I’d like to think God has a special place in his heart for geeks like myself.
There’s something in us that gets giddy thinking about how a program like Logos can index thousands of books in such a way that hours of work can be done in a mouse click. The ability to access our entire study library on a sleek and beautiful device like the iPad makes us feel cool.
Software updates are like Christmas presents.
We should all be thankful for the eccentricities God placed inside us when he formed us in our mother’s wombs. 1 Corinthians 12:27 states this best:
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (ESV)
Where would geeks like myself be if there weren’t people who were perplexed by the very sight of a computer? Where would we be if there weren’t people to remind us technology is only as good as its ability to help us live our lives, and that gadgets aren’t an end in and of themselves?
Taking Advantage of Opportunities
The opportunity to use my individuality to serve the body of Christ is one of the greatest joys for a believer. For me, my opportunity came when I came on to serve as the Webmaster for my church. In May of 2008, my cousins who are all in their 50s founded Sonship Ministries in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Over the past two years, our church has thrived due to the commitment of our leadership to teaching the Gospel. In developing a presence on the web our goal was two-fold: reach more and different members of our local community, and create something that would be an asset to our congregation.
One of the aspects of being on the web I thought would be particularly beneficial is to have a church Twitter account. Presenting that idea to a group of men and women in their 50s who haven’t grown up being saturated in the immediacy of technology was quite funny. Once I explained its ability to make announcements easier and grab people’s attention they came onboard. (Follow us @sonshipbayridge.)
Launching Twitter at our simple church has been filled with fun. In the first couple of days using it, I encouraged various members of our staff to log on to explore and see how things work on the site. They got excited putting out their first “twitters” as they called them initially.
I explained that the individual messages are called “tweets,” which yielded some more puzzled responses but that has begun to change. We’ve been able to utilize Twitter to announce service cancellations due to bad weather, let people know when sermon audio is posted on our site, and announce our annual service time switch for Daylight Savings Time.
Changing our Presence
Even more telling is how it’s affected our presence on the web. While I’ve done all to create good meta-tags for our website and submitted it to numerous search engines, our Twitter account appears in a Google search much higher than our actual website. If you input “church bay ridge Christ centered” into Google, our Twitter account is the eighth listing.
1 Corinthians 9:22b-23 says:
I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Surely, in a time when technology and the internet has been co-opted for so many sinful purposes, it is the call of geeks who have been saved by Christ to use their talents to shift the tides on the web. God has a special place in His heart for us because we are His ambassadors in a beautifully unique community.
I am so grateful for leadership in my local church that is willing to become all things to all people by not fearing the Internet. Instead we have embraced the call to use it to share the Gospel.
Next mission – Facebook … 😉
Christina says
Brilliant post!
Becky says
I think it’s great that you started a twitter account for a church who’s member were like 50yrs. I can imagine what would happen at one of the churches I’m a part of if we did that, we’d have to explain it to them like you did. Excited you’re going to do Facebook next. It’s encouraging to see that you could do that for your church and maybe somehow I could get something like that started for mine (still young). It’s amazing how social networks can have a big influence on communicating with our own congregations, but as well as those looking for a church, or those in our community. I’d personally choose a church by their website and what types of social networking they had (Twitter, Facebook, blog, ..). Thanks for sharing this, very encouraging, time to share it!
Stacey says
I LOVE seeing posts like this! Online ministry has been a strong calling for me for a couples years now, and it’s encouraging to see God call others to it. I can’t wait for your next post in this series either. We really will be able to be “all things to all people” once the Church is fully mobilized online!
Lou says
Thanks for all the great responses! I very much look forward to writing my next article. 🙂
God bless you all!
Lou