Being intentional about our online lives

As part of my preparation for my book on strategic online ministry, I am working my way through some of the latest books and other materials on the topic. As I review these for myself, I will also share my thoughts about them on this blog.

When I first started reading The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice, I was a bit cynical. The title seemed a bit corny and so many people have said so many things about Facebook already that there couldn’t be anything new to say. Besides, any book written about a specific technology is going to be outdated a year after it was published, and since this was published in 2009, I figured it was already going to be out of date. But, as I began working my way through the book, I was pleasantly surprised in many ways by this book and would recommended for reasons having nothing to do with finding out about Facebook or online ministry.

The book begins with a quick history on the rise of Facebook, in which the author compares the impact that Facebook has had to other technological breakthroughs in modern history. I did find it a bit hard to buy the comparison of Facebook’s impact to that of air conditioning or London’s Millennium Bridge. The discussions of how quickly Facebook’s popularity rose and the founder’s plans for the future can be found in many places. But for the uninitiated, it provides a good background on the popular social networking tool.

The book then continues with a discussion of the human need that sites like Facebook are filling. Facebook, according to Rice, provides us with an environment much like home: it provides us with a sense of control, it gives us a sort of “family”, and it is place to put our “stuff” (at least our digital stuff).  We are drawn to Facebook because it surrounds us with the things we are the most comfortable with.  It also provides us the ability to stay connected with more people, introducing us to the concept of “hyperconnectedness”. How many of us are “friends” on Facebook with people we would never have kept in touch with otherwise?

There are disadvantages to all this connectedness as well, and this is where Rice begins to set the stage for the main message of this book.  Facebook is designed to appeal to our “naturally adolescent assumption that the world is watching, and offers us a spotlight, a microphone, and a stage as vast as cyberspace from which to act out our assumption.” When we update our Facebook account, we are assuming we have an audience, and therefore each update is made in order to get a reaction. This turns our friends into an audience and turns us into performers. In fact, if we thought no one would ever read our updates, would we post them in the first place?

Rice’s prescription for all this is to remind us of the life of Christ. Specifically, he recalls the story of the woman at the well, and brings those lessons into his ideas for how we can utilize Facebook in a new way:

Rice then goes on to lay out a plan for how we can use Facebook to imitate Christ by being intentional, humble, and authentic.

This brings me to my biggest criticism, and perhaps also my biggest praise: This book is really about something much bigger than just Facebook. This book is about how we live our lives online. We must be intentional about our online lives. And this starts by being intentional about our “offline” lives as well! We must understand that everything we do online is recorded and kept…forever. We can use our online selves as a way to demonstrate Christ to a lost world.  My biggest issue with the book, then, is that it seems to only focus on Facebook! The suggestions it makes for how to live our online lives apply equally as well to any other social technologies as well.

For those of you interested in how you can be intentional, humble, and authentic online, I recommend The Church of Facebook. If you like, you can buy it from my Amazon bookstore and support my work! You can find out more about the book and read the first chapter at Jesse’s site here.

Tags: church of facebook, facebook, jesse rice