Category Archives: article

article, Blog, mobiquity, preachinginasocialmediaculture, socialmedia, technology

Before You Give Up On Social Media…

Leave a comment

Social media is often accused of making society more narcissistic and self-centered.   Although there is truth embedded in the diagnosis, I argue against the treatment that is often prescribed.  The disease does exist but the underlying problem is not the technology – it is us.

In many ways, social media is a technology that has given everyone a platform and a megaphone.  It allows everyone a voice without filter or control.  As a result, the megaphone amplifies what we all, unfortunately, have always cared most about – ourselves.  These megaphones are addicting, ubiquitous, frustrating and, I would argue, hopeful.

In many ways, social media has taken the web of the Internet and placed interconnected megaphones of self-expression everywhere.  This reality frustrates us and, as a result, we protest, complain and even threaten to give up social media completely.  We consider and contemplate putting the megaphone down in protest.

Before you give up on social media and put the megaphone down, try turning it around.  

There are reasons people are posting information about themselves on their social media channels.  People desire to be heard, loved, respected, etc.  Social media provides a unique and amplified opportunity to express these needs but it also provides a unique and amplified opportunity to hear what is going on in the lives of our friends, family, and culture.

I often picture social media as millions of people with megaphones shouting words, ideas, pictures, links, etc. at each other in amplified fashion.  But what would it look like if we took that same technology and turned it around, allowing us hear the hurts, challenges, successes, desires, etc. of our friends, family, and culture?  What would it look like for God to use us in amplified fashion through our amplified listening and awareness of others?  What would it look like to use social media in a way that allows us a unique and amplified view of what God is doing in our world?

Before you give up on social media and put the megaphone down, try turning it around.

article, Blog, christmas, standard

Have a Wonder-filled Christmas

Leave a comment
***the following is also published in the Vermilion Standard***

As we enter the Christmas season, we enter a season of wonder.  However, our busy lives too often
mask the precious gift of wonder and dull our curiosity to uncover it.  This Christmas, I want to challenge you to seek and discover wonder and, as a result, experience a wonder-filled Christmas.

The Christmas story in the Bible is filled with accounts of wonder.  Young Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, was filled with wonder when the angel of God came and told her she would be the mother of the Son of God.  Young Joseph, the carpenter betrothed to Mary, was filled with wonder when the angel met him, telling him to marry the virgin Mary who was with child.  The Shepherds were filled with wonder when a group of angels interrupted their normal evening outside of Bethlehem to sing and announce the birth of Christ and telling the Shepherds where they could find the new born King of the Jews.  The Wisemen, looking into the heavens, were so enveloped with wonder that they left everything to embark on a long and costly journey to follow the bright star in the East.

Consider each of these experiences of wonder in the Christmas story for a moment and one of the commonalities that pervades them all: wonder at ordinary times.  In each circumstance, the biblical characters in the Christmas story were interrupted by wonder-filled experiences in the midst of their ordinary.  Christmas reminds us that wonder isn’t so much hiding from us, but we are hiding from it.  Our preoccupied and dulled senses have become blinded to wonder in our God-created world through the intoxicating busyness of life and our self-centered lives.

This is part of the reason why we love Christmas through the eyes of a child, eyes that have yet to be clouded by skepticism and the discontent that dulls our senses to the wonder that surrounds us.

This Christmas, I would challenge you to see the God-created, incredibly beautiful and wonder-filled world around you.  A world in which God is working and a world filled with beauty on open display in the gallery of ordinary, testifying to the greatness and awesomeness of God.

Wonder is not hiding in a secret place with a secret lock solely reserved for the rich few who can afford to open it; rather, it is a gift that is found in the ordinary, available to ordinary people, in ordinary circumstances just like you.  This Christmas, open your eyes to God, open your eyes to Jesus, and see His wonder-filled creation where wonder is constantly on display in the gallery of the ordinary.  Don’t allow the dullness of skepticism, discontent and ignorance to blind you to God’s wonder proclaimed through creation and experienced through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

article, Blog, socialmedia, standard

Five Guidelines for Social Media

Leave a comment
The following is also published in the Vermilion Standard.

We are spending more and more time online.  Although some of this time is filled with people posting and watching cat videos on YouTube or checking email, most people are spending countless hours on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), in an inherent desire to do part of what we were created to do, participate in relationship with others.

Social media is in its infancy and we are still trying to understand this new medium and vehicle.  Like anyone understanding a new vehicle, there is a training period where one learns its abilities and limitations.  Social media is no different.  As we live increasing amounts of our lives online, knowing how to do this well is becoming increasingly apparent.  The Bible has lots to say about how we engage this new world.

Using the Bible, I would like to suggest five guidelines for life in social media:

  1. Social media is NOT a place to confront someone.  The Bible teaches that if someone has done something wrong, you are to first go to him or her privately (Matthew 18) before making it public.  Humanity’s temptation is to bypass relationship and instantly cast judgment rather than seek understanding and, with humility and love, help the person that needs confronting (Matthew 7:1-6).  Thus, a public Facebook status or Twitter tweet is not a healthy way to confront someone about something they have said or done (or not said or done) because it does so outside of relationship, understanding, and love.
  2. Social media is social – keep it that way!  The tendency with social media is that it can become a convenient means to express our love of self.  If social media is simply a means of self-promotion, it ceases to be social and ends us isolating people further.  Jesus calls us to “love our neighbour as ourselves.” (Matthew 22:39)  Thus, we need to celebrate others and foster relationships rather than just use Facebook or Twitter as a place to celebrate our own lives, family, accomplishments, etc. 
  3. Social media is public – what goes online stays online.  The Bible calls us to live lives of integrity – for our private life to be consistent with our public life.  Thus, if you are not able to tell the world about something you have done (with photographic evidence perhaps), then maybe it is a caution to you doing it in the first place.  Proverbs 20:7 says, “The righteous who walks in his integrity— blessed are his children after him!”
  4. Social media is powerful.  The Bible teaches that the tongue is extremely powerful and has the ability to be used for amazing good or tremendous evil (James 3).  Words are powerful.  They can be used to build someone up or they can be used to tear someone down.  Just as the tongue is powerful, the type or text is powerful and can extend the reach of our hatred, jealousy, selfishness, bullying, or unhealthy relationships.  Therefore, understand the power of social media and wield that power for your love of God and others, rather than for love of self at the expense of others.
  5. Social media expresses our thoughts.  Our thoughts should represent the renewed mind we are called to have in and through Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”   May what we post, view, and read, represent these qualities.  If we did this, imagine the kind of place the virtual world would be; imagine the kind of place the physical world would be.

Technology is not evil and wrong but technology does extend our reach and sometimes, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we reach for evil and wrong things.  

article, Blog, misc

Gospel-Centered Confusion

Leave a comment

In recent days, there has been a rise in rhetoric.  The use of the phrase “Gospel-Centered” has become ubiquitous.  People are arguing for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Gospel-Centered Preaching, Gospel-Centered Evangelism, Gospel-Centered Children’s Ministry, Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry, etc.  On the surface, it is hard to argue against the use of the phrase.

The challenge I would make to this phenomena is not necessarily against the desire to be Gospel-Centered (although I think it is fair to ask: Should we be Gospel-Centered or Christ-Centered?  Have we lifted the message over the Messiah?) but I would challenge what one means by Gospel-Centered. If one believes that the Gospel is simply the message of reconciliation between God and the individual through Christ (in essence: an individual transaction of salvation paid for by the death of Christ) and nothing more, this means something very different than if one believes that the Gospel is the message of reconciliation of all things (Colossians 1:20) through Christ: between God and humanity, between humanity and humanity (reconciliation, justice, and compassion), and between humanity and creation (creation care).

If we simply understand the Gospel as a transaction between God and the individual, we have only understood the Gospel in one dimension and, in doing so, conveniently commodified it for a consumerist culture.  This is analogous to seeing the physical world around us through only one dimension (length), void of width or height.  By adding two more dimensions, we see breadth and depth of the world around us.  The same is true with the full Gospel message and, thus, the embrace of the full dimension of God’s love (Ephesians 3).

The church is called to proclaim the gospel not simply in its words, offering something for people to consume but also through its actions and communal presence.  The Church, as the people of God, are called to be a city on a hill, living in God’s Kingdom expressed through forgiveness, peace, justice, compassion, etc for the entire world.  The Church doesn’t simply have a mission, the Church is called to embody mission by its very existence, presence, and activities because its very existence is an invitation of reconciliation.  In an individualistic consumerist culture, this is extremely counter-cultural, explaining why the church’s role is so difficult but also why it is so important.

Thus, I would argue that the church can only be Gospel-Centered if it embodies and proclaims the message of reconciliation of all things through Christ; thus, is active in sharing how one’s reconciliation with God is only possible through Christ, is active in carrying for our planet, is involved in reconciliation ministries, is pursuing justice and compassion, is caring for the whole person, etc.  If the church is not doing these, pursuing these, etc., is it truly Gospel-Centered?  If the church simply communicates a one dimensional message of individual salvation (individual reconciliation with God) it is simply not communicating the whole gospel.

Echoing the mission of the Lausanne Movement the call of the church is for: The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.

article, Blog, standard

Artificial Love

Leave a comment

This post will also be published in The Vermilion Standard.

Scientists are currently working on Artificial Intelligence with an intensive curiosity.  The Mount Everest of robotics and computer programming, artificial life is the challenge of creating a machine that is self-aware, has emotions, and experiences love.  This sounds like an interesting and noble goal but it comes with profound ethical questions that must be reflected upon in advance of this exploration – at least that is what should happen and yet, like most scientific curiosities, ethics take a back shelf to the curiosity of possibility.

We, the potential creators, users, and consumers of technology and artificial intelligence, need to ask ourselves the following questions: “Is it ethical to create something to love if we have no intention, or follow through, to love it in return?  Is it okay to create something to feel the emotion of attachment, commitment, sacrifice and undying affection, if in return, we respond with consumer distance and perishable affection?”

This is an ethical question for our new emerging age.  The fact is, if we create a machine that could feel this way with some sort of self-aware consciousness and then abandon it with impunity once the novelty of the experience is over, it would be as cruel as it would be inevitable, given our human selfish tendencies.

Whether this technological advancement is a possibility or not is still up for debate but it does lead to another discussion.  It causes us to consider our creator and the fact that God created us with the ability to love in an expression of our free will.  In fact, we are created to love God, others, and creation and live in unbroken relationship between these three realities – a reality we are all guilty of falling short of.
Our creator created us to love but, unlike the potential creators of artificial life, God did so with the ability, intention, and follow-through to love us and stay committed to us – demonstrated by sending Jesus, His One and Only Son to save and rescue us.

John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God is not a consumer God who created us in disposable fashion.  Rather, God created us as free human beings to live forever with him, even entering our existence (Jesus Christ), demonstrating his love for us and rescuing humanity from sin and death.

I want you to know that God loves you.  I want you to know that God has not abandoned you.  I want you to know that in Jesus Christ, abundant and eternal life is possible.  In Jesus Christ, you can know real life…not just artificial life.