Elizabeth Drescher is the author of Tweet If You Love Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation and co-author of the forthcoming Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (2012). In a recent guest post for Union Theological Seminary’s New Media Project she provided one of the best brief explanations of the shifts in life on and off-line:
Social media participation has clearly become a real part of the lives of almost every American in nearly every demographic grouping we might imagine. It’s not that we’re living our lives more online, but that the boundary between what we used to distinguish as “virtual” and “real” is simply gone.
So What?
I continue to hear of the increasing importance of social media for ministry, yet encounter relatively few who see clearly that the two worlds (online and offline) are now one.
- How does understanding these together as a part of our world change how you think of church and ministry when compared to the former model that featured two distinctly separate realms?
- How does your congregation use this new media enriched world to expand mission and ministry?
Note: For another insightful consideration of this topic, consider reading No Longer Divided: Virtual and F2F.