a glimpse of a shadowed figure on the other side. They confess their sins and receive instructions on absolution. What is new is that concept played out online-minus the absolution.

Troy Gramling, pastor of Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, said his new Dot Com confessional-the first known of its kind in a Southern Baptist church-corresponds with a 10-week sermon series aimed at preventing people from "screwing up" their marriages, parenting and commitment to God.

The 6,500-member congregation, which has led Florida Baptist Convention churches in baptisms for the past two years, launched the website, www.ivescrewedup.com, just before Easter. The site now has more than 400 online admissions and is scheduled to be up at least through Father's Day when the series culminates.

So far the site has received about 1,000 hits a day, according to Gramling, who told Florida Baptist Witness a team of people from the church is responsible for vetting and posting the anonymous messages in which people are asked to list only a city, state and age along with their "confession."

The black and white themed website, with inviting scrolling letters announcing "Confession is Good for the Soul," is reminiscent of a Catholic confessional booth—although the Catholic Church has denounced Internet confessions as not meeting the requirement for its holy sacrament.

A litany of sexual transgressions are displayed on the site under the heading "Browse Confessions," with dozens of other sins and slights including theft, lying, drug and physical abuse, and lust. Some read like requests for prayer. Others are testimonial in nature with or without admissions of guilt. Few appear as petitions to God. From Florida, a 37-year-old women admits to "not being a loving wife" to her husband while watching him being "consumed" with pornography. The woman describes the damage to their relationship in graphic terms and pleads, "Father forgive me and my husband and let me find peace so we can continue a healthy relationship."

In one posting, a 79-year-old from St. Clair, Mich., talks about not giving a friend, who is unable to drive, a lift. "I feel bad about not responding immediately," the person wrote.

From Harlingen, Texas, a 44-year-old admits to an affair with a married man, and from Hickory, N.C., a 22-year-old writes she has lost a child and "everything I ever loved" because of drug and alcohol addiction.

"I don't want to live like that anymore," the N.C. individual wrote. "I want the Lord to take me and I want to take him into my heart as my savior. I want to repent from sin and change my life now. God help me."

Where it all started

Envisioning providing a place where people who "live on the net" could connect with the church and take a "first step towards healing," Gramling said he and his staff decided a Catholic-like "confessional" where people pour out their sins anonymously would appeal to the large Catholic flavored community in South Florida—and in Lima, Peru, the location of one of the church's satellite campuses.

"The website itself is just like a confessional where people can come and they can confess or they can browse the confessions," Gramling said. "The hardest thing sometimes is to admit that we've screwed up and so this is kind of like that first step."

The 30-something senior pastor is not unfamiliar providing Internet resources. He leads an online church in addition to managing church campuses in Cooper City, Doral, Sawgrass, Hallandale Beach and in Lima, Peru.

"People believe [God] can forgive an online confession just like any confession, if it's a sincere confession about what they've done," Gramling said. "And we want to provide opportunities for them to take the next step to healing and to repentance and changed life and changed direction and all that."

Gramling said the pain expressed on the Internet site is indicative of the heartbroken nature of people all around, and the site allows people to take off their masks and be honest about their shortcomings.

"Confession is good for the soul," Gramling said in explaining what he sees as a ministry the church is providing. After further discussion, Gramling told the Witness there are two Bible verses which support the need for confession-one of which is 1 John 1:9.

"The whole idea of confessing to God is a very biblical idea and then James when he talks about confessing to each other," Gramling said. "I think most of these are written not so much for you or me that are browsing through them, they are written from someone to God as opposed to praying to God, they're actually just confessing to Him in written form.

"So I think it's more about forgiveness in First John than it is salvation and that kind of thing," Gramling said. "These are folks who have made mistakes, have screwed up, and so now they're confessing to God whether it be pornography, adultery, or cheating or [that] they haven't been kind to those around them, or whatever it is."

The site instills in people who view the confessions a desire to pray, Gramling said, downplaying what some critics have suggested will bring out the gawkers, voyeurs and vulgar. He claims the site is a wake-up call for all who read it and will give those who confess a bigger picture of the pervasive nature of their sin.

A team of people looking at the messages weed out ones that are too graphic, but try and otherwise post most out of a concern that "if somebody's truly confessing and it doesn't make it on the board that it could affect them in some way," Gramling said.

Though there are no-comment sections and the e-mail confessions are not tracked after they are posted, Gramling said he hopes other information on the site will lead posters and browsers to take advantage of the church's teachings beginning with a look at their Internet resources.

In order to give people a visual image of what he is talking about, Gramling said the church built a two-sided confessional which sits on its main platform and is used for dramatic presentations.

The population in South Florida and in Peru knows what a confessional booth looks like, Gramling said. "They have somewhat of an understanding of sin and that they need to confess, but nobody is going," Gramling asserted. "I mean, I won't say nobody is going, but very few people are actually using the physical confessional."

And writing confessions on a computer is really more akin to communicating with God through journal writing than it is to confessing sins to believers for the purpose of accountability, Gramling said.

"There's no doubt it's easier than confessing eyeball to eyeball. But our target is that person who has very seldom confessed to anybody," Gramling continued. "We can go straight to God and, of course, confess to Him and God forgives us and this is just trying to use something people are familiar with, especially with the Catholic tradition in the sense of a confessional and help them to begin the dialogue with God."

On whether the use of such a distinctly Catholic concept such as a confessional booth might haze over the theological differences between Catholics and Baptists, Gramling said any confusion would be unintentional.

"There is no attempt on our part to even try to blur that line or anything," Gramling said. "We've been very upfront [and said] it's not about coming to me or going to one of the other pastors, it's about you and God in this relationship."

Gramling said he anticipates positive will come from the site which is going to be up for an undetermined amount of time-although it was originally slated to be online for only a few weeks while the original sermon series ran.

"It's cool what God has done," Gramling told the Witness. "Just being reminded that sin causes a lot of pain that we never see in our world because people keep it on the inside."

Seminary leader cautious

Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., expressed caution in promoting Internet confessions.

"This website is well-intended, but is, unfortunately, a step backward for the proclamation of the Gospel," Moore told the Witness. "This site represents a kind of pop-sacerdotalism, a place where in a cyber-confessional troubled souls can gain catharsis. The problem is that cleansing doesn't come through venting one's sin anonymously on the Internet. It comes through the blood of Christ, through the Gospel."

Moore added, however, that the Internet may be useful in ministry.

"I think the Web certainly could be a tool for pointing men and women to Christ-but to Christ- not to a false sense of security via some cyber-priestcraft. An Internet-based Gospel presentation, along with information about churches would be a good use of the Internet. This is a well-intentioned bad idea."

Mac Brunson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville told the Witness when dealing with confession it must be determined if it's "the private confession of private sin, the public confession of private sin, or the public confession of public sin" that an individual is dealing with.

Additionally, there is the issue of who receives the confession.

"Since all sin is against God we need to confess our sins to Him," Brunson said. "After all, only God can forgive sin. I am afraid that by [creating] online confessionals we convey to people that this is in place of a priest. No written statement, no human, and certainly no voyeuristic eyes can absolve, forgive, or redeem."

Brunson also said confession should be only as wide-spread as the sin is known.

"An online confession becomes a means of almost bragging about what one has done. It also very well may provoke others into sin," he warned.

"In addition, an online confessional may very well become nothing more than a talisman, a charm, some hocus pocus," prompting people to do what they want knowing they can just confess later," Brunson continued.

"God warns us that He will not be mocked," Brunson said. "I am thankful that this brother has brought attention to the need for confession, but the end does not justify the means. There is a much more biblical way to do this, and as Scripture is very indicative, it is through the local body of believers."