@StickyJesus – How to live out your faith online

The Following is part of the Patheos book club for @Sticky Jesus

I want to introduce you to a fine resource: @StickyJesus – How to live out your faith online.  In this book, Toni Birdsong and Tami Heim discuss many of the questions that Christians ask about web 2.0, including the most basic question: How can I utilize the internet for Kingdom purposes?

@StickyJesus begins with a global challenge:

We challenge you as a Christ follower to changer your mind-set of the way you spend your time online.  We challenge believers around the world to forgo denomination, sit in the same pew, and write this ongoing story together and share new ways to reach a fragmented world for Christ (2).

Then, the authors go on to explain the goals of the book:

• Explore how Christ honored and built relationships and how you can do the same online
• Give you a practical understanding of the marketing-driven culture online
• Point to the Holy Spirit as your Power Source
• Provide personal stories that show God moving and transforming lives through social networking channels
• Summarize each file with a download and a prayer that are 100 percent retweetable
• Alert you to the danger zones
• Demystify the world of social networking with easy instruction on getting started on Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and content gathering (RSS)
• Provide ongoing resources to help you grow beyond this book at http://stickyjesus.com/.
• Include a glossary in the back of the book to help you along the way

In my estimation, these goals were achieved and helpful and practical ways.  For instance, as stated above, each chapter is summarized by a “download” and “prayer” that is all retweetable.  Here are some of my favorites that you may see in my Twitter-stream in the upcoming weeks:

• You have the privilege of sharing the story that will stick to every generation (24)
• Jesus’ mission was not to inform but to transform the world (49)
• Conversation is the new medium, and content is the new gold.
• Advertisers communicate diverse, persuasive, subjective messages, but the Christ follower communicates the Message. (73)
• God has given you dominion over the shiny things of this earth and the Internet (114)
• Love must define your mission online (129)
• Reach out, seek to serve, forgive, and be inclusive (129)

As a blogger, Web 2.0 is a medium that I interact with on a daily basis.  I have learned a lot over the past 3 years or so, but a book like @StickyJesus would have helped me understand the “workings” of the web.  If you are a relatively newer blogger and a follower of Jesus, as I already have demonstrated some, this book is one that is full of insightful nuggets of wisdom about the various facets of the web.  For instance, I was impressed by the author’s knowledge of the history, motivations, and strategies of the online world.  Here are a few interesting facts they share:

• It took radio thirty-eight years to reach fifty million users; television, thirteen years; the Internet, four years; and the iPod, three years.  In just a nine-month period, Facebook added one hundred million users, and downloads of iPhone applications reached one billion.
• Ninety-six percent of people born between 1980 and 1994 have joined a social network
• One out of every five couples married in the U.S. met via social networking (8-9)

Along with an awareness of the development of online influence, the authors do well to address the “danger zones” of the Web.  Beyond the obvious areas of pornography and scams, they address some issues that the church at large has not wrestled with enough.  For instance, “excessive Internet use can weaken family bonds, create and feed online addictions such as gambling and shopping, increase emotional distress, and inhibit healthy socialization skills.”  They add that in the church “leaders worry that online relationships will replace face-to-face discipleship” (103).  I believe that these issues need to be discussed and that web fasting should be a regular practice (now, I’m preaching to myself!).  They wisely say: “Log off and rest – often… Living in the Age of the Internet makes the godly issue of rest even more urgent” (107).

Finally, I want to say that I enjoyed the ways in which the authors integrated spiritual / discipleship ideals from Scripture into the ways we interact with social media as a whole.  I think that this book comes to us in a creative fashion and would be a great read for teenagers who are immersed in Web 2.0 by default, for those wanting to create an online platform through blogging and utilizing social networks, and for those who do not know much about the inner-workings of the Web.  For any of these people, @StickyJesus serves as a guide for how to live out our faith online.  The only thing that I wish the authors would have also included were the insights from Shane Hipps work on the issues surrounding the use of “mediums” and technology.  With that said, I believe that this book will provide many the opportunity to think about issue of faith and social media in practical ways.

ALSO: CHECK OUT THE @STICKYJESUS LIVE CHAT, HAPPENING THURSDAY MARCH 1 WITH THE AUTHORS!