Saint Paul said in Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; because it is the power of God that brings salvation to EVERYONE who believes.” Romans 1:16
If you are on FACEBOOK, you have seen the image above after every single posting on your FACEBOOK page, including everything you post. As part of the “social” part of “social media” we are invited to like, comment, or share the messages from our friends or even strangers. It is amazing sometimes how many strangers feel that they have to comment on some of my postings.
The creators of FACEBOOK have made it so easy that those of us with non-technical minds can easily just click on whichever activity we want to engage with and voila, it happens.
Clearly the easiest way to jump into the world of social media might be the LIKE button. Take a FACEBOOK posting featuring Romans chapter 1 verse 6 as an example. If that was posted to a friend’s FACEBOOK page and you were happy to see the verse on FACEBOOK all you need to do is click LIKE, thumbs-up, and the world would know you liked it.
Of course if you want to add your personal insight, you would need to click on COMMENTS. So if this verse was posted on FACEBOOK and you really liked it you could click first on the LIKE button, which would register that you liked it. Then you would have to CLICK on the COMMENTS button, which would open up a “dialogue” space where you can type in your own words reflecting on how you think about the subject. You could type, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel! I am thankful for God’s love through Jesus Christ,” for example.
Now comes another easy button but apparently it is the hardest button for so many people to click on. It’s the SHARE button. People SHARE FACEBOOK posts that they obviously agree and believe in. They want their friends and family to be connected to them through the posting. It might be a video of puppies or kittens. Perhaps it is a story about one of their favorite sports teams or celebrities. Many SHARE stories that their children or grandchildren have posted about their lives. SHARE is just as easy to click on as is LIKE and COMMENT but for some reason it seems to be really difficult to SHARE posts from St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on FACEBOOK.
We stream our Sunday and Wednesday worship services live on FACEBOOK, but they remain on FACEBOOK forever. If you click on the SHARE button, your friends and family on FACEBOOK will be able to watch those services and connect with our church. Almost every morning at 9:30am I stream a live FACEBOOK message of 15 minutes, hit SHARE and everyone sees it. We post messages about the CHICKEN BARBECUE, about the FLUTE ENSEMBLE, and even stream Celebration of Life services. All of these could be reaching so many more people if every member of St. Paul’s merely hit the SHARE button on their FACEBOOK pages.
I would hope all of you have LIKED St. Paul’s FACEBOOK page, but now in this Lenten Season I am asking each of you to sacrifice a little time and effort by boldly SHARING St. Paul’s FACEBOOK messages onto your social media. No need to be embarrassed to share, because we all love this church and I would hope we want more friends and family members to be connected to God, Christ, and if they don’t have a church, with St. Paul’s.
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; because it is the power of God that brings salvation to EVERYONE who believes.”
Pastor Dave