Anyone, and I mean anyone, who can help us think about how the gospel and the church and life itself is being reshaped (or influenced or revolutionized) by social media like Facebook is worth listening to. Jesse Rice's new book, The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community
, is not only worth listening to but it's worth church staffs reading together to discuss.The Church of Facebook does not approach the subject with a holier-than-thou critical attitude, it doesn't bring in Bible and theology to make it sound Christian... the sort of approach that may sound right but be short on critical analysis. My summary statement:
Facebook is a spontaneous ordering of humans that both benefits us and is reshaping our sense of community and provides us with challenges ...
The Church of Facebook explains through (what I'd call) social psychology how the Facebook phenomenon arose (spontaneous order is his term -- great story to begin the book) and what it provides for 300 million people (connection, not to be confused with community) and how it is illuminating so many things about life (like relationships) and how we are adapting to it in so many ways ... and then he offers some warnings about how to live in a Facebook world as followers of Christ.
There's more to be said about Facebook, and more will be said over the next few years, but this is a fine book and one that penetrates deeply into the Facebook world and then comes out to explain to us what is going on in that world.
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Thanks for pointing to this book. I look forward to reading his thoughts on FB and social media in general.
Great to see that someone is placing thought into the obvious. I think what Jesse is hitting on is contextualization. We know that social networking is just in its infancy. If Moore's Law is applicable here then we are in social networking "AOL dial up" phase... wait till it goes to broadband! Church staffs are going to be very interested in this conversation... in a few years. Hopefully Christ's followers will take to heart this fluid paradigm shift.
Facebook and Twitter are helping me understand the people I serve and people just like them. Like never before this generation is now letting us in to their minute-by-minute thoughts. This age wants to know and BE known. We would be wise to listen and then to speak Christ back to them minute-by-minute. Isn't this closer to what Jesus did with the 12 than we have EVER done? It used to be once a week for the Christ-teacher to speak into your life, now it's every hour of every day and through the night. We have been given a free diagnostic stethoscope that can just as easily be turned for us to speak Grace back. WOW! What a great time to be sahring True Love.
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