@stickyJesus. Toni Birdsong

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СКАЧАТЬ same? How do you deliver the only message that matters? How do you make it stick?

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       Light trumps shiny every time.

       "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14, NIV).

       God planned for you to be born in this time.

       Social networks are the communication channels you can travel with Him and for Him.

       The newest mission field is at your fingertips. No passport needed.

       Jesus is still the greatest influencer and community builder of all time.

        Jesus said, "Follow Me."

        The mandate hasn't changed: spread the gospel here, there, and everywhere.

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       Dear Lord,

       With one word You spoke the world into being. You spoke light. You spoke man. And You spoke love with Your Son, Jesus. You fashioned me long ago to live and move in this time, and I will man my post with Your authority and Your power. I will speak Your name in the Land o f Shiny Things, knowing that only Your Lightcan interrupt the world's gaze and turn it back to heaven.

       All things were created by You, for You, and for Your glory—including the many tools of technology. Help me master those tools to bring Your Kingdom to this earth.

       I will go and I will do just as so many have done before me with the tools they were given. Open my mind and open my understanding—for my deepest desire is to follow You and make You known as I log online each day. Amen.

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Jesus: the stickiest story ever told

      @stickyJesus The world changes, but

       My message doesn't.

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      So, are you following Zoë ? I've been following her for about a year. She's always eating at great restaurants, reading interesting books, and doing interesting things. Check it out—I even have her status updates and photos feeding to my phone. Pretty cool, huh?

      It's conversations like this one, overheard while standing inline at Starbucks, that just a few years ago could have gotten you a restraining order or, at the very least, raised a few eyebrows. But that was then and this is now. "Following" another person online simply means you have access to the person's real-time updates when you join online social networks such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or one of the many other social platforms. They know you are following them, and they may be following you just as closely.

      Many of these networks include an ever-growing list of friends, followers, or connections that make up the millions of niche communities thriving online. Such sites have redefined our interpersonal relationships and what it means to be followed or have a big following. Even a word as simple as friends has been amended from people you might invite to your wedding to people you wouldn't recognize if you ended up shipwrecked together. Yes, our vernacular has morphed exactly that much.

      For millions of people worldwide, social media sites have forever changed how to stay in touch with family, friends, clients, and coworkers. In the landscape of online communities, users share status updates, a variety of media, blog entries, news, resources, and other personal and professional information.

      Connection

       is the very

       core of what makes us

       human

      The degree to which people now use social media tools is jaw-dropping to techies, the press, businesses, and even the college kids who unwittingly designed some of the sites just for fun. But if you were to peel away the layers of any social network and look beyond the graphic interfaces, lingo, widgets, and apps, you'd find beating at the core the universal human need for relationship. That we tend to thrive—and survive—in relationship with others is the core of our humanness and a reflection of our Creator.

      In his book The Church of Facebook, Jesse Rice accurately frames this online migration as the human need for home and writes, "At the root of our human existence is our great need for connection: connection with one another, with our own hearts and minds, and with a loving God who intended intimate connection with us from the beginning. Connection is the very core of what makes us human and the very means by which we express our humanity."¹

      That expression of humanity is streaming online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and it spans the entire planet. In fact, if you were to dip a ladle into any social networking sphere during any time of the day, you would find people from every country, race, and creed reaching out, venting, educating, joking, grieving, making money, spending money, celebrating, polarizing, unifying, inspiring, advising, and even praying. It's a cacophony of human dialogue similar to what you would hear while eavesdropping at a food court or an after-hours business mixer—only it's taking place in a digital environment.

      how we got so chatty

      It's fun to skip a rock across the history of this cultural phenomenon of social networking. Remember the BBSs (bulletin board systems) of the 1980s as the primitive network messaging boards that allowed users text-only discussions, file sharing, and online games? BBS pioneers (geeks, coders, and gamers) gained momentum throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s when Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL logged on to the action and stepped up the interface a notch for a monthly or even hourly fee. The social side of those networks stimulated Web sites such as Friendster.com, Classmates.com, and SixDegrees.com, where everyone on the planet was determined to trace his or her social lineage within six people, or connections, of Kevin Bacon. It was a seemingly wild but absolutely probable notion that sparked a quest for faster, deeper, and higher degrees of social connection. These rudimentary social platforms were baby steps toward meeting our need to connect online.

      The globalization of the world economy—faster, better communication technology between all countries—encouraged this overall social connectivity. Over the course of thirty years, the social networking phenomenon went from crawling to standing upright with Netscape's browsing capability, which opened the door for Aunt Fran to surf for holiday recipes and cures for her sciatica. Then, as the general public became more reliant on technology, the press outrageously compared Google to God. After all, the talking tech heads of the day reasoned coyly that Google is wireless (everywhere), knows everything, and can answer any question that anyone asks. And if information is power, then Google's ranking is right up there next to God, right?²

      Just because a technology evolves, there is no guarantee that a demand will support it—at least not to the degree that social media exists today. Remember the Microsoft Zune? The Apple Cube? How about electronic currency? You don't remember the technology failures because, well, they pretty СКАЧАТЬ