The Christian Ghetto and Social Media
I’ve heard it a lot lately. You’d think as a business owner it would be music to my ears. But it isn’t. “We want The A Group to create a social network for our church.” “No, you don’t” is usually my reply.
Here’s the big question: should every church have its own alternative to Facebook?
Recently I ran across a term that describes our need recreate community as the “Christian Ghetto.” The Christian Ghetto is a place where you go to hang out with your Christian friends, fill up a website with Christian pictures and Christian videos of lots of happy people, loud preaching and youth camp promos. There’s not much witnessing and shedding of light in the ghetto since everyone is already convinced and the place is way too bright as is.
I understand the need for closed networks within several difference facets of ministry. For example, in managing small groups who need to connect in privacy or resourcing ministries that deal with evangelistic strategies where an open discussion in Facebook, would undermine their effectives.
So should the Church abandon social media altogether? Absolutely not. The church should redeem it . Christians are already there in millions strong among their unchurched friends. Instead of trying to pull your people out of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut or whatever the social media du jour is, your church should develop tools to engage, inspire and create dialog within these networks. We should resource our people with tools for integration and not segregation. We should take our Christian content into every part of the web we’re allowed to go. Go where the darkness is and shed light.
I say let’s break up the Christian Ghetto mindset we Christians tend to have and lets become more intentional in our social media outreach.
What’s your take?
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15 Comments:
I think it's sad that Christians always feel the need to retreat and not engage culture. Sometimes we have what I've heard described as "Christian safari" where we go out into the wilderness to evangelize and catch the unsuspecting unsaved and then run back to our ghetto. Thanks for the post
April 20th, 2009 at 6:43 am
There's a lot that I don't understand about social media, but if Christians don't spend time there, how can we impact our world?
April 20th, 2009 at 6:54 am
So how do you create a safe place for families to connect?
April 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I agree. We need to join the already established networks and engage with all christians and non-christians alike there. This forces us to be transparent and not have multiple personalities – a church personality, a work personality, a friend personality.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I *completely* agree with the post (though curious to know how that second-to-the-last paragraph was supposed to end). Tools such as Facebook and Twitter allow so many other people to be introduced to our practice of the Christian faith.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:38 am
One of my favorite sayings "take what you have learned in the dark and share it in the light", your post is right on target. What a better place to be a fisher of men.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I totally agree. Brilliant point!
April 20th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Like many others who commented, I agree. I get a lot of email invites to join other people (most I don't even know; funny how that works) on "Christian" social networks. I never really saw the point to that. Most of my friends and acquaintances from my church are on FaceBook. Both of our ministers have FaceBook accounts.As for safe places for families to meet, I believe FaceBook allows the creation of groups in which membership can be restricted. I'm not discounting the need for "ghettos" of some kind at one point or another, because as believers we do need a place apart from the world to worship, bear one another's burders, etc, but it shouldn't keep us away from the world.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:04 am
I generally agree with what you are saying, but I would also point out that there are some functions of church community that are not served well in a more general setting. What are your thoughts about http://www.onthecity.org – recently purchased by Zondervan as a social networking community site for churches?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 am
I think the whole point of social networking is that it brings you into contact with multiple circles of contact. To me, it would defeat the point of a network to have it limited to only people who know each other from a single context and not extended friend networks, i.e., friends of friends.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 am
I would tend to agree with what Lawrence said above. And perhaps it depends on your definition of "networking." To me, networking by its very nature creates diversity by putting you into contact with people you may not otherwise encounter. I welcome correction on this, but if new connections are the goal then it seems wise to get out of our "bubble" whenever and however we can (rather than simply to create a new one
April 30th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Great post. This is the reason I blog the way I do… follow people on Twitter like I do… and break out of the only 'my' church mentality. We have to be very intentional with what we do.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:04 am
Nice post Maurillio. I prefer that Christians make whole world safer for everyone by being present than making portions of it safer for our immediate families by being absent.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I personally believe Twitter is the greatest social network artists can get promotion. Many well-known superstars/performers nowadays began through Twitter. Exactly like Marie Digby and Arnel Pineda, the modern singer of the actual music group Journey. A few of them are having something like Tweet Attacks to find the real followers in a “dirty way”.
August 16th, 2010 at 3:35 am
Thanks!
August 25th, 2010 at 9:34 pm