Dave Miers is a cool guy. I’ve never met him. But he seems cool. He does cool stuff like raising money for clean water in India – but he does even cooler stuff than that, he tries to help people know and love Jesus. He’s writing a couple of concurrent series on davemiers.com one called Digital Skatepark about using the Internet for Youth Ministry, and some interviews with people like Steve Kryger, Steve Fogg, and little old me – about redeeming social media.
In my post I shared this quote I read on Church Marketing Sucks a few weeks ago which I think sums up the opportunity that social media presents.
“If some day they take the radio station away from us, if they close down our newspaper, if they don’t let us speak, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left, a people without priests, each one of you must be God’s microphone, each one of you must be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always exist as long as there is one baptized person. And that one baptized person who is left in the world is responsible before the world for holding aloft the banner of the Lord’s truth and of his divine justice.” – Oscar Romero
Here’s my big thesis about how churches should use social media:
Doing social media well as an institution is all well and good, but churches need to equip and empower their flocks to use social media as people who don’t promote their own image on social media, but the image of Jesus.
Anyway. I say more on that post. Keep track of these two series though. They’re good stuff.
I thought you met him when he was a speaker at megasurge in cardwell.
Nope. Didn’t ever go to a megasurge. I think I was out of town for that one too, so I didn’t even meet him before or after.
cardwell… i remember that place! i couldn’t sleep at night scared a croc was going to get me!!
ps – thanks for your input into the social media series and the mention in this post.
keep preaching Jesus.
I bailed on facebook as no matter how politely i raised issues, or pointed to the gospel, i’d get hammered from all fronts (including on occasion from guys within the church). it seemed to bring out the tribal groupthink more strongly than I’ve seen in real life.
is empowering the flock to use social media for the gospel more important than empowering them more broadly for evangelism and to have a passion for the lost that they meet every day in the office or in their physical social circles? I think it can be both, but without the care for the lost, we’re going to water it down so we don’t get hammered as much for causing offense. I might have been a coward for running from the fight in facebook, but it brought out inner jerk that i can normally hide, and that wasn’t being a good witness.