Social Media and the Glory of God

            Thus it begins.  I am now entering into the blogosphere, where anyone with an internet connection can pretend that they are a journalist or an author.  I’m somewhat surprised that I’m here. I never really liked reading and writing when I was younger.  My senior year of high school I slept every day in English class. (Students don’t follow my example here.)  However, as I went through college and now into graduate school, I have gained an appreciation for the written word.  Then, after reading my friend Ben’s well written and thought provoking blog (http://benrussell.tumblr.com/), I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at it.  So, here I go.  I just wish I had a Macbook and I was drinking a cup of coffee, those seem to be essential blogging tools, but I will try my best.

            For my first post, I decided to tackle the issue of social media and the glory of God, since that will give some insight into my purpose in writing this blog.  “Social Media” has become a popular buzz word in the media today because of the explosive growth of websites such as Facebook and Twitter.  If you use these websites or others like them, you understand how much of an impact they have on your life.  If you don’t use these websites, you probably aren’t reading this blog.

            I have always been somewhat reluctantly dragged through the different incarnations of the social media revolution.  During my late high school and early college years, MySpace rose to prominence.  I was adamant that I would never get a MySpace.  My cousin, however, had different ideas and created a MySpace page in my name and forced me to take control of it.  Later in my college years came the advent of Facebook.  Again I refrained from bowing to the trend, until I found out some cute girls had Facebook and I quickly joined.  Finally, last fall, my cousin wore me down and I got a Twitter.(@blong85)  Now I have a blog and my immersion into social media is complete, until they create something new.

            Now that I have bored you with my social media history, let’s look at a passage from the Bible.  In 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to do all that they do for God’s glory.  The entire chapter discusses whether certain actions, eating food offered to idols, was sinful or permissible.  Our verse above is the end of that discussion.  Paul gives his readers a principle to guide their actions.  They are to ask themselves if their actions are bringing glory to God.

            This brings us to the point of this post.  Everything we do as followers of Christ should bring glory to God.  So, if social media is going to be such a large part of our life, how can we use it to bring glory to God?  How can social media be used to deepen the faith of believers and reach out to the lost?  How can social media make God’s name be great? And, as we should do in every area of our life, how can we make Jesus look really good through our use of social media?

            There are many don’ts of social media that could be discussed; inappropriate pictures and conversations, relationships we should not enter into. These things either cause us to sin or, at the least, hurt our testimony by our involvement in them. 

In this post, however, I want to focus on some does that I have tried to implement.  First, I use Facebook in the youth ministry that I lead to disseminate information to leaders and students.  This has been very helpful in keeping proper communication.  Second, I started tweeting thoughts each day from my devotions.  I hope those tweets, along with this blog, challenge people to dig deeper into the Bible and apply it to their life.  Finally, I use Facebook messages to keep in contact with my accountability partners throughout the week, so, we can check on each others progress and encourage each other. 

            Now I leave it to you.  How can you use social media to bring glory to God?  If you come up with some good ideas, please let me know.