Saturday, December 10, 2005
Not As Hard As You Might Think
Al Mohler is looking at kids and the Internet -- specifically the "blogs" they create ay MySpace.com. He extensively quotes a Business Week piece on the "MySpace Generation." Al opines:
It seems like every time there is new media Christians want to rush to capitalize on it to "spread the Gospel." It's a new tool, and that's good, and it's a potential problem, but every generation has been confronted with those.
The Gospel is a person, the person of Christ, it's not a medium, nor is it medium dependant. In my experience, kids do MySpace because personal relationship has become so difficult. The kids my wife and I teach have responded quite well to having someone just show an interest in them. I've looked at their MySpaces and in large part found them innocuous, though many are not. They like that we know about it, but they are also quite grateful that we offer them an alternative. They revel in actual personal human contact - particularly with an adult. They are, by the way, extremely impressed with a middle-aged blogger - they thought it was "their" thing.
We so often confuse the medium and the message as Christians. Our message is timeless and pure and attractive. Our message is nothing less than Christ. That, I think, is what we need to remember when we concern ourselves with new mediums. Our message is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Our message is bigger than MySpace or any other medium can hold.
This generation also presents the church with a missiological challenge -- how to reach this generation with the Gospel.As someone who weekly teaches a Bible Study for high school kids all who have a "myspace" I don't think it's all that hard - sorry Al.
It seems like every time there is new media Christians want to rush to capitalize on it to "spread the Gospel." It's a new tool, and that's good, and it's a potential problem, but every generation has been confronted with those.
The Gospel is a person, the person of Christ, it's not a medium, nor is it medium dependant. In my experience, kids do MySpace because personal relationship has become so difficult. The kids my wife and I teach have responded quite well to having someone just show an interest in them. I've looked at their MySpaces and in large part found them innocuous, though many are not. They like that we know about it, but they are also quite grateful that we offer them an alternative. They revel in actual personal human contact - particularly with an adult. They are, by the way, extremely impressed with a middle-aged blogger - they thought it was "their" thing.
We so often confuse the medium and the message as Christians. Our message is timeless and pure and attractive. Our message is nothing less than Christ. That, I think, is what we need to remember when we concern ourselves with new mediums. Our message is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Our message is bigger than MySpace or any other medium can hold.
