I was invited (along with UVC’er Jenny Weigle) to give a presentation last Saturday to a group of United Methodists about social media and the church. The day started with worship and after about 15 minutes of singing and before one of the pastors started praying, a man across from the aisle from me just couldn’t take it any more. He had been slowly rocking back and forth saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” to himself, but he got up and for the next 3-4 minutes proceeded to run around the sanctuary calling out at the top of his lungs, “Jesus! Jesus! Thank you, Jesus! Praise him! Thank you!”
A few folks were clapping and encouraging him but there were others who were no doubt thinking, what is this man doing? Methodists don’t behave this way! I must confess that I had a mix of discomfort and admiration. Discomfort, just because I’m not used to responses to Jesus like this, but admiration because he had a message and he simply had to communicate it at that time in that way.
That’s why social media has become so important to us, but not because it’s simply the thing to do. We really believe in what we’re doing as Urban Village. We really believe that God is actively working to renew this world (one might even call this process “salvation,” even though that word has a lot of baggage). We really believe that we’ve been asked to help “thy kingdom come,” as it says in the Lord’s prayer. Because of those beliefs, we want to let the world know. That means we’ll be imposing ashes on people on the street again on Ash Wednesday and we’ll still put up fliers and we’ll utilize social media. We need your help with that. Like us on Facebook, if you haven’t already. Follow us on Twitter and retweet the messages we put out there. Write us up on Yelp. But don’t do this because we need validation. Do it because there’s at least a small part of you that wants to be part of God’s renewal project.