The opening paragraph of UT’s official social media usage guidelines reads:
“Social media and social technologies can help you create and nurture relationships, share information, advance knowledge, raise awareness, build support, participate in important conversations and collaborate on new ideas.”
Important conversations? Raising awareness?
As Christians we have the most important conversation to engage people with and the greatest cause to raise awareness about.
We are commissioned with advancing the knowledge of God to every nation until “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, as water covers the sea (Isa. 11:9).” This is quite a task.
As more and more people live their lives online and take the internet as their primary news source, we should take this as a prudent and partial opportunity to flow into these online crevices and inundate the earth. Faithful AND prudent (Matt. 24:45). Certainly this is terrain that needs to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.
Romans 10:18 likewise presents insurmountable challenges apart from social media megaphones like Twitter.
But I say, Have they not heard? Yes surely: Their voice has gone out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the inhabited earth.
Through Twitter, even the softest spoken Christian voice can reach the ends of the inhabited earth.
Facebook and Twitter are new countries that require no passport, no money, and no foreign language skills. They are the biggest melting pots the world has ever known. And yet you can reach people there every minute who are just as real and needy (at least spiritually) as the people in the most extreme mission field. You can give a message around the world and be back the same day without any jet lag.
Of course this doesn’t marginalize or compete with literal missionary movement. And I am certainly not encouraging us to bunker down in the comfort of our own homes and simply tweet verses all day, patting ourselves on the back for hard work. There are still lots of places the internet can’t go and ways the internet can’t replace the human element. But this should come as a welcomed supplement.
Through the internet we have access to living rooms and smart phones all around the globe. Only in the last few years have John Wesley’s famous words in 1793 become a real possibility- “I look on all the world as my parish.”
Welcome to the new pulpit.
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conversant faith 
The problem with Twitter, though, is that sometimes I feel like I’m shouting into an empty hanger. I have no idea who hears me out there. Or maybe a better way to describe it is, I’m shouting into a hanger full of shouting people. You’re painting a grand picture, but my experience with it isn’t so grand.
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What has helped me is having a group of people who use twitter regularly to speak about Christ. I never feel like I’m alone with my message. Also, I follow a lot of Christian leaders or like minded people, so I see a greater impact than my own tweet. Interacting with people and joining their conversation helps people discover you.
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Twitter and blogging are like sowing the seed in the first parable in Matthew 13. The Lord is a very gracious sower; He sowed some of His seed to the roadside, some to the thorns, and some to the stony places. My guess is that an ordinary farmer would save all his seed for the good earth. In the sowing aspect of the gospel we sow and leave the results to the Lord. This is especially the case with social media broadcasts (as contrasted with person-to-person interaction via email or comments) where we have no idea where the seed will fall.
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If you look at the new technological developments both in the area of social networking and the new smartphones coming out from the perspective of God, all these “locusts” and “time consuming” new things are for the spreading of the gospel! Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should be on the social networks and on our smartphones all the time – we just need to somehow SPEAK the gospel through our facebook, twitter, google+, and any other social networks….
I’m also considering to write something along this line. It has never been SO EASY to speak the gospel that the whole world may read it, and at the same time it has never been so DIFFICULT for many Christians to do it…
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What do you think is difficult about it?
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Catch the serpent by the tail and it’ll become your staff
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Amen!
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Exactly. Aaron’s staff is the gospel of God. Throw it down and it will swallow the philosophies of the world. What better place to throw this staff than online?
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Luke 14:23: “The master said to the slave, Go out into the roads and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” The Lord’s desire, and even His command, is that we go to bring people in so that His house may be filled. In this verse many versions have “highways” instead of “roads.” In this century the biggest “highway” on the earth is the internet. Lord, send some of us, two by two, to the internet to gain people for Your house.
While we go, we need to pray. We can post as individuals but it is better to function with a companion in prayer. Unlike face to face gospel speaking, we don’t know whom we will reach by an internet post. But we can pray for specific responses, that we may have a few to shepherd personally.
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Great application to this verse!
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Lately, I’ve noticed some popular celebrities posting more verses/ministry than me!
Anyways, I think it’s important to use hash tags & trending topics to really interact with people on Twitter, so that they will see your posts and perhaps follow you. Next time you see a trend, jump in, and speak the truth.
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Really? Which celebs? Yeah, hashtags are ideal for that. During summer orientation at UT there was an official UT hashtag #getmorein4. We added that to our tweets about our events to get the word out more.
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Kyle, love the post! Recently tweeted a quote from this article. The present technology is for the gospel. Period. Why shouldn’t our generation own this fact and use social media for the gospel?
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Saw that! Thanks. Three pivotal technological advances God used for the gospel- the roman roads, the Gutenberg press, the internet.
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