The Pro's on the Church and Social Media

Darren (of problogger.com fame) offers this great video on how he thinks the church can use social media.  These are great thought from a great person.  Darren has guided many people through how to use social media to impact their message, business and personal brand. ( HT to Andrew Jones)

Surprise Guest Message for TransFORM from TransFORM on Vimeo.

Comments

[Ben Howard]

Thanks for posting Chad. He has some interesting thoughts, but I'm not sure if I agree with everything he says. He talks a lot about the community that is forming on the various social media. While that is surely true, I think that internet community cannot be considered true community in the fullest sense. To disembody community and to strip it of it's incarnation nature serves to to undermine the physical theology of the church and will erode the essential doctrine of the incarnation.

To say that we can have true church without physicality is nothing short of docetism. This plays out particularly in his theology of the sacraments. Sacraments by nature are physical manifestations of grace given to the visible church by God. To perform a marriage online or to consecrate the Eucharistic elements over the phone or video (my example not his) betrays the nature of what the church has always taught about it's sacraments.

Community in it's fullest form is physical (which you can't get online) as well as emotional, rational, etc (things you can get online). I don't discount that communities are being formed and that the church can (can and probably needs to) use social media to break into these areas. But we cannot be content to reside there. We need to call people into the fullness of the Gospel of Christ which means being part of his body - the church, not just online, but in a physical and tangible way.

[chad]

Ben- I would agree with you here. I am not a fan of "doing" church completely through the internet. I think a point could be made on the difference between what "is" a sacrament and what is considered "sacramental". It think the success of the website youversion.com shows how scripture reading online can have great success.

The physicality is part of the identification of Christian Worship, we serve a Triune God so our worship should relate a communal faith.

I do think it is important to realize where we can find the communities online already that are exhibiting the characteristics of relationality.

Good thoughts. It is always nice to see you around here.