(Image via CrunchBase)

St. Pixels, is an online 3D church, hosting the first-ever interactive worship service on Facebook. According to St. Pixels designer, Mark Howe: 

“Love it or hate it, Facebook is where people are in 2011. If the Gospel is for today’s connected culture, it has to find a distinctive but culturally-appropriate place within social networking.”

“It’s easy to build irrelevant ghettos in cyberspace or to abandon distinctives in the rush to embrace the latest online fad. Our Facebook application is an attempt to engage with a cultural phenomenon on its own terms while holding onto the Gospel that has transformed so many cultures across the centuries.”

The multimedia church is hoping to proclaim Christ through new media outlets like Facebook and potentially reach out and touch some of the reported 600 million neighbors on the social network site.

The first service is scheduled to be launched on May 10. St. Pixels intends “to create a sacred space and a welcoming and witnessing community on the Internet.” They also hope to make disciples and provide opportunities for theological discussion and exploration.             *Top

“For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year.”

The runner–up is said to have been Wikileaks’ Julian Assange who was a strong candidate before his recent legal problems.

Response: The choice and even the runner-up demonstrates how much a part of our daily lives the Internet has become. No longer just the playground of techno-geeks, nearly every family and person in America plus one billion and half people around the world are touched in some way by the web.

For some of you who thought that it was all just a fad that would eventually play out now is the times to consider that we are really in the midst of a communication revolution. I’m sure that friends of Gutenberg were not all that sure about his invention of the printing press either at first. Those who saw the first autos laughed for a while and kept on riding in their horse and buggies, and those who saw the first TV broadcast in 1939 probably didn’t see much future in it.

However when it comes to the Internet the future is right now and it is making it possible to take Jesus to countries where it is illegal to preach the Gospel. it is a revolution and a new day. Time to get aboard, we could be looking at the generation referred to in Daniel 12:4 -

  “…to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”

Millions are searching for knowledge and all sorts of stuff on the internet everyday in every nation of the world. We really do need to make it easy for the world to find Christ even if by supposed accident.            *Top

“How are you using social media to refresh others?”

Quote from article:

Will you choose to be a breath of fresh air to the world today? How are YOU using social media in your life to refresh others lives with the grace and truth of Jesus Christ?

Philippians 2:15:

“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God.”

Response: Some good thoughts to consider as we tweet, poke, and ‘Like’ around our own social networking sites.

                ( Logo via Wikipedia)

a New Jersey pastor has added a new commandment to the list that he expects his leaders to abide by: ‘Thou shall not use Facebook’.

The Rev. Cedric Miller of Living Word Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune, NJ has ordered his staff of 50 married church leaders to delete their Facebook accounts or resign from their leadership positions.

The pastor also says that he intends to counsel his entire congregation of 1,100 members to follow their lead and also discontinue using the social network site.

What lead to the pastor’s decision was the experience of counseling 20 different couples in failing marriages where Facebook was a factor in their trouble and actually lead to adultery with new and past friends initially found on line in the social network.

Response: <<Read my response to this story on my Answers blog>>

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Image via Wikipedia

According to AVG, the Internet security firm, nearly 92% of children in the U.S have some type of online presence by the time they reach just 2 years of age. The young children either show up in articles and pictures in their mothers social net page or they have their very own site.

We are seeing the rise of a new phenomenon with the lives of people receiving full documentation on the Internet from the time they are born and even before. Over 500 million folks around the world are participating in Facebook alone not to mention MySpace and others.

My wife and nearly all of the grandparents we know have pictures of their grandchildren online. With this new group of kids growing up we could be looking at the first generation that is fully represented and documented on the Internet ‘from cradle to grave’?

The gospel needs to reach that generation and what better way than to use the very online instruments and tools that are now so part of the modern human experience.            *Top        

(Image via Wikipedia)

Here’s the beginning of a series on developing and designing a Facebook fan page on Ministry Vault blog:

Facebook Fan Page Design

There are over 350 million folks on Facebook and it is still growing exponentially. It has incredible potential as a vehicle for outreach.

Here’s an excellent article from Digital Evangelism Issues on using Facebook in ministry. It addresses various current issues and has links to helpful training:

“Facebook outreach and training”

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(Hat Tip to: Digital Evangelism Issues)

The OurChurch blog has an article on evangelism and social networking where they evaluate and link to a recent PBS article.

John Saddington of ChurchCrunch, was one of those interviewed in the PBS article and points out:

“One of the nice things about social media is that it establishes a two-way conversation… Instead of blaring our faith into people’s faces, we can use blogs and social media to dialogue.”

The social media really does make it possible to naturally share your life and faith with your friends and relatives. A genuine tool for evangelism.            *Top

(Image via CrunchBase)

NEW YORK — A small Web company called Power.com has sued Facebook, saying it doesn’t follow its own policy of giving users control over their content. Meanwhile, Facebook is suing Power.com over copyright and trademark violations.

It’s hard to know who to root for here—though Facebook did recently claim that of your content belonged to them until they reversed themselves after a well deserved backlash. So we probably should be rooting for Power.com and greater freedom of use. 

(Image by voteprime via Flickr)

Here’s an interesting article by Yahoo Tech: “No such thing as "deleted" on the Internet”

It Reminds folks that some of those horrible pictures and stuff you ‘deleted’ a month ago are probably somewhere out there still on the Internet—particularly if it was on Facebook.

This should be a lesson for all of us in ministry to be careful what we say and what type of info. we might publish. I know for example, some of the things that I have published about Islam on my Apologetic blog might be none too popular among some in the Middle East, though I get quite a few visits from there. However, I have been careful to be as accurate as I possibly can be.

On a couple of occasions my responses to some comments on a blog or two have not been all that charitable. I am learning to be far more loving than I used to be. In the mean time, there are a few comments still out there that I’d take back if I could. A lesson I am still in the process of learning.

This media is far more permanent than the ‘delete’ button promises.