Our Digital Mission Field

When we accept Christ, we become members of his body and commit ourselves to contribute to the corporate witness of Christ’s body. 

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Beginning May 6th, I’ll be participating in Moody Center’s “Go Dark, Shine Bright” campaign. You can find out more at www.godarkshinebright.org. Please consider participating in this coordinated movement of prayer.

While pursuing my Master of Divinity in the early 2000’s, I worked as a personal trainer. It was the perfect job for a seminary student. Not only did my work schedule leave the middle of my day free for classes and study, but I also had the opportunity to interact with clients one-on-one and to develop relationships with them over several years. As I went about my job, I was also able to be a living witness to my clients.

Being a witness didn’t mean that I was in constant evangelism mode. I wasn’t passing out gospel tracks at the end of every workout or doing altar calls between sets. Instead, I sought to live faithfully and to be honest about my faith day in and day out. My faithful, yet flawed, witness meant being odd in ways that would demonstrate the difference Christ makes in the lives of his people. My speech, my reaction to the problems and challenges of the world, and my actions toward others conveyed God to my co-workers and clients.

Our interactions on social media are similar to my interactions as a personal trainer. Our evangelistic efforts online can’t be limited to proclaiming the message of salvation. Posting a never-ending stream of gospel memes without also developing a faithful digital presence will not create a compelling, living witness. We can’t offer a faithful witness to Christ if we post in ways that are not full of “integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned” (Titus 2:7-8). In the digital mission field, we have to live out our faith by conforming our digital selves to the image of Christ.

Even as we speak about our “digital selves,” we must recognize that who we are online cannot be at odds with who we are offline. We don’t live separate lives, but the whole of who we are and what we have is to be fully dedicated to God. The point is not to suggest that our digital lives are somehow separate from our physical reality, but to emphasize the importance of our digital lives and the need for faithful witnesses to Christ on the digital mission field.

As we enter social networking spaces like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, it is crucial for us to recognize that each of these platforms has a wonderful plan for our lives. They are not neutral spaces. They exert an influence on us and seek to form and shape us in ways that advance their particular agenda. As Jaron Lanier notes in the Netflix documentary entitled The Social Dilemma, “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product…Changing what you do, how you think, who you are.” We are consistently in danger of becoming the “product” of the digital platforms on which we interact. When we enter the digital mission field, we should be aware of the influence the digital mission field exerts on us.

So, what can we do to resist the “gradual, slight, imperceptible change” in our behavior that forms us into “social media animals”? What can we do to ensure that we offer faithful testimony on the digital mission field? First, we can step away from the mission field to gain perspective. The“Go Dark, Shine Bright” campaign is designed to help you do just that. Take a break from social media, reconsider how you interact on it, and get ready to shine brightly within your particular social network. As Dwight Moody said, “In the place God has put us he expects us to shine, to be a bright and shining light. While we are here our work is to shine for him…”

Second, and perhaps most importantly, we have to enter the social media space with our own agenda firmly established. As I argued in Thinking Christian, “when we have not offered a faithful digital presence, it is, in part, because we did not have a good idea of what it meant to offer a faithful ‘analog’ presence.” We have always been shaped and formed by our environment. George Will points, for instance, to the influence of the state in his introduction to The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts writing, “Men and women are biological facts. Ladies and gentlemen—citizens—are social artifacts, works of political art. They carry the culture that is sustained by wise laws and traditions of civility. At the end of the day, we are right to judge society by the character of the people it produces. That is why statecraft is inevitably, soulcraft.” While the state and social media may use different mechanisms to change our behaviors, we need to focus on our Christian agenda. Without that focus, we will be far more susceptible to the purposes and plans of others that seek to conform us into something other than Christ.

Our agenda has been set for us.  When we accept Christ, we become members of his body and commit ourselves to contribute to the corporate witness of Christ’s body.  Our agenda is, as Moody suggests, “In the place God has put us he expects us to shine, to be living witnesses, to be a bright and shining light.  While we are here our work is to shine for him.”  We are to glorify Christ and walk worthy of our calling.

Third, even with an established agenda, we can’t be naïve. Our best intentions can be disrupted if we don’t inform ourselves. Watch The Social Dilemmaon Netflix, read Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now or Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, or listen to Tristan Harris’s discussion of the media on TED Tech’s podcast episode entitled “How Better Tech Could Protect Us from Distraction.” None of these resources offers a definitive treatment of social media, but each provides frameworks that will help you navigate the social media space in a more faithful manner.

Finally, agendas and information won’t help if we are running on our own power. No amount of smarts or willpower will offer us the resources we really need to glorify God in the digital (or physical!) world. We need to be praying that the Holy Spirit will guide us and press us to obey God’s word. When we depend on God, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. Seeking to chart our own course without his wisdom and guidance is a fool’s errand. In truth, it is no better for us to determine our own path than for us to submit ourselves to the directions given by a social media platform. Left to our own devices and limited by our own resources and strength, we will not only fail to love God with all we are and have, but to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Let’s prepare to proclaim the gospel by spending time in prayer and asking God to guide and use us to show the world what it means to live in his presence. Let’s commit to being living witnesses wherever God has placed us. Let us pray, as Paul did for the Thessalonian church: “To this end, we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 1:11-12).

 

 

 

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Crazy Different

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

 

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About the Author

For more than a decade, James served in academic leadership within biblical higher education. He currently serves as President of the D. L. Moody Center, an independent non-profit organization in Northfield, MA, dedicated to honoring the spiritual legacy of D.L. Moody. James serves on faculty at Right On Mission and as a consultant for Christian colleges and seminaries in the areas of leadership development, online programming, and enrollment management. He also teaches as an adjunct instructor at the collegiate and graduate level in the areas of biblical studies, interpretation, and Christian thought. James graduated with his B.S in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2000 before earning his Master of Divinity from Moody Theological Seminary (2004), his M. A. in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College Graduate School (2005), and his PhD in Theological Studies-Old Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (2012). He later attended the Harvard Institute of Education Management and completed a year of executive coaching. James researches and writes in the areas of theology and Old Testament Studies. Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody was published in 2021. He also published Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Mind in 2020 and co-authored Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology in 2018. James also co-authored "Isaiah" with Michael Rydelnik in the Moody Bible Commentary and contributed to Marriage: It's Foundation, Theology, and Mission in a Changing World, and The Moody Handbook of Messianic Prophecy.In addition to writing on theology and Old Testament studies, James has also published and presented in the areas of online curriculum design, higher education policy, organizational strategies for higher education recruitment, and Christian leadership. James and his family live in the Chicagoland area. He is available to speak in the areas of Christian leadership, Christian theology and contemporary issues, Christian identity in the digital age, biblical higher education and college choice, and Old Testament theology. .