This is the title of a USA Today article on February 5th, 2014. You can find and read the entire article here.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/02/05/facebook-read-more-bible/5223235/
This is no surprise at all for me and probably for most of you who are reading this post. The surprise is that so many in the church world are still ignoring the great tool of social media. I still meet people every day who tell me they want nothing to do with social media. Here are the number one reasons I hear from pastors who do not use facebook, twitter, and blogs.
#1. I don’t have time.
#2. It is just a place where people gossip.
#3. I don’t trust the lack of privacy.
#4. There is too much bad stuff there.
Speaking from the experience of starting a new church, I have used facebook, twitter, and blogs to meet new people. These are people who do not go to church anywhere and many of them are now coming to church. Yes, you will also meet people who already go to church and that is great as well, we all need friends. I communicate with the people who attend the church and I do that more than I ever could imagine without social media. The people of the church get to know who the pastor is. They get to see what my life is like outside the church. I am amazed by the number of people who criticize me for posting too much or too often but I am encouraged by the numerous people who thank me for allowing them to get to know their pastor better than they have ever been allowed to before. I do pastoral care through social media. For years people have wanted some of their pastors time and there just wasn’t time to go around but with social media there is. I get numerous messages and questions on a daily basis through facebook, twitter, email, and text messages. I get so many that at times I get behind and ut takes me a couple of days to get back to people but they appreciate the fact that they can communicate with me.
Often I will get a message from a total stranger who has questions about matters they wouldn’t dare come and share face to face. But, the beauty is, after finding out through social media that it is safe to share their concerns with me, they come and we sit down face to face and discuss matters further. In some cases that has taken a year for some to become comfortable enough to meet with me.
My friends tell their friends about their church. My friends tell their friends if they have questions that it is safe to ask their pastor. My friends invite their friends to our church. My friends tell their friends about our online sermon videos and others items that may be of help and encouragement to them. My friends have become great evangelists through social media and don’t bother saying that’s easier than face to face and that is the reason they do it. The fact is, they start the conversation online and it leads to face to face friendships.
Being on social media has allowed me to touch thousands of people with the message of Christ that I would have never reached otherwise. I don’t have time not to be on social media!
There is a good amount of gossip online. I remember when there was a party line with the telephone and in my house you could hear the phone rattle in our house when someone else on the party line was getting a phone call. It was real easy to pick up the phone and listen. There were lots of harsh words exchanged in the days of party lines. There is a good amount of gossip that happens in the grocery store but I still buy groceries. If you listen closely when you sit in a restaurant you will hear lots of gossip. I always say be careful because the restaurant walls have ears, and they talk to others… As a matter of fact, I am told that gossip even takes place in the church. Imagine that, but I still go to church services. Gossip is a matter of character. Do you have enough character to walk away when someone wants to talk about someone else? I will bet that most people have that ability and the character to do so, you can ignore it online also. Gossip may even give you an opportunity to speak up for the person being maligned.
There really isn’t much expectation of privacy online. As a matter of fact there isn’t much expectation of privacy in our world any longer. I just recently read a book called “What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube.” The author, Erik Qualman says, “privacy is dead.” Erik has written two other fantastic books, “The Digital Leader,” and “Socialnomics.” I recommend them to you highly. There are however tools to keep you as safe as possible in the online world, they are not foolproof and neither is anything in the physical world. Be smart about life in the real and the virtual world.
There is a lot of bad stuff on social media. I have to agree with you there. I think you would also agree there is a lot of bad stuff in the world. It is on the shelves of the stores where we shop. It is on the televisions that we watch freely in our homes with children watching. I love to watch “Law and Order,” I celebrated just last week that I was going to get to watch an episode after missing it for the last six months and 2 minutes into the show we turned it off because of the graphic language and violent scenes. Yes people use some bad language on social media but I’m not the social media police.
Jesus hung out where the people were and if you have noticed and I’m sure that you have, there are millions of people on social media. We as Christians need to seize the awesome opportunity we have to reach this world for Christ. Here are just a few lines from the USA Today article for us to ponder.
“WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans check Facebook daily than read the Bible and it has more monthly users worldwide than most continents have people.”
“It has 757 million daily active users. Of those 19 percent are in the U.S. and Canada, so that’s more than 143 million people checking Facebook daily.”
“The Bible used to be the go-to for statistics about reading, pre-digital age. A 2006 CBS News poll found 15 percent of U.S. adults read the Bible or other religious texts daily. There are about 267 million adults in the U.S. and Canada. That means about 40 million people reading the Bible daily. And then there are monthly users – Facebook claims 1.23 billion of them. That’s more people than live in any country but China. In fact, Facebook is beyond comparing to nations and is more continental in magnitude. Facebook’s monthly user population is larger than six of the seven continents, only behind Asia. Facebook’s monthly user total is about the population of all of North America and Europe combined.”
Church, if we are going to reach this generation, we are going to have to use the tools God has blessed us with.
Ronnie