Last week I wrote, concerning community, “People are always looking, always searching, in the hopes of finding a place where they are welcomed, accepted and liked. People long to belong.†I wrote that as I was on a plane flying from Orlando to Philly. On the way back, I flipped through this the US Aiways Magazine when I came across an article entitled, Welcome to the Social.
Now, I’ve already written that people are living more and more of their lives online and that, in particular, the internet is becoming the place where they search for community. But, in that article, the stakes got raised raised again. Consider this quote…
If you don’t belong to some kind of social network, you soon may not belong anywhere.
Now, that is a pretty serious claim, but to the extent that it is true, is already a serious challenge to the church on two fronts. First, it means that we that the church, the community of God, whose very call and purpose is to invite those around us (and around the world), into fellowship with Christ and his people, is failing. Once upon a time, the church was the center of community in the church. It was the gathering place for the town social life. Not anymore. The challenge for the church is to recapture our God-given responsibility and status as a place of true community. The second challenge for the church, in light of online social networks replacing “traditional†real life socials, means that the church needs to find a way to foster community online.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but this article raised the stakes again for me. It is our mandate as the church to engage people, meaningfully, in relationships. How can we use the internet to do so?
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