Thinking Biblically About Facebook
UPDATE 2: I’ve turned this post into a full length essay for The Gospel & Culture Project.
UPDATE 1: Many of you have asked for the audio of this message and for information on accessing the complete Ten Topics study guide. Though we record my Sunday sermons, for a variety of reasons I don’t record my Thursday night messages. Perhaps I’ll revisit this in the future. I have now, however, posted my teaching notes at the bottom of this post (note: I don’t teach from anywhere near a full manuscript, but there’s enough there to give you the big ideas). As for ordering copies of the study guide, please contact my admin at cpeckham[AT]cpcfc.org
Continuing the Ten Topics series I’m teaching this fall, tomorrow night I’m delivering a message titled, Facebook: Technology and Relationships. This message explores technology’s impact on how we do relationships and how followers of Jesus ought to engage technology.
Because of its extreme popularity (especially where I live), I’m focusing the discussion on Facebook.
In preparation for tomorrow night, earlier this week I took a tour of Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, a 15 minute drive from my front door. My friend/fellow church member/Facebook employee showed me around 3 of Facebook’s buildings in downtown Palo Alto. They run a slick operation.
Just like the Google campus, Facebook headquarters serves up tasty free meals to all employees and nearly every floor is set up with kitchenettes housing all the snacks and drinks you could want. They even had my favorite smoothie flavor in stock: strawberry-bannana.
More impressive than the food was the dry cleaning. Facebook offers a free dry cleaning service to all employees. And, more striking still–not a single Facebook employee has an office. All employees sit in rows or clusters of desks. Entry level administrators have desks next to high-level managers. When I walked past Facebook Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerburg, he was sitting at his little desk working away on his computer smack in a sea of other desks and employees.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to talking about the intersection of Scripture and Facebook tomorrow night.
If you’re interested, here’s the “homework” people are doing in preparation for tomorrow night:
Facebook.pdf
Facebook: Technology and Relationships. 11/13/08
The Technology Lens
- Technology (most, not all) is neutral and can be used for good or ill
- Cave paintings
• Art or war plans
- The Wheel
• Drive to church or drive-by shooting
- Internet
• Dispense truth or porn
- Approach technology with this lens: neutral, good or ill
We’ve grown up in an age of unprecedented technological development
- The 2-3 generations before us experienced significant technological change, but not to the same degree as what we’re experiencing.
- Examples…
- The technologies that have taken off during our lifetime have radically changed how we do life, relationships, family, community, work.
- How many of you could do your job without a computer?
- How many of your lives and relationships would radically change if you didn’t have a cell phone, email, and access to the internet?
- How many of you go to public places and are fully present with the people you’re with and the place you’re at, never distracted by your cell phone, ipod, etc.?
We must see our engagement with technology as a discipleship issue
- Following Jesus means letting Jesus influence all of your life, everything about how you do life
- The 2 wrong ways to react to technology: The Bear Hug & The Cold Shoulder
- The Bear Hug: unthinking use of technology
- “Everybody has an iphone, I must have one.”
- Zero thinking about the impact this technology will have on you and others
- The Cold Shoulder: ignoring, retreating from technology
- “Technology is worldly, I won’t be corrupted by it, I’ll stay away from it.”
- Escape to the hills! Amish mindset.
- Problem with this line of thinking: you’re still using technology!
• The Washing Machine vs. The Washing Board (both are technological developments)
- The 3rd way: The Side Hug–thoughtful engagement with technology
- Matthew 22:36-40
- Give a Side Hug to technology and ask it this question: How can I love God and love other people through this technology?
- Christians are called to thoughtfully engage culture as a means of loving God and loving others.
- The concept of Leveraging
- Rather than look at dozens of technologies today and how they affect relationships and how we’re to engage with them as Christians, we’re singling out Facebook because of its present popularity.
- We could do a whole message on the Microwave, Netflix, the Answering Machine, Hybrid vehicles, etc.
My Facebook History
- My Facebook 30-day experiment
9 Potentially Negative Uses/Dangers of Facebook
- 1. The trend of using status updates to complain
- Examples…
- You should be honest/authentic, but not a complainer
- 2. Measuring your worth/identity by number of Facebook friends/Facebook interactions
- Facebook measurements are opposite of gospel measurements
- 3. Greater concern over forming Facebook (virtual) friends rather than real friends
- 4. Diminishment of face-to-face time with people/enjoying and working on real relationships
- Disengaging from face-to-face time with people to check what’s going on in your Facebook world
- 5. Dual identities
- Being someone online who you’d never be in person
- 6. Hurting and excluding others (intentionally or unintentionally)
- “Favorite friends” application
- Not being invited somewhere
- Without this technology you wouldn’t have known, or at least wouldn’t have known in the same way
- Misunderstandings:
- “Is he talking about me?”
- “She wrote on her wall, but never writes on mine…”
- etc.
- 7. Facebook and online life can make you more distracted, changes how you think/attention span
- Recent research
- 8. Can tempt you away from your calling/work
- Your heart isn’t engaged in something great and big, but constantly distracted by silly little status updates (“I’m chewing gum”) and Wall writings…
- 9. Thinking about yourself more than you already do
- You weren’t created to think about and focus on yourself. Facebook can tempt you to become a more self-focused person than you already are.
6 Facebook Opportunities: 6 Ways to Love God and Love Others Through Facebook (Leveraging)
- 1. Can get back in touch with old, far-away friends in an easy way, showing them how you’ve been changed by Jesus
- My story: “You’re a pastor? What changed?”
- 2. Can use Facebook as an extension of face-to-face relationships/can be used to enhance time with people
- Get to know people better/better love and care for people when you’re with them because through Facebook you know more about who they are and what’s going on in their life
- Examples…
- 3. Can use Facebook to think about yourself less and others more
- Facebook can be a tool for getting outside of yourself/your problems
- 4. Can use Facebook to sharpen/discipline what you do with your time
- Status updates and built in accountability
- 5. Can use Facebook to quickly announce/make great things happen: events, face-to-face time
- Instead of taking 45 min. to call 10 people to come over for a spontaneous evening of fun and fellowship, use Facebook
- 6. Can use Facebook to influence other people for Jesus. Create a new culture with your status updates: use to influence, love, encourage, teach, and challenge people towards greater love for God and other people.
- Wife’s story…
- This is the single greatest change I’d like to see us make.
Closing Application
- Some of you are all jacked up (Bear Hug) and internet addicted and you just need to take a fast, or permanent break from Facebook
- Some of you are a medium-bit jacked up and need to take some time to reflect, get alone with God, and ask him how to engage this technology for his glory, your good, and the good of others. Make changes.
- Some of you are only a little-bit jacked up (Side Hug) and just need to get creative and come up with ideas for using Facebook to greater glorify God and love others.
- A few of you are “Cold Shoulder” technology people that need to engage the 21st century here in Silicon Valley
Regarding Facebook: I just don’t get it.
And even if I did get it, I ain’t got enough free time to got it.
Yo J-Buzz
Why haven’t you posted this on facebook yet?
Is this series online somewhere? I’m helping lead a college ministry right now, and it would be very helpful to listen in on this series. Thanks!
I am with Nick. I’d love to listen in.
Our major employer in the area, Epic Systems, runs a similar operation. I have lunch there on Wednesdays with people from our church and I’m always amazed that I can get such things as swordfish for $3. It’s an interesting culture to minister within. I’d love to connect at the Gospel Coalition and talk ministry in the tech culture, especially to people within one company.
I printed the document and am going through it myself. I’d love to go through it with our youth group, all of whom are on facebook. Any objections? Any copywrite or credit information I need to be aware of? Thanks.
I think Justin should turn his teaching into a book which would impact high school and college students. He is an excellent speaker and his messages do get “through” people.
If and when that book comes out, I will be the first one to buy it and help promote it! :>)
Please let me know if your group discussions come up with possible ways to make a positive impact via Facebook. I’m developing Facebook applications at work and would enjoy working on a personal project that could help with our mission.
One of my biggest worries about Facebook is the disconnect it can bring to human interaction. Personally, I would never be able to truly connect over a digital medium because so much non-verbal communication is lost. I also worry about the time suck that it can become
And don’t think I’m a Luddite about all this. I work at an Interactive Agency that designs web sites so I see the value in online. I just don’t have the time to visit yet another web site that doesn’t fully integrate with all the other stuff I do online. I do Twitter, though, and like both its simplicity and the fact that I can easily see other people’s tweets in my Feed Reader
Thanks for the notes. Awesome. I’d be in favor of you revisiting the idea of recording your Thursday night talks ;)
Powerful reminders for a very timely issue. Thanks for sharing!
Justin,
Thanks for taking the time to provide such a thoughtful (and convicting) post. Every Facebooker who calls themselves Christian should take this post to heart and then implement it the next time they log in to their Facebook page. Good stuff!
Great stuff. The best aspect is your thoughtful rubric for engaging with technology in general, for good or ill.
Thanks, I shared this link in the Facebook for Pastors group.
I really like a lot of your conclusions and thoughts, but one area that I would recommend you rethink is the idea that “technology is neutral” and can be divided into neutral, good, or ill. Perhaps it can be said that technology is morally neutral, but it is not neutral in its effects on society.
For example, the internet is certainly not neutral as it has changed the way we do business, the way we communicate, the way we process information. The wheel (automobile) is one of the reasons we live further from our friends, family, churches, and jobs.
So, it might be good to think about how a technology might affect us beyond just “good” and “bad”…
Again, your post is really great, I just wanted to add to the discussion…
Great wisdom here.
Thanks for an insightful post. I am working with a team here at NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC to leverage the Facebook platform for our Internet campus, so the risks and potential rewards have been on my mind a lot.
For me, it comes down to this: If what social networks really offer is the promise of living life more abundantly, we should be able to apply the most traditional filter there is in determining whether it’s trash or treasure: “Whom are you living for?”
If you use Facebook out of the overflow of your heart in living for Jesus — spontaneous praise, awed witnessing, intentional helping, intimate friendship – then I say in classic John Piper mode, seek as much joy from Facebook as any Christian hedonist should.
Greatly enjoyed seeing a pastor devote time to this discussion among the flock. That shows innovative leadership. Congrats.
What I didn’t see though, and forgive me if I overlooked it, are three significant points for additional consideration…
1. Look at the faces among your Facebook friends. Do they all pretty much look like you? Perhaps Facebook might awaken the (big C) Church to our self-serving nature… ie, we only associate with people just like us. Where’s the multicultural Church? What would Antioch’s Facebook group look like?
2. Are we inbred… ie, only associated among PARTICULAR church friends? That is, does our Facebook friends generally speak well of the citywide Church of Jesus Christ? I would suggest that Facebook is a great tool for our time… to reconnect the fractured Church, city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood.
3. Social-networking with a purpose… is called team-building. Social-networking without a purpose… is probably just another distraction as our neighbors die and go to hell. How many people in your city die each week? Here in Indy, it’s 400. Between sermons. Might social-networking with a purpose, 24×7, help accelerate the Great Commission as a team endeavor?
John, great point. I agree. The notes don’t show that that is what I spoke to in my message–moral neutrality.
Really? Facebook? I understand that it is a look at technology as a whole, but this is just another over-analysis of something that can really just be taken at face value (no pun intended). Life as a Christian doesn’t have to be this complicated.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for this. I really appreciate your study on Facebook. I am going to post a link to your blog on my Facebook page for my friends to check out… We are all in our 20s and use the site to connect with old friends but also to get the word out about services and conferences that are happening in our church.
I’m using facebook to platform for social justice; my best friend and I started the “Clapham Circle” group on facebook to raise awareness of human trafficking. We also use the journaling site livejournal.com for the same purpose. I’ve used facebook to mobilize various efforts in my community about human trafficking awareness and activism. Facebook can definitely be a powerful tool for good.
Thinking Biblically About Facebook
Justin Buzzard offers some thoughts on utilizing facebook for ministry, looking at nine potentially negative uses/dangers of facebook, as well as six ways to love God and love others through facebook. By the way, here’s our facebook group and facebook …
Here are some of my positive observations:
1) I can keep up with what the missionaries I support are doing on a frequent basis (if they update their status or write on their wall.) What a blessing to know how they are doing.
2) I get to watch friends and relatives spiritual growth and can encourage them, even when they are hundreds of miles away.
Things to watch for:
If facebook is draining your time and you are focusing on things that do not matter to God, it reveals something to improve in yourself. You are probably like this on or off the Internet. Giving the “cold-shoulder” to the Internet will not help you, expecially as technology changes even more. You will find another way to occupy your time that keeps you out of relationship with others and God. (Can you tell I am speaking from experience and continued struggles here?)
Paul
As a homeschool mom, I found Facebook a convenient way to keep up with various other homeschooling moms I had met on the Internet over the years. We would come and go at various Christian women’s message boards, but I found if I wanted to keep up with someone who was no longer on a board with me, or vice versa, I had to follow her around the ‘Net and join something she was on in order not to lose contact. Facebook is a great way to find out about the new baby or job or whatever without having to be a member of a message board or, as you pointed out, sending a dozen e-mails to people. I find that when I am busy and can’t catch up on my message boards, Facebook is a quick shortcut to keep me informed of the latest with those I love.
Great read. I really enjoyed this.
My concerns about Facebook with its advantages (I have joined it, BTW)
1. It is an imagined community. The reality is that it is individuals physically sitting at their computer, but the only thing community about it is in their head. “Face-to-face” is understating it. A community communes together, breaks bread together, can share burdens *really*, not just with a wall writing.
2. It feeds our narcissism, which says I am what other people think of me. Facebook is a well-contained means by which I can control that very thing – my identity as others see it. I can have a cool persona, a serious or silly persona, be an intellectual, etc.
3. It demolishes authority structures. Is a high school student “friends” with his teacher? A college professor? Facebook is the ultimate egalitarian institution, which is good in most ways, but not all. A Biblical understanding of society includes authority structures, where not all relationships are “friends”.
4. It is so white.
Good aspects of facebook:
1. It forces the Christian to be a single person. You cannot have two identities, for example one for work friends and one for church friends. Whoever you are, you cannot pretend to be someone else to another group.
2. It forces missional thinking. What you write is seen by all. Facebook forces you to think about how someone outside your clique would hear something, after all, all your friends see you.
Ha! I like side hugs.
Looking forward to the essay.
Face Book makes it easier to communicate with the leadership team of a multi-church organization used to reach international students, who, in turn, also are easier to reach using the social net working power of FB.
So sorry and sad that we could juste drift away of the centrality of the scriptures in our preaches. The preach doesn’t seem to be centered on Jesus-Christ or the Scriptures…its centered on technology and facebook… I’m not angry about that but just disapointed. You know I’m sure that any humanist teachers (not that I have anything wrong with them) can do a preach like that. Like Peter said in Hebrews 5:
12 For at the time when ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and have become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
13 For every one that useth milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
14 But strong meat belongeth to those who are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
You know, if people were “full age” they would easyly use their execised senses to use facebook for the Glory of God. Facebook can be a good tool for the Mission, If you are doing a preach on our missionnary role day by day, it’s a good application, but…it’s not enough and “missing the goal” to promote a tool to make a preach. Make a preach on what God say then give us some tools. The way to established good relationship is not in what the world is giving us, but in what He’s giving us: His Son died on a cross and risen from the dead 3 days after. A way to re-establish the relationship with God first will completely change our relationship with people. (1 John 4:19-21)
Finally, I don’t say that what you’ve teach is wrong…but…the problem is… don’t teach that as a pastor or a Scripture’s teacher!
A disapointed pastor’ son…
Amen! Preach Christ and Him crucified for our sins. It is efficient unto salvation and sanctification.
This helps me so much! I’m trying to convince my dad to let me get a facebook and this has helped me to better understand the reason I want a facebook and will help us both to make an informed decision. Thanks so much!
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