The New Mission Field

This week I want to explore something I briefly mentioned last week - the new mission field.

If Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest in the world. Twitter would be number twelve.

So let's play this out. Imagine Facebook and Twitter are the world's two newest nations. In many ways, they are. They have their own infrastructure, their own language (hashtags, @ replies, etc.), they have their own social norms, and their own economy. Their economy is only slightly based on the dollar, but more valuable still is your number of friends/followers/traffic. Exposure is the new currency.

If these nations existed in the physical realm, the church (I hope) would immediately send our best and brightest evangelists who have a heart for the lost to share the gospel. I mean, the third largest country in the world has appeared out of thin air in less than a decade! Has the field ever been more ripe for harvest?

There are some peculiarities to Facebookers and Twitterites. None of them are native. They all have dual citizenship in some other physical nation. They all are living in a place where they at least have access to the internet, meaning they have a certain amount of wealth.

How well have we studied these new nations? How well do we know them? Before we throw missionaries in, we would want to educate them on what they will find once they arrive. Have we done our research?

I believe this is one way we as the church need to be viewing social media sites. It is an opportunity to share the gospel. But just like sending missionaries to the rest of the world, you've got to know the culture. So this week, I want to look at the culture of social media, and how we as the church can begin sending missionaries to Facebook.