The Lead

Mark McNees has discerned five lessons that the church can learn from Facebook, and has rolled out the first four.

Facebook Lesson #1: It is all about the life of the participants and not the CEO.

Facebook Lesson #2: Facebook culture is very open to ‘friending’ new people into their Facebook community.

Facebook Lesson #3: The Facebook community does not have business hours.

Facebook Lesson #4: The Facebook community is eager to share life with one another.

He will roll out #5 on Wednesday.

Here is how he dilates on these lessons:

Facebook Lesson #1: It is all about the life of the participants and not the CEO.
Mark Zuckerberg definitely has some ideas about community. In 2004 he had a choice; he could start a blog sharing his ideas on community or create a living experiment as an expression of his ideas. If Zuckerberg created a blog he may have built it to tens of thousands of readers which would have been an amazing accomplishment, but his living experiment (F now has 800 million active users living out an expression of his view of community.

What the church can learn from this:

The church’s job is to create a community which encourages, equips, and edifies people to holistically love God and love people. This is the church’s grand “idea.” Largely the modern church’s approach has been a didactic dissemination of knowledge (i.e. sermons, books, blogs), rather than a dynamic community driven expression of faith.

As a teaching pastor, author, and blogger the irony of this post is not lost on me. For clarification however, I am not saying idea creation and sharing is the problem, quite the contrary, the sharing of ideas is central to Facebook, however, the strength of Facebook is in the amount of voices sharing their ideas about community and that is why people check in with FB several times a day.

Tangible expression of Facebook Lesson #1:

Zuckerberg is the creator, founder, and custodian of Facebook, he has created a path for community to exist in ways the world has never seen before. He has done this by giving people a platform to share their thoughts and ideas. The Church can take this concept and intentionally create paths for multiple voices to share about loving God and loving people.

Comments (8)

Amen!

Posted by Bonnie Spivey | January 9, 2012 7:22 PM

Also puzzled by comment on this comment that I have submitted too many comments.

What kind of community has too many comments? Could it be TEC?

Posted by Bonnie Spivey | January 9, 2012 7:24 PM

I disagree with him about blogs, though - I think they're actually quite a lot more open than he seems to. And they are not all about "disseminating knowledge," either; many are created to create a community where can talk together about common interests and everyday life.

And for many, you don't have to belong, or to have an account, either - you can just dive in and talk.

But, I do agree that both FB and blogs are a great model for the church, with the chance for so many people to interact and share ideas!

Posted by bsnyder | January 9, 2012 7:34 PM

Bonnie - you posted the same comment twice - that is what it means.

Posted by Ann Fontaine | January 9, 2012 7:46 PM

Great to hear from Mark. I attended his church in Tallahassee way prior to coming to TEC. I can honestly say that I would have left this Jesus character behind altogether were it not for their ministry. Great guy, great mind, glad to see people are interested in his thoughts.

Posted by DavidBums | January 10, 2012 9:04 AM

Ann--Thank you for the clarification. I did hit that submit button a couple of times.

Posted by Bonnie Spivey | January 10, 2012 11:37 AM

Now the same thing has happened but I shall try this again.

Posted by Bonnie Spivey | January 10, 2012 11:40 AM

Personally, I am beginning to find Facebook an echo chamber.

My conservative friends have either hidden me, or just choose not to engage in discussions of ideas that counter their own.

On those rare occasions when discussions ensue, they often end up being really ugly. For that reason, I am coming to wonder if Facebook is spiritually unhealthy for me. I end up being surrounded by like-minded people who are continually posting things that remind me of how unjust and uncaring the world is. I spend a lot of my time feeling angry and hopeless about the future as a result. From my POV, the church has enough problems without becoming like Facebook.

Posted by Paige Baker | January 10, 2012 5:35 PM

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