Tagged: Facebook RSS

  • Mark 9:25 am on February 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Facebook, ,   

    Facebook and Eschatechnology in the Church 

    Much has been said of late on the inter-webs about the (negative) influence Facebook and other social media websites have had on attendance at church worship services.  Richard Beck, psychology professor at my alma mater ACU (makin’ me proud!), suggests that there is a certain psycho-social human need that is met in the gathering together each Sunday morning. Seeing the same familiar faces, catching up on the goings on in the lives of friends, and “visiting,” is a major reason why many of us attend church in the first place.

    Beck says that teens and young professionals of the emerging Generation Y, among the most comfortable on technologies like Facebook, are also the folks least likely to be regular attenders of church services.  He claims that the same needs met by regular in-the-flesh gatherings can be met by checking status updates online, and most kiddos simply don’t want to spend an hour and a half doing something they can do 15 times in 5 minutes!

    Interestingly, he’s done the research and concluded that our Facebook friends (the ones we pay attention to anyway) tend to be our actual friends! Facebook isn’t replacing our social world, it is reflecting it…complimenting…even augmenting it!

    But what about the other purposes of gathering together?  Like worship, teaching, physical touch, laughter?  What about social justice, community service, and more?  Beck says that all the surface level practicals of arranging our social lives can now be done online or via texts, whereas the deeper reasons for gathering can be focused on more and more.

    Now when we gather, it is to see God glorified, or our neighbor loved – with fewer distractions! We see this happening with fewer minutes being used during a worship service to do announcements – now we just ask folks to join our Facebook page to stay connected all week long!

    Can Facebook help us “do life” with our church 7 days a week? Sure it can – but it can also perpetuate shallow relationships too.

    Can Facebook help us serve our neighbor? You betcha!  But it can also keep us sequestered to our dark little apartment, or keep blinders on to everyone who isn’t in our own little social network.

    —>  In short – Facebook merely helps you become more of who you already are! If you are a shallow jerk in your actual relationships, you’ll have apps and tools to make you an even BIGGER shallow jerk online!  (Farmville, anyone?)  If you love the LORD and are passionate about seeing his Kingdom come, you will be a part of helping it come on Facebook as it is in heaven!

    At a congregational level, if your church can’t seem to get past conversations about sports and the weather during your “fellowship times,” why will people attend your gatherings when they can meet all those needs from their smartphone?  And if your church is begging God for revival, if they are constantly listening to each other’s heart and the heart of God – there will be no shortage of ways to use the power of Facebook to meet those needs.

    Think about your faith community now – how might social media augment what you value as a community?  How might it help reorient your values in a positive way?

    God seems to reveal himself and propel us in mission each time new technology emerges (think stone tablets, Roman roads, the Gutenberg press, blogs, and more!)  With tongue placed firmly in cheek, I call this “Eschatechnology.”

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  • Mark 8:57 am on March 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Facebook, , Life Sciences,   

    Thy Kingdom Connected makes a case for the church in a world where Facebook has replaced the primary commons for people to connect.

    Studies everywhere are bemoaning Generation Y’s unprecedented exodus from not just the church, but of Christianity. They posit that kids these days are just fed up with the church’s hypocrisy, its close-mindedness, boring worship events, and the like. The truth is – that the church has been like that for generations! That may be their explicit reason for leaving church, but if church has always been just as mind-numbing, why is it that this generation in particular is dropping like flies?

    With this question in mind, consider the unprecedented use of smart phones, Web 2.0 technology and social media. Think about it – the very thing that people “went to church” for in past generations now is at your finger tips! Facebook is “My Kingdom, Connected.” My photos, my status, my events, my ‘friends’…”

    And yet Dwight J. Friesen prepares us with new metaphors and language to connect us to a different kind of Kingdom. He plays in other fields of study, from biology, physics, mechanics, ecology…even knitting…and teases out rumors of God’s networked-Kingdom.

    Missiologists and church planters could use new vocabulary to describe the fresh vision of God’s people in today’s world – and while Friesen’s language at times leaves you wondering if “there was a single English word in that last sentence…” he seems to invite his readers to explore a new landscape of metaphor and paradigm for living as a networked ecology of Christ.

    I am an organic church advocate and practitioner, helping facilitate a network of faith communities meeting in homes, coffee shops, and other places life happens… I found great encouragement in Thy Kingdom Connected and found myself setting aside some of the metaphors and descriptors as a means of under-girding our theology and ecclesiology here in Chicago.

    So often in theology and in church planting we pick apart models, theories, Scriptures, and just about everything else…leaving the issue just about as lifeless as a dissected frog in biology class. But Friesen takes a page from the “Science of Life” – asking the question, “What would it take to develop a theological vision that enhances life?” At the core of life-centered theology is one that cultivates life in context, rather than picks it apart – seeing theology and ecclesiology as inherently relational and therefore, not approachable as an “it” — as would have been done in the typical modern worldview — but as a “we” – and a dynamic, open-ended and even divine “We” at that. We are in the petri dish, we are in the linked network we are ourselves exploring.

    In Friesen’s understanding of leadership, we are to engage our community the way Google engages its users. No one goes to Google for its own sake – it is a springboard to resources and information. Leaders too are a linking catalyst…a hub to the resources to the very best that God has to offer. This is more than the leader having a big library – this is cultivating a culture (ecology) of a organic, spiritual system, fully connected as an “all-channel network” — meaning giving not only your resources but pointing to each other as resources to access for strengthening the links of a church network. This is the nature of leadership – influencing the people-system for catalytic transformation.

    I disagreed with Friesen’s approach (if not his content) regarding the Christ-Commons and Christ-Clusters. He seemed to say that Christ-Commons were regularly scheduled events whereas Clusters were serendipitous fly-by-night collections of Christians. I agree that there are both kinds of “groupings” in the Church – the folks walking to Emmaus on Easter may be to him what is known as a “Christ-Cluster” – which is fine – but to call that “the soul of the church” is a little much if you ask me. Spontaneous engagements with community and the Spirit is simply a natural overflow of family life together – which can happen in a regularly scheduled event or in an impromptu worship night at a friend’s house. People grow from both “quality and quantity” time together and with the Spirit.

    Our network in Christ extends beyond our little crew that meets in my living room – it is more than our network of organic churches in Chicago. It is broader than the global church in our day, and reaches further back than Pentecost and beyond the 2nd Coming of Christ. It is the Church Universal – it is the Bride to Be. Entangled in the Network of God, who was, is, and is to come.

    Thy, not My, Kingdom Connected!

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  • Mark 9:34 am on December 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Facebook, , Wikipedia,   

    YouVersion – a 2.0 spiritual resource 

    Its amazing how things change, and how at the same time, things so much the same.

    Looking into how our culture works, I’m watching people at the check-out get replaced by automated voices and “self-checkout” lanes.  Haiku’s of the past are today’s Tweets.  We are at once more isolated and yet more connected than ever before.  We are scatter-brained, multi-tasking, over-worked and stressed out, yet we have created Wikipedia, the largest repository of human knowledge IN HISTORY.

    The same is true for spiritual formation. I am passionate about Christ-centered transformation in a person’s life – including my own – and yet I remain very firmly planted in our world’s changing world.  What of worth can come from using the tools of Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, and the like for the purposes of spiritual formation and discipleship?  How can we center on Christ through these tools?  I’ve written before on “Eschatechnology” and using technology as an extension of our resources in pursuing Christ.  Paul did it with the new Roman roads, mailing systems and parchment writing.  Moses did it with stone-tablets.  Martin Luther did it with the Gutenberg Printing Press.  More on that here.

    YouVersion is quickly finding itself among the coveted list of spiritual resources for the digital age.  They’ve just released a new version of their Bible reader online and on many of the smart phones.  Now you can choose or customize any number of reading plans, picking from dozens of translations of the text.  You can make contributions and comments right alongside the learned theologians (a la Wikipedia).  You can join groups, add friends, (like Facebook) and engage live presentations (at a worship service, for instance) with audience response, note-taking, and group-share.

    I’m still imagining what this might look like in our church network.  Maybe friends in an LTG become friends on Youversion and share insights into the text they’re reading for that week.  Maybe new disciples can read through the “Outreach New Testament” reading plan – designed for people just looking into the Christian faith or brand new to following Jesus. Maybe tweeting a verse that hit you while you were reading and beginning a conversation on Twitter with others.

    Certainly this tool is not for everyone – but it gives fresh life to those who are inclined like I am toward infusing their faith into a 21st Century world.

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    • Josh Frank 12:07 pm on December 21, 2009 Permalink

      There’s an interesting conference in CA coming up in March:
      Theology After Google

      More on that here:
      http://transformingtheology.org/calendar/theology-after-google

      Good thoughts as usual, Mark!

    • Mark 12:19 pm on December 21, 2009 Permalink

      Josh – cool! Where do you hear about such awesome conferences? I’m guessing that I’ll be “attending” via Twitter. :)

    • Josh Frank 12:26 pm on December 21, 2009 Permalink

      Most of them are through the emerging circles I still follow, folks like Adam Walker-Cleaveland and, to a lesser extent, Tony Jones.

      While California in March (Chicago’s extra month of winter??) sounds great, I’ll likely be following along online, too.

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