Social Media and the Church

Jesus’ mandate to his disciples was simple: “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.” – Mark 16:15. At that time that seemed to be a herculean task for the disciples, but the mandate was much more fulfilling than any challenge posed to them. In this new era, the world is now virtually accessible and one does not have to “go” into all the world, but rather one can now “Google, tweet, post, like and share” all the world.

The 21^st Century has created various opportunities through the advent of social media.   More so, any believer in Christ’s kingdom can now easily fulfill this mandate to spread the Good News wherever we may be.  Access to Social media is now as common as universal primary education.  Everyone is either directly or indirectly influenced and informed by it, so doesn’t this make the mandate become easier for His disciples?

The church now has a major opportunity to not only meet its members and friends that are associated with their fellowship, but to now capitalize on these opportunities presented by the advent of social media by reaching the masses beyond their borders.

Tweets, posts, blogs, shares, links and likes are the new hot words due to the social media era. The gospel, by definition, is the teaching of the life of Jesus Christ and with  these social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Google + to name a few, they have all made it quite easy to now consume and create multimedia content that can teach the masses of Jesus. The world has successfully used these platforms to constantly inform their subscribers of the latest news, the hottest gossip and the most current update for the next best application in the market, but what about the church? More so, what about the Caribbean church? What is the Caribbean church doing with these amazing and influential sites that seem to have the attention of the majority of its population which are the youth?

With a more local focus, Churches in Guyana have been grappling with this opportunity. Fundamentally, they’ve tried to use these platforms exactly the way the North American, Asian and European territories have done it, forgetting that we don’t have to use their method wholesale, but we can tweak it to suit our congregations. Along with tweaking, we also have to effectively communicate with the congregation using our own language that is unique and attractive that would automatically appeal to our masses.

The art of social media is attractiveness in text, visuals and sound. The church now has to form messages from the Word of God that will be impactful yet simple enough to fulfill Jesus’ mandate. The next step after conceptualizing these messages is dissemination – which is already catered for by these social media platforms – but this can only be reached if the members play an active role at the dissemination stage. This should be easy, seeing that we’re all mandated by the same Jesus to “Go into all the world and teach…” or is it?

The effective utilization of our networks as members – through the advent of social media - can expedite this God-given mandate. The “Church” – which is not the building we congregate in on Sundays, but rather “we” as individuals are the church – should rethink and reconsider our ways in reaching the masses.  It is the belief of many that the Senior Pastor and its board members– have to come up with these plans and strategies to fulfill its God given mandate. If we’re to continue with this attitude, each of us would single handedly obstruct the realization of every soul coming to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ. “I’ve come not to condemn you”, but to encourage you as believers in the Kingdom of God to remember the mandate and to use these same social media platforms that we use on a daily basis to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.