Digital Evangelism
I’m gonna hop on my soap box for a quick moment to once again talk about digital ministry. This is all in an effort to make social media a more peaceful space for us to thrive in.
My kiddos are young… too young for social media, yet they are influenced by the digital space every single day.
They watch some YouTube videos, watch a show… or play video games. All of which require the lovely tool known as the world wide web. Influenced by someone who isn’t me. Yes, I can and do control a lot of the content that is flowing onto their screens but that still doesn’t stop them from developing parasocial relationships with those that grace their screen. They’re learning to build relationships and one of the tools used to communicate and develop those relationships is a small glass screen. Hence the moniker “glass generation” to define my children’s generation. Gen Alpha has never known a world without a piece of glass in front of them.
After last week’s podcast, pondering about influence on social media had me think back to a book I read in 2020. “From Social Media to Social Ministry” by Nona Jones. She’s an incredible Pastor, author, speaker and I highly recommend you give her a follow. I went back and read her book last week. In Nona's book, she describes a paradigm shift that’s needed for the church. Shifting away from these plans to use social media to get folks into the building and instead strategizing a way to help believers grow in their faith through social media. Utilizing these glass screens as tools for discipleship.
Social media gives us the opportunity to create conversations and connect with believers and unbelievers. Instead of looking at these social channels to broadcast information ABOUT your ministry or ABOUT a program or ABOUT an opportunity… why not create content that invites people into conversations. Broadcast media is about a specific one way communication. That’s where you get things like church messages online or a prophetic word or whatever… all of this communication being heard by the receiver. But social media was never meant to be this one way communication tool. It was meant to foster connection and conversations.
So what does that mean for us? If you’re sitting there and thinking to yourself. I literally have like a couple dozen followers and I don’t have the reach that you think I do.
Jesus calls us to choose to follow Him and go out to create more disciples. Nona says, “To fish for people requires going out into the deep. It requires leaving behind what's familiar in favor of what's promised. We can use social technology to swim out into the deep, unknown waters of the digital world to connect with people we would never meet otherwise.”
Practically this means, getting up the courage to share the gospel online, asking friends/ followers how you can be praying for them, hosting live prayer on your personal social media channels, talk about the sermon you just heard and open the comments up for discussion, share a bible verse of the day… the list goes on. And listen, if you’re not up to sharing on social media just yet. It’s okay. Another practical thing you can do is to pray for people who do. Pray for those of us who share the Gospel daily on social channels. This is a mission field just as much as any. I know it sounds weird to say that but it’s true. I have had many a things go haywire just as I’m about to post something for a Gospel sharing client. Entire harddrives get wiped and are unrecoverable… computers crashing… it’s maddening and then I remember that I’m in ministry and I gotta have prayer partners covering my back.
As you’re watching or listening to this through your glass screen I want you to think of this as a way to bring peace to a space that usually doesn’t get to be peaceful. I want you to think of some anchor scriptures and share them. Whether you get online to read them or you just post the verses, I want you to use this glass screen to reach generations that have never known life without them and give Life through them.
