“You will be my witnesses to the end of the earth.” Jesus in Acts 1
Growing up I could never imagine having the capability of sharing the Word of God or my faith testimony to “the end of the earth.” Heck, I couldn’t imagine being a faith-filled witness beyond Western New York. But then technology changed and like Dick Tracy in the comics we now can use a device on our wrists to connect with the entire world.
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church started streaming our worship services before COVID was a term we all would dread hearing, and we soon discovered that our little church in West Deptford was reaching people on every continent in the world. People worshiping with us in Germany and Liberia; praying face-to-face online with people in Pakistan.
I think everyone knows we have a FACEBOOK page, but we also have an INSTAGRAM page and a TWITTER account. Since THREADS is quickly replacing X (The new name for TWITTER) amongst people who care about messaging we need a THREADS account.
Once we started streaming our Sunday worship services and then our evening Bible Study we began getting responses from strangers who had never set foot in New Jersey. They came to worship online with us on Sundays and Gail from North Carolina has even become a valued member of our Wednesday evening ZOOM Bible study.
And friends, today we can have the capability to effectively reach even more people who can help us grow St. Paul’s, stay financially viable, and who are needing to hear the teaching lessons of Jesus Christ. But to do so, our church needs to find that one special person willing to take on the challenge of putting our message onto INSTAGRAM, THREADS, X (formerly known as TWITTER), and FACEBOOK as their personal mission for the church. The message has to be ongoing and regular rather than occasional, which means someone has to be in charge.
The word “memes” was created by author Richard Dawkins in 1976. It was his attempt to explain how society can replicate understandings and evolve through simple repetitive and/or visible messaging. The first “memes” were those smiley faces we call “emoticons” and in today’s world “memes” have become more sophisticated while sharing a wide variety of messages. We use “memes,” like the one of Woodstock and Snoopy, on our Facebook page all the time because a visual message is more effective than several paragraphs of written language.
Are you someone who enjoys spending time online? Are you the creative type who has fun designing art and perhaps “memes?” Well, we need you. We need someone who will regularly post messages about St. Paul’s online using either church created memes and messages or if the person is creative, their own “memes” and messages about St. Paul’s (obviously, reviewed ahead of time).
The cool thing is the person who takes on this responsibility can be a teenager or an octogenarian. The person just needs to have the interest, because it really won’t take a lot of time for someone already hanging out online. So if it is you, your child or your grandmother please sign up because then St. Paul’s will be in a better place to share all the ways we worship God and serve out our faith! Send me an e-mail (pdatstpauls@gmail.com) if interested!