DALLAS, TX - Pastor and best-selling author of It's All About Jesus, Larry Richards, is known for practicing online the humility he preaches in the pulpit by retweeting only 75% of all compliments he receives on Twitter about himself or his books.
Richards briefly looked up from his phone to explain his humble retweet ethics to reporters at a Friday press conference. "When you get to have as big of a following as I do - which is rare - it's really easy to let this sort of thing go to your head. I see it happen to Christians online all the time. They write a book, get a little attention, and suddenly their Twitter feed is literally nothing but retweets of every little positive thing anyone says about them or anything they've ever written. That's dangerous and obnoxious, and that's why I limit myself to retweeting only three out of four."
"Whether the compliments are directed toward me or I happen to find them in the browser tab I keep open at all times running a Twitter search of my name, I only retweet three quarters of them, and no more," he continued pensively. "And the other 25% - I just let them go. Nobody sees them but me and God. Just me and God. Nobody else. Is it hard to let those lavish compliments pass into history without broadcasting them to everyone? Yes, it's hard. But it's the right thing to do."
Richards then went on to recite from memory a number of the compliments he had passed on retweeting, explaining that they were legitimate compliments, not throwaways, despite the fact that he declined to share them to his followers out of his exceeding meekness.
Before returning his attention to his Twitter app, he added, "Also, and this might not be an issue to people who don't get boatloads of compliments every day like I do, but I usually try to space the retweets out to one or two per hour, instead of all at once. That way there's not a constant wall of them, which sends the wrong message. And last but not least, I almost always make sure to add a note about how 'humbled' I am by the compliment I am retweeting, just so everyone knows where my heart is."
