Social Networking and The Church Part 1

I'm working on a proposal for managing Social Networking at my Church... I thought I would just let if fly here while I'm working... Silly me...

Communication is critical to success in life – this is nothing new. If you don’t think so, historians around the world believe that one of the greatest achievements in the last 1000 years is Gutenberg’s printing press in or around 1440. It’s interesting to realize that the one of the first things ever printed in Europe was The Bible. Communication was coming out of the “dark ages”, but no one then would have dreamed where that first book would take us.

Fast forward about 569 years and the world is very different, how we communicate has changed a great deal, but our need to communicate is stronger than ever. If there was anyone in Gutenberg’s time that thought what was happening wasn’t important they have long since been forgotten. One of the reasons that the movable printing press was so important in the course of history was that it allowed information to reach people that had no way of getting it before. Now, more common people had a chance to own a copy of God’s word or some other important communication, to read for on their own. 569 years later we take communication for granted, we don’t just like it – we expect it, we crave it and we live for it.

Gutenberg’s printing press was “bleeding edge technology” – I can only imagine those around him clamoring to find out what was next, how it worked and how they could get in on the action – just like some of us do with technology today. Technology is a word that we throw around a great deal in our society and when we do with often put the technology before the purpose behind it (“form over function”). When we do that we often get into trouble and the message get’s lost and our credibility disappears with it which then affects our effectiveness of spreading God’s word. Christ would want us to be as effective as possible with our marching orders in Matthew 28:19,10

“go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”

using every tool available to us and using those tools in such a way as to allow us to be successful in spreading His “good news”.

Knowing this, we need to be diligent, careful and creative with the communication tools at our disposal in order to be as effective as possible in our mission to tell the world about the good news of Christ.