Foursquare and People of Peace
Tried out Foursquare yet?
Foursquare is a fusion of online social media and real world engagement. It allows users to “check in” through their phone when they arrive at a specific location, like a coffee shop or concert. It is location-based social media – meaning that each and every place has a “social network” embedded in it – you can find the regulars of a bar simply by looking them up in Foursquare, and get special deals if you are the most frequent visitor of a certain restaurant or other social destination.
Habitue — –noun [huh-bich-oo-eyz, -bich-oo-eyz; Fr.]  a frequent or habitual visitor to a place
Our Pray4Chicago event (twitter: #pray4chicago) is all about “praying with your eyes open.” Our goal is to send folks out to discover the “community wells” of a specific part of the city, meet the “habitues” of a barbershop or park, and begin to imagine what a community of faith would look like in that context. We might use Foursquare to learn who “the regulars” are – or to create prayer walks for future P4C participants. Could the Foursquare “mayor” of a certain location (the person who is recorded as having visited a specific place the most often) be a clue as to who the person of peace is in that place?
Can Foursquare help you in your effort to discover your city? Most Americans, Christians included, are stuck on the treadmill of daily life. Wake up, go to work, come home, rinse, repeat. Maybe, just maybe – we can discover our neighbors by stepping off the treadmill and into where the people are.
Maybe it will transform our zombie-like Starbucks runs…you know, the ones where you duck in and duck out only murmuring your wildly complex coffee order to the barista before hopping back in your car to head off to work? Could Foursquare…and more importantly, an intentionality on our part, bring us one step closer to meeting the lonely people living all around us?
Of course, Foursquare is in my mind a crutch for those of us just learning to meet our ACTUAL social circle. Much better than “checking-in” with the mash of a phone button, is to gird up your loins, walk over to a stranger in a coffee shop and strike up a conversation. Its amazing how easy it is. Its even more amazing how ready people are to talk if you can inspire them to step off the treadmill.
Our default is to live with blinders on. It is in our nature to filter out the periphery, and to autopilot. Live locally – live with your eyes open.
Check out how Paul Watson and others are using this tool already.
priest, and 