Find the Kingdom of God on Facebook

I noticed the way the world had shifted as my wife and I went to Wal-Mart this past Saturday. Our friend, Susan Carter, stopped us to wish my wife a happy birthday and to comment that she might like to go with our daughter to a concert if her son couldn’t make it. I know that doesn’t sound earth shattering. But as we walked away after that brief exchange, I realized that I had just seen in real life the benefit of a connection sustained in cyberspace.

            We hadn’t seen Susan in a while as she no longer works at the high school and her son is in college and so not at drama events anymore. But Susan knew both about Victoria’s birthday and our daughter’s tastes in music because of that multi-million user social network known as Facebook. The online group had kept us connected while we were no longer bumping in to each other on a regular basis.

Facebook began October 28, 2003 as a late night prank by Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg. The 300-million-dollar business was originally a posting of photos from the facebook given to students as a way to get to know other people on campus. The original idea was a version of “hot or not” in which photos from the school’s official facebook were placed side by side asking students to vote on which person was hotter.

By the following February, Zuckerberg was creating an online facebook for Harvard first named “The Facebook.” Within the month more than half of the undergraduates were members and the site soon expanded to Boston area colleges, then the rest of the Ivy League and beyond. The exclusively college site later expanded to include high school students and eventually everyone 13 and older.

Sometime within the past six months large numbers of us in the more-than-half-my-life-is-over crowd realized we were over 13 and jumped on the bandwagon. In the process, the one-time late-night prank turned teen phenomenon morphed into the CB radio of the new millennium. Today the site has more than 175 million active members and the fastest growing segment is the AARP crowd of 50 and older. All we need is a hit song like “Convoy” or a movie like “Smokie and the Bandit” and the metamorphosis will be complete.

The only problem with being a middle-aged users of Facebook is that it means admitting that the teens had it right and we were wrong. The teens were right in that while we were busy complaining about the cost of text messaging and the late night time on the computer, they were more connected with their friends than we parents and children of the “Me Generation” of the 60s and 70s dreamed possible.

Now that we are reveling in the “25 Random Things” we never knew about our friends and friends of our friends in some cases, we have to crank back the knob on the anti-technology rants. Don’t know what I mean? Then you weren’t on Facebook recently when more than 100 million people shared 25 random things about themselves with their friends.

The flood of messages was annoying, at first it was anyway. Then the random things went deeper and touched on things both humorous and tragic that I never knew about the people I know. My own 25 random things were not the best I read by any stretch, but to give you a feel for the phenomenon here’s a few: “4) I've done a lot of hitch hiking, in the US and Europe. 16) I miss the taste of paste. 21) I get nervous when I write sermons. I struggle with whether I am getting it right. I don’t get nervous when I give them.”

The point for me is that Facebook helps keep a link open between you and people you wouldn’t otherwise have the time to stay in touch with through the usual means. For example, I feel better connected to real-life friend and fellow pastor Rick Douylliez now that we are friends on Facebook. The pastor of First Presbyterian Church in St. Mary’s sent me an inbox message to my account while I’ve been writing this column to say, “I have found Facebook to be extremely helpful in ministering to youth. This is where they are!”

Rick went on to note the side benefit to his ministry that he is, “also connected now to hundreds of clergy across the nation.” You might not know it, but loneliness is a key issue with clergy in general. Rick is right. Facebook helps connect pastors so that they don’t feel as isolated in their work.

Writing this article while on Facebook also just connected me to Mary Jane Harrison-Brooks. She lives just a hundred yards away, but it is highly unlikely we would have spoken before church this evening if it wasn’t for the online network. Thanks to the internet she was able to let me know, “I have found that keeping in touch with my Christian friends via Facebook on a ‘daily basis’ with small comments and statements has been very uplifting.”

This is the strength of Facebook to me. Comment on what you are doing and all your friends will see it. As the average person on Facebook has 120 friends, that’s a lot of contact from one statement.

My neighbor goes on to write, “Because of Facebook, I have been reunited with old church friends from Seattle whom I had only exchanged Christmas cards with for the last 20 years...now I can see their photos and keep up with them everyday! I can celebrate their good news like becoming a Grandparent and pray for and support them when they have a bad day too.”

With 850 million photos uploaded each month, chances are that you will get a peak inside the lives of old friends that you could never have otherwise. You get to watch your friends’ lives in a way previously possible for stalkers alone. It’s a view you get because they open their lives up to their connections on the network.

This is why Jim Morrow says, “Facebook and other social networks have helped me deepen the connection with members of my church community. Facebook is a real place with real connections.”

Jim is another real life friend and colleague in ministry with whom I am better connected thanks to Facebook. Jim is the Youth pastor at First Methodist Church in St. Marys. Youth pastors are the ones that charted a course for churches to use online social networks for ministry. First it was Live Journal, then MySpace and now Facebook.

Jim writes of these networks, “By taking part in it, I can help move our faith conversation from existing solely inside the church walls to the place where people live a very real part of their lives.”

He goes on to write, “Facebook has also helped me connect members of the church community with each other so that their Christian support and fellowship grows stronger, quicker. This is helpful, especially for people who are newer to the church. ...and it's a great communication tool!”

The point is just that. Facebook is a tool for communication. Despite the ways I have waxed just shy of eloquently about the good of Facebook, the group also has a dark side. People share inappropriate photos or trash one another online. And then there are incidents like the tragic story of the girl who committed suicide seemingly in response to a series of exchanges on MySpace with a Mom down the street who was pretending to be a fellow teen being cruel to the fragile child.

Facebook is neither inherently good or bad. It is a tool for communication. As such it will follow eight-track tapes in going the way of the telegraph and the Pony Express. As a pastor, I have no stake in any given communications tool. Jesus never said, “By this they will know that you are my followers, that you friend one another on Facebook.”

Jesus’ incarnation—God becoming man—was not virtual reality. It took place in real time with real touch. And sometimes we still have to get together and laugh and hug and share one another’s company.

Online networks will never replace real life interactions. But that’s not how teens have been using them. High school and college students created and used these cyber social connections to maintain real life connections while apart from their friends. The rest of us are just catching up, but we would do well to follow their lead in not using the internet to avoid connecting with others in real life, but as a means to enhance and maintain those existing relationships.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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