Going Viral!

With the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of The United States On Tuesday we witnessed the culmination of a 2 year campaign to relentlessly use social networking and to harness the power of the internet in an unprecedented way. President Obama successfully used viral networking to get his message of “change you can believe in” to millions of Americans and then rode the technological wave all the way to the White House. Using websites Such as Facebook, Myspace, and Youtube, and other technological tools such as email, text messaging, and instant messaging, President Obama’s campaign, the most technologically savvy is history, went viral and built an interconnected, grassroots following that was committed to putting him in office.
If a political campaign can ride the wave of “social networking” and “viral marketing” all the way to the White House, then the people of God must learn how to harness that power in order to advance the Kingdom of Heaven. When the church was still in its infancy, Paul used everything that the culture had to offer to spread the gospel message to an unbelieving world. In Athens Paul used cultural symbols and quoted popular philosophers in an attempt to share the good news. When God sent him to the gentile world Paul used all the cutting-edge technology at his disposal (boats) to sail to distant ports and take the gospel with him. If the church is going to be effective in ever-changing technological world we must learn to effectively use the cutting-edge mediums available to us.
As a Christian I believe that God has called me to go and make disciples, just as Jesus first called his followers to go and make disciples, and he has been calling all Christians to go and make disciples ever since. But maybe the go for me and for Jacob’s Well will take us to places that we have never gone before, maybe it will take us to cyberspace, to social networking websites like Facebook and Youtube. Maybe, just maybe the great commission for us for today isn’t simply a cal to go, perhaps it is a call to “Go Viral!”