Social Media
You Have A Beautiful Voice.
Had the Apostle Paul been born in this “information age,” how would he go about spreading the gospel today? What methods would he use to get the message of “Christ crucified” out to the greatest number of people? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I believe that social media would be a large component of his strategy.
Here’s why I’m so convinced. In Paul’s day, he took advantage of of three things. First, there was the “peace of Rome.” Much of European society and a large part of Asia were under Caesar’s military control. This means that it was fairly safe to travel across borders. Secondly, and as the saying goes, “All roads lead to Rome.” By our standards travel wasn’t very fast back then. But the fact that they were able to move across difficult terrain and past multiple boarders made Christianity accessable to a large number of people. And finally, there was a common language. No matter where you were born, nearly everyone around the Mediterranian spoke a simple form of Greek. It was the language of commerce and travel, and it became the language of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul harnessed all three of these advantages and used them to preach the gospel to the largest number of people possible.
For me personally, this is why it’s not so difficult to imagine Paul jumping on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and the growing number of social media websites that we have at our fingertips. I also believe he would have taught his converts how to leverage these technologies for the expansion of the kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, even with all these tools available to us in America, the traditional church as we know it is struggling. Across the board, church attendance is down. Giving is down. Conversions to Christ have been trending in the same direction for over a decade now. Perhaps the worst part of what we see in the statistics is that the Millennial Generation is dropping out of church in greater numbers than their parents or grandparents ever did. This is tragic and it should burden the heart of every believer.
And yet, the Millennial Generation is the most connected generation in world history. The only two people who were more connected to everyone on the planet were Adam and Eve. In addition, the Millennials are technologically savvy. They have social networks, tribes, friends, followers, contacts, etc. What if we could leverage all the opportunities at our disposal and attract them into an environment that captures their generation for Christ? What’s even better about this is that the “environment” I’m talking about is modeled after the first century church.
As you read through our webpage, you’ll see that we are not doing “traditional church,” “attractional church” or even “megachurch.” We believe that we—the body and bride of Christ—are the church, wherever we are, and whenever we meet. The house church network that The Movement Church of San Antonio is building is a wonderful fit for those who have tried everything else but have still walked away.
We need your help to get the message out there. If you would “Like” and link us on your Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and post our stuff on the internet, it would be stinking awesome. We’re not asking you to do this for us, but for the common cause of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’ve even created some catchy Facebook banners that you could use on your homepage. They will capture some attention. I guarantee it. More importantly, it will drive traffic to our webpage, and perhaps we can reach some lost people in your social network. Just right click the image with your mouse and then save it to your hard drive. Once it’s there, you can upload it anywhere you want. These banners are formatted according to the exact size and dimensions of Facebook’s specifications:
I’d love to talk with you more about this. Send me an email and we can start a conversation. Or better yet, let’s grab a cup of java.
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