An Ethic of Social Media - Part 4

In my last post, I gave my analogy for the world of social media, Twitter in particular. I said that Twitter is like using a megaphone to speak in a very large, very crowded room. This understanding of the nature of Twitter should then inform the ethic that guides our use of Twitter. Last time, I presented the "don't's" that come from this understanding of Twitter. Now, I'll give you a few "do's."

#1 - Do connect with other people in the room. One of the great things about this big room with lots of people in it is that it enables you to develop relationships with lots of people. Use Twitter to connect to people you can learn from, people who can learn from you, people you would like to know better, people in your community, people in the same field of work as you, people engaging in ministries you have a heart for. There are limitless possibilities of people with whom you can connect on Twitter. Twitter should not merely be a place for you to get stuff off your chest. The real value of it is the connections it enables. Now, this doesn't mean you can't be selective. I am. I don't follow everyone that follows me, and I'm not constantly adding new people just to try to get my own follow numbers up. I choose who I want to follow based on the value I think will develop from the relationship.

#2 - Do be real on Twitter. People connect with you on Twitter because they want to get to know you, the real you. Don't just shoot off stuff that sounds like it came from a Hallmark card or a daily devotional. Give people a glimpse into your world, what your daily life is like, what you wrestle with, what joys you have. Twitter is an easy world to wear a mask in, and there are a lot of people who do, but you will get more out of the experience if you take the risk to let others know you for who you are.

#3 - Do use Twitter as a means of encouraging, supporting, and praying for other people. If you will watch Twitter with eyes open to the opportunities to minister to other people, there are a lot of them out there. People often post stuff that you can simply reply to with a "Praying for you." And if you post that, pray right then for them. Don't just say it; do it. Twitter also is an incredible network for discovering a need and responding to that need. If you see someone needs help, and you know a way that you and your network of friends can help, then do it.

#4 - Do use the full functionality of Twitter: @replies, DMs, retweets, Twitter lists. This one is pretty nuts and bolts. Take some time to actually learn how to make the most of Twitter. It will help you avoid some of the "don't's" if you just know how to @reply to a post someone has put up, or to DM someone instead of sending it out for all to read. Retweets enable you to get word out to your network about something you read that you thought was valuable for them to read also. And, Twitter lists or a Twitter client that categorizes tweets for you will help you make your way around the crowded room without just getting a bunch of noise.

#5 - Do tweet regularly. Now, I know that seems in contradiction with one of the "don't's", but there needs to be a balance. You don't need to tweet so much that people get tired of you and turn you off, but you also don't want to tweet so little that people forget you are out there. If you are in a large, crowded room, and all you do is stay on the edge of the room, never talking to anyone, never interacting with anyone, it won't be long before others don't even notice you anymore. Really, about all it takes to do that is one or two tweets a day.

#6 - Do take a break from time to time. Take a Twitter Sabbath every once in a while. Have a day where you are completely unplugged, where you go dark for a while. Sometimes, you need to get out of the room, and invest in relationships in the real world.

#7 - Do engage in real world relationships. It's important to remember that this very large, very crowded room is an imaginary room. As awesome as the world of social media is and as many relationships as it facilitates, we need real relationships with real world people. We need people with flesh and blood and tears and hugs and laughs. We need people with whom we can have more extensive conversations than 140 characters at a whack. We need people who can pick us up when we fall or kick our butts when we are wandering in dark places. Engage in Twitter, but also engage in life.

So, that's my stab at an ethic of social media. I'm sure there are other principles that could be added, but those are the governing principles that I use. Some of them I am more successful at than others, and some of them I am committed to giving more effort to. I hope it helps you. I also hope that you will spend some time thinking through the ethical implications of the social media world for yourself and develop some principles for yourself.

Sunday Rewind

We had another awesome day at The Crossroads. We are continuing our series "FAMILY" about how to have the family life that God designed you for. This week and the next two weeks are all about children. Children are such a vital part of family life. The message focused on the importance of children, in particular, making sure we give our children the most important thing in life, a relationship with Jesus Christ. I really loved the opportunity to encourage some of our new Christians that they can talk to their kids about Jesus.

I am excited about what is going to happen next week. Our entire service is going to be spent in our Kids' Cove Children's Area. Adults will get a taste of what our children experience each week and how they worship God. Jesus sat a child in front of his disciples and said, "Do you want to know what it takes to enter the kingdom of heaven? Then just watch this kid." I think we need to spend more time experiencing God through the beautiful eyes of a child. Our own faith would probably be encouraged and grow stronger if we could see life through a child's eyes more often.

We had an awesome worship time this week. The band just seems to be getting better each week. The addition of an electric guitar just really allows us to do more of the alternative feel that is our target style. It also allows our acoustic guitarist to expand and play bass occasionally. I am excited about how God is growing the band. I also had a great praise this week. My voice is back. For those of you who don't know, I have a cyst on my vocal cords that causes me to sound like a chain smoker from time to time. I have really been struggling with it for the last two to three months. But two weeks ago, I found myself singing along to the radio with no pain and no difficulty. For the last two weeks, I have been able to preach without pain or strain. So, I am super excited and prayerful that this is a permanent, or at least long term healing.

Last week we had one of our highest attendances yet, but this week we were really down. A lot of people are away on family vacations, and that really has an impact on attendance. But, last year, we had one of our biggest growth times during the summer months, so I am looking forward to that happening again this year.

Summer is a really busy time for us, and we are gearing up for a lot of stuff right now. This Saturday, we will have a car wash to raise money for our Mexico mission trip. The following Saturday is the first of four Family Movie Nights that we sponsor during the summer. In July, we go to Mexico. So, please be in prayer for all the things coming up.

An Ethic of Social Media - Part 3

My analogy for understanding social media and Twitter in particular is this: Twitter is speaking into a megaphone in a very large, very crowded room. Twitter now has over 100 million users (and Facebook has even more)! If your user profile is open, all of those people have access to anything you post as a tweet or an @reply. Even if your profile is locked, all of your friends have access to everything you tweet. So, to carry through with the analogy, even if you have your profile locked, you are just in a locked room in the very crowded building, and any of your friends are free to leave the room and pass along to others what you have tweeted.

So, that analogy has several implications for our ethic of social media. It informs what we should or shouldn't post, how we should relate to others, and the attitudes we should display on Twitter. So, here are a few ethical principles I have developed based on this analogy of Twitter. I'll give you the "don't's" today, then the "do's" on another day.

#1 - Don't tweet anything you wouldn't want your mother (or father, brother, sister, spouse, fiance, children, best friend, etc.) to hear. Once you tweet something, you have absolutely no control over what happens to it after that in this incredibly crowded room. There's a good chance that your mother is in the room. Even if not, there are plenty of people in the room who may know your mother and pass along to her something you posted on Twitter. We must remember that Twitter is not an isolated conversation. There are millions of people who can pick up on our tweets and pass them along. Your tweet may not make it to your mother, but it could be picked up by someone else you care about and negatively impact their view of you. So, think about the things you say on Twitter. Are you okay with everyone in your life seeing the language you use? the subjects you tweet about? the way you respond to others?

#2 - Don't expect others to respond to everything you tweet. Twitter is a great way of increasing our sense of narcissism. Because there are tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people following us, we think that everyone cares about everything we tweet and have some obligation to respond to our tweets. We get an inflated sense of ourselves and how others should view us. But, we have to remember, that a tweet comes with no strings attached. You should tweet simply because you want to express yourself, but no one in this crowded room has an obligation to respond to what you tweet.

Remember, it is a very crowded room, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of conversations going on every day even in the limited circle of people you follow. I follow about three hundred people on Twitter (a fairly small number for a lot of pastors, but I am kind of selective), and I have about 350 followers. I don't have the time or capacity to keep up with everything everyone says on Twitter in a given day. So, I have an application that allows me to filter and categorize my tweeps so that I don't get just a lot of noise. There are certain people that I "pay more attention to." There are people that I often respond to, and people that I never respond to. Beyond that, I may walk out of the room for several hours. When I come back into the room, I may not catch up on all the conversations that have taken place in the time since I left the room. So, I may not respond to something you posted. It doesn't mean I don't care. It just means that I wasn't in the room when you used the megaphone. If you really care about making sure someone gets the word, send them a DM or actually text them. But don't get upset at people for not responding to your generic tweet.

#3 - Don't be passive aggressive on Twitter. What I mean by that is, don't use Twitter as a means to attack someone, complain about someone, be ugly about someone. Even if you don't mention the person by name, there's a really good chance that some/many/or all of your followers have a really good idea who you are talking about. In this crowded room, there are others who are aware of the situation, and you may be doing damage to your relationship with them, to their understanding of your character, and to your reputation. Additionally, a lot of people use Twitter to "secretly" attack someone who is actually following them on Twitter. That's just not cool. If you have a problem with someone, don't get on the megaphone to complain about them. Talk to them, but don't air it out for all of us to hear, because, quite frankly, we don't want to hear it.

#4 - Don't have arguments on Twitter. This one is closely connected to the former one and is often a result of it. Nobody in a big crowded room wants to hear you fighting back and forth with someone else on a megaphone. If you've got an issue that you are going to fight about, move the conversation to DMs, text messages, or actual real world conversations. Don't air it on the Twittersphere for all to hear. Even if someone else fires a shot at you, be the bigger person and move the conversation to an avenue where you can actually resolve the issue. Again, we don't want to hear it, and it doesn't build other people up. Each of these last two actually do considerable damage to the relationship with the other person and to other people's opinion of you. When you move an argument, disagreement, relationship issue to Twitter, you have opened it up for all the world to see. You have magnified the intensity of the issue by the factor of however many people are listening because you have exposed the issue to hundreds or thousands of people. Here's the general rule of thumb for life: Praise publicly, criticize privately. People always respond better to that simple standard. Besides, Twitter is one of the worst avenues in the world for having an argument. How in the world can you really get to the heart of an issue when you have 140 characters or less? By having an argument on Twitter, you are demonstrating that you don't really care about finding any resolution to this issue. You just want to fire shots at the other person. And that is not a Christlike way to handle problems.

#5 - Don't have lengthy Twitter conversations. My rule of thumb is, if you are having a conversation that just involves you and another person, after about three @replies, it's time to move the conversation to DMs or text messages. Remember, it is a crowded room, and your conversations should be beneficial or engaging to the other people in the room. If you are just having an A-B conversation, and nobody else is engaged in it, move the conversation. If the conversation engages more than one other person, it's probably okay to take it to about 5 @replies. And if there are a large number of people engaging, it's okay to keep it going. If your conversation is of a personal nature (I can't believe so and so did such and such!) or the mundane (Can you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home?), keep it off Twitter.

#6 - Don't be a whiner. It's okay to very occasionally post about something that frustrates you, an issue that you want to champion, things that bug you or get on your nerves. Twitter is a great avenue to do that and see if other people experience the same things and maybe even get some answers for how to deal with it. But, don't be a constant complainer. The other people in the room will get tired of it quickly.

#7 - Don't overtweet. Okay, this one is just a little bit of a pet peeve of mind, but maybe the rest of you are okay with it. In this big, crowded room, if you are constantly on the megaphone, it get's old. Tweet stuff that has some interest, impact, or bearing on your followers. It's okay to tweet where you are eating occasionally or when you are going to the store or that you are going to bed. Just don't do it all the time. If all you are tweeting to me is a running agenda, your schedule for the day, or your current location, I don't care. I guess this is kind of an arbitrary number, but if you are sending out more than 5-7 tweets an hour (not including @replies) you may be guilty of overtweeting.

Okay, well, I guess there are probably some other principles you could come up with based on this analogy, and if you do, please feel free to share them. But for now, that's what I've got. I'll share my "do's" for Twitter in the next post.

The Divine Family

Well, as promised, here is the manuscript from today's message. You'll have to look up the Scripture passages for yourself. Come on, you can do that much!

Our relationships with each other in our families impact our sense of well-being, our happiness, our self-esteem, our ability to be good parents, our performance at work. For our children, family relationships affect choices about friends, peer pressure, drugs, alcohol, smoking, sexual behavior, self-esteem, study habits, grade point average. Family is the first relationships any of us have. Our family relationships are the longest lasting relationships most of us will ever have.

So, we are going to take some time to look at how to have a healthy family life. We’re going to look at some biblical principles about families, about marriage and husbands and wives, about parenting, about disciplining your children and teaching godly principles to your children, about how to prepare for family.

If we are honest, families aren’t easy. Relationships in families are difficult. So, we are going to look for biblical answers for how to have the kind of family God wants us to have. But I also want to encourage you, if you look through the pages off the Bible, you are hard-pressed to find a good example of family life. In fact, most of the examples of family in the Bible are what we would call dysfunctional families. King David was a man after God’s own heart, yet his family was riddled with adultery, murder, incest, incredible sibling rivalry, rebellious sons, and all kinds of problems. So, if you have some struggles in your family, just know that you are not alone, that some of the greatest people of faith in the Bible had family problems also. So, we’re going to look at some biblical principles for how to have a healthy family. and I promise you we are going to have fun and some surprises along the way.

Well, today, in our understanding of family, we are going to begin with God. We’re going to develop a theology of the family. Before we look at the how to’s and principles for marriage and parenting and dating and some of those family issues, we are going to start with what we can learn about family from God. You see, God created the family. The very first human institution God created on earth was the family.
The very existence of family derives from God. It’s not just that God created family. Our very understanding of what family is all about comes from God. Eph. 3:14-15. God, the Father, is the prototype for all fatherhood and as a result for all families. Our concept of father begins with God, not man, and so every human family exists because of God. Without God, there is no family.

Think about this, the most prominent image that the Bible gives us of the very nature of God is a family relationship, Father and Son. Family is so vitally important that God has revealed himself to us in the first two persons of the Trinity as family. Jesus began his public ministry by being baptized, and after his baptism, as he is about to take on the mission for which he came to earth, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends on Jesus, and the voice of God comes from heaven, and look what he says: Mt. 3:17. God himself, in some incredible, mysterious way, reveals himself to us as family. The relationship between God and Jesus is the relationship of Father and Son. If we are to understand family, we have got to gain some understanding into why God has made himself known in this way and what it means to us.

The fact that God has revealed himself as family means that family is an experience and expression of the divine. Let me say that again, and I want you to be sure to write that down and don’t miss it. Family is an experience and expression of the divine. Through family we experience and express something of who God is.

It is an experience of the divine. In family, we are supposed to experience something of who God is. In family, we are supposed to experience relationships with other people and love and forgiveness and acceptance and mercy and compassion and tenderness and discipline and instruction. We experience the character of God in family. There is supposed to be something unique about family. If you come from a halfway healthy family, you know that you have experienced emotions and closeness and love unlike anything you have experienced anywhere else. That’s the God element in family. One of the primary means that God shows his favor to us is through family. In family, we experience provision, shelter, support, encouragement. God designed the family as the first place for us to experience him.

But, let’s be honest, we experience Satan at work in our families also. There’s a taste of heaven and a taste of hell in families. You see, Satan understands that the family is a critical point for us to experience God, so he wants to mess that up as much as he can. In fact, your family is one of two primary areas where Satan is going to try to attack you. He’s going to attack your mind, what you think, what you feel about yourself and life. And, then, he’s going to attack you through your family. He’s going to try to wreak havoc in your home, because he knows that God has designed the family as a place for you to experience the divine.

It’s an experience of the divine. It’s also an expression of the divine. In family, we are supposed to experience something of who God is. We are also supposed to express something of who God is. All those things I said you experience in family, you are also supposed to express those to other people in your family. Love, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, mercy. Family is the first place you have to live out your commitment to be a follower of Jesus Christ. If you don’t live it at home, it’s not real. You express who God is in your family, but also your family is an expression to those outside of it of who God is. People who aren’t followers of Christ should be able to look at your family and see something of Jesus Christ in the way you relate to each other and the way you respond to people outside your family.

So, because God has revealed himself to us in a family relationship, family is an experience and expression of the divine. So, today, we are going to look at a few statements by Jesus from the gospels about the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son to understand something of the family relationship of God. What do we learn about family by looking at God?

So, let’s take a look at a few things Jesus says. Jn. 3:35; Jn. 5:20. The Father loves the Son. God’s character, God’s nature, is love. God is the most loving being in existence. The Bible says we are capable of love because God first loved us. Our understanding of what love even is comes from the fact that God created us in love and so we know love because he designed us to love. But the greatest expression of God’s love is not God’s love toward his creation or toward human beings. It is his love for himself.

The triune God, three in one, has forever existed from all eternity in a perfect love relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If you asked the question, “Who does God love most in all the universe?” the answer would be, “Himself.” Now, this is not a selfish kind of love on God’s part. It’s just that God is the most loving and most lovable and glorious being in all the universe, so for God to love anything more than himself and his glory is for God to be guilty of idolatry.

Think about it this way, what kind of universe would we have gotten if we had a God who was three in one, but the three didn’t love each other. I’ll tell you what we would have, Greco-Roman gods who constantly squabble with each other and human beings get caught in the crossfire.

God’s love within the Trinity forms the basis of his love for us. You see, God sent the Son to die on the cross to show his love for us and so that we might love the Son and through loving the Son, we might also love the Father. Why did God send the Holy Spirit, to point us to the Son and create in us love for the Son so that we might love the Father, and then in turn that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would show their love to us. God’s purpose was that through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he would bring greater love, honor, glory, and praise to himself. Jesus said, “Whoever keeps my commands is the one who loves me, and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I in turn will love him and show myself to him.” Jesus told his disciples, “The Father loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God.” God’s love for us comes first from the fact that there is a perfect, unchanging, eternal love relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So, here’s the point, and I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but your love for each other as a family will form the foundation of your love for others, for all other relationships that you will form in life. It is vitally important that you show love for each other. Jn. 13:35.

So, the first thing Jesus teaches us about the relationship between Father and Son is overwhelming love. There has forever been perfect love between Father and Son. And that kind of love is the foundation for family life.

Now, look at the next thing Jesus says about his relationship with the Father. Mt. 11:27; Jn. 10:15. Father and Son know each other perfectly. The Son knows the mind of the Father. The Father knows the mind of the Son. They exist in a perfectly absolute open relationship. There are no secrets, nothing hidden, no thoughts that they don’t share. They are in perfect harmony with one another. There is never a point at which they are in contention with each other. There is never any argument or debate. So, everything Jesus said was a reflection of the mind of the Father.

But it is more than just knowing facts. In the Bible, to know someone means far more than just knowing about them. It is used to refer to the most intimate of connections. So, when Jesus says the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father, he means they have the closest of connections to each other. So, the second thing Jesus teaches us about Father and Son is that they have true knowledge of each other.

And Father and Son have a common purpose. Jn. 5:19. It is natural for a son to want to please his father, to do the things his father wants him to do. So, part of the reason God chose to reveal himself as Father and Son is so that we understand that the Son is all about doing the will of His Father. The ultimate expression of that was in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus the Son says to God the Father, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” The human side of Jesus looks at the agony of the cross and says, “I’d rather not have to experience that, but Dad, I know why I’m here and I know what we’re about and I understand my mission, so I want to do what you want.” Jn. 10:18. Jesus willingly laid down his life on the cross because he understood that that was what he had come for. Jesus had a firm understanding of his purpose on earth. He knew that he had come to die. He knew that his reason for existence was to go to the cross. So, the last thing Jesus teaches us about the relationship between Father and Son is they have a common mission.

So, based on the relationship between God the Father and Son, based on our theology of family, let me give you a few take homes. First, if you want to have the family you were made for, if you want to make it through the difficult times as a family, if you want to have a family where you find happiness and fulfillment, you’ve got to start with God. Family is an experience and expression of the divine. You need God to have the family you were made for. You need to seek God’s guidance and direction for your family. You need to study the Bible to understand how to live as a family, to know some of the mistakes to avoid, to know how you are supposed to fit in as a husband, father, son, wife, mother, daughter. You need to pray, and seek God for your family. You need to make God a priority in your family. You need God.

Second, fill your family with overwhelming, undying, unconditional love. Love each other the way Jesus has loved us and the way Father and Son love each other. Lavish your love on your family. Just like God’s love for himself forms the basis for his love for us, our love for each other in families forms the basis for all our other relationships. Family should be the place where we know, no matter what, we are loved.

Third, make sure your family is a place where you can know and be known. Where you don’t have to put on a mask, you don’t have to impress anybody, you don’t have to be a certain way, you can just be you and be known. Family should be the one place where you are truly known and where you truly know the other people in your family. Our children need to know that they don’t have to win our approval. Our spouses need to know that they can be real. Family needs to be the place where we are most known and yet still most loved.

Fourth, be a purpose driven family. As a family, this is what we are about, this is who we are, and this is what we live for. Make sure everyone in your family has a firm understanding of what you are about. We’ll talk more about that in weeks to come.

Now, one last thing I want you to see. Having looked at the relationship between the Father and the Son, knowing how infinitely Father and Son love each other from all eternity, knowing that they have forever existed in perfect harmony and fellowship with each other, I want you to look at the last Scripture on your outline. Jn. 3:16. Somehow, in the infinite wisdom of God, the perfect relationship between a loving Father and His Son, resulted in the Son going to the cross that we might have life.

Sunday Night Review

Today was another great day at The Crossroads. We launched a new series simply called "FAMILY" that I am really excited about. We're going to be exploring some really straight up biblical instruction on God's plan for the family. We are doing this series because so many people are struggling with issues related to the family but don't know where to turn for help.

Today, I got to approach family in a way that I have never seen anyone else do it before. Not that I'm all that. I just never have seen anyone else do this. I developed a theology of family by looking at the family element of the Trinity (Father and Son). I probably can't give you a good understanding of it here in a recap, so I'll probably just post the manuscript of the message later. Anyhow, I really came to a greater understanding of God's love for us because of his love for his own glory and for his Son through this message. And, of course, I had fun doing it. I really do love to preach.

We had a great crowd this Sunday. I think it was our biggest since Easter. Each week, we are continuing to see new faces in the crowd. It is just amazing to watch. Our Kid's Cove children's area is overflowing. We had 62 in there today. We need more children's workers. So, if you are available, please let us know.

The band did an awesome job, as always. We had a new guitarist with the band today. We've had a great acoustic guitarist who has been faithful to us from the very start (Thanks, Jake). But we have really wrestled with finding a consistent electric guitarist. That's a pretty big hindrance since we do an alternative worship style. Well, because of some of the relationship connections that we are developing and because of our God on your iPod: Classic Rock series, we discovered a couple of guitarists were sitting in the crowd each week. Cory played with the band for the first time today, and he did awesome. Having an electric just really opens up some great stuff for us. So, praise God!

After our worship service, we went to one of the local city parks to do some more service. We have adopted a section of trail in the park to keep clean and looking nice. Today, we just did a trash pick up. Several families got out in the blistering Texas heat to help out. Then, we all hung out under a shade tree, and had a picnic together. We tossed the football around, played croquet, threw a flying disc, and played horseshoes. It was a great afternoon! I love connecting with some of the new people at The Crossroads!

Man, we are still on the ride of our lives, and I am loving every minute of it!