A Real Sense of Community

Posted on September 8, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

A few days ago I read a story about a man with 100,000 Twitter followers who took his own life. I know nothing about his history or the reasons behind the suicide. But I am struck by sadness that none of the 100,000 “friends” was close enough to prevent this tragedy.

I often hear that social media is intended to build a sense of community. I suppose it does to a limited extent. I read certain blogs and have some knowledge of the writers. We can comment on each other’s blogs. In a very limited fashion, we could call that community.

Yet isn’t a real community supposed to prevent tragedies like suicide? Shouldn’t a following of 100,000 people have at least a few that would be close enough to know when something is terribly wrong?

Because of my interest in blogging and the church, I find articles which present social media as a platform for church growth. But as this tragedy illustrates, social media connection may not equate to real growth.

The church is a community and fellowship of the redeemed. We are a bunch of imperfect people who are brought into relationship with each other because of our individual relationships with Jesus Christ. We bring dysfunction and ignorance and God uses the community to work these problems out of us.

Social media can be a tool to build community, but let’s not think that a large on-line following is a real community. We still need to worship together, break bread together, study together, perhaps even argue with each other if we want to be a real community. Real community can be a messy business because there are times when each of us is a mess.

The church should be a place where flawed people feel accepted and air their struggles. Each member should feel valued and have a sense that the community suffers when one member is suffering. We should know each other well enough to know when something is wrong.

This type of community may not prevent tragedies like the suicide mentioned above, but it should minimize their occurrence. Real community provides real help to those who seek it.

Let’s focus on being a real community and not be satisfied with a sham based on follower counts.

Gutenberg, Google and the Church

Posted on June 8, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

The Retweet

http://twitter.com/#!/coryhasabeard/status/78146081514459136

The Question

http://twitter.com/#!/uSlackr/status/78215933755273217

The Response

I’m not sure what Cory had in mind when he tweeted, but here is what his tweet made me think of.

There are those in Christendom who have an aversion or a distrust of anything new. Part of this I understand. It is easy to settle into a pattern of church life and anything that upsets that pattern can be viewed as an annoyance. There is a sense in which new things should be evaluated and not automatically accepted. Some level of distrust is healthy.

But the aversion to new things can become pathological. In many congregations a change in the order of service will prompt a flurry of notes to the pastor indicating that the old order was better.

The distrust of new things leads to some curious practices. One of my favorite church curiosities is the practice of segregating worshipers into traditional and contemporary by having separate services for each group. I know that it is OK to have preferences and traditional is not better or worse than contemporary. How does this segregation enhance overall body life? How does splitting into two groups bring unity?

My point is that change is not inherently good nor bad; change must be evaluated as to its benefit in moving the church toward her goal of making disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). It does not benefit the church to hold to old paths just because they are old and familiar.

Gutenberg could not have imagined the speed with which information can be disseminated in 2011. The internet and social media are tools which can be used to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. These new tools of communication should be used by the Church to proclaim the message. So the point I take from the tweet is that the Church should be investing in developing a web presence.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the church had sought to work on good television programming in the 60’s and 70’s instead of decrying the “one eyed monster” or the “boob tube.” We are starting to see some well produced and well acted movies with a Christian message, what would have happened if we had started doing this 50 years ago?

The internet and social media are not going away barring major damage to our infrastructure. We, the church, need work within these systems to provide opportunity for people to hear the voice of Jesus calling them to come home.

A Twitter Milestone

Posted on May 3, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 3 Comments

I’m relatively new to Twitter, but I did just passed a milestone. This morning I sent out my 1,000th Tweet:

http://twitter.com/#!/mhmcintyre/status/65411548939681796

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge accomplishment. But I do believe that social media are going to be around for a while and the Church needs to employ them to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ.

Happy Tweeting! SDG

6 Reasons for a Church to Engage via Social Media

Posted on April 5, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

I am a relative newbie when it comes to social media (SM). My involvement with SM came as a result of a discussion we had in an elders meeting surrounding the potential benefit of SM for the church. In November of last year, I plunged into Twitter and paid more attention to Facebook.

Since my investigation was aimed at how SM could benefit the church, I would like to offer the following thoughts as churches consider using Social Media.

There will be an increase of what some are calling “digital natives,” those who have never known a time without the internet and electronic communication. As a result, SM are the primary tools for communication for a increasing segment of the population. I was at an organizational meeting for a summer mission group recently where most of the participants agreed that Facebook was the preferred method of communication among the team.
More people prefer to have information pushed to them as opposed to having to go looking for it. Twitter and Facebook can be used to push information to users. This saves people the effort of going to a web site and looking for the information they need.
SM allow for a sense of community because they are interactive. People can post responses and engage in spontaneous conversation. We are called to build relationships with other believers and reach out to those who do not believe. SM is a tool to do this effectively.
SM can provide near real-time response to issues and questions as they arise. In our electronic society, this speed is expected.
Twitter forces brevity with its 140 character limit. Churches can get out a short message with a link to a registration form or web page if additional information in necessary. The benefit is that people don’t need to spend a lot of time wading through information that does not pertain to them.
Facebook and Twitter give the account holders control over how and when they view information. Users can set up notifications and use filters to bring specific information to their attention.

I assume that there are other benefits that I have not included here. Please comment to add other considerations (both positive and negative).

Categories

Archives