Lifeshare
I have been seeing a lot of logos all over Facebook about something called Lifeshare. I stumbled on someone’s post saying they were about to go live so I clicked on the link and found over 100 people gathered to watch a live video stream of several people talking about how they have a dream to use our online spaces to spread the word about Jesus. This site appears to be a service of Lifechurch, a multicampus church that is just telecasting one Pastor to multiple places over a television. I was intrigued so I kept watching. They said a few prayers and gave examples of how their online presence could be used to share the good news of Jesus. Some were using Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, blogs, and a new toy called Gospelr. Gospelr is a microblogging service simalar to Twitter but geared toward sharing the gospel among others. This service even interfaces with Twitter so that when you send a message on Gospelr it also sends it on Twitter adding a watermark “Gospelr” at the end. It must be something if it made it on the front page of Techcrunch, a technology related blog.
While I am sometimes skeptical about methods like this that can be confused with conforming to the world, I am willing to give them a chance if they are Christ centered and preach Christ as the only way to salvation. Being someone that is naturally attracted to new technology related toys, I always try these things out. I must say that I was impressed by the enthusiam the group had for sharing the gospel. At first I was afraid the motivation may be to spread their group and the toys, using Jesus instead of the other way around. I did not leave with that impression. I enjoyed myself enough that I plan on participating again. I love to learn about Jesus through the Bible. One resource that I have found that is amazing is the teaching series of Les Feldick. He starts in Genesis, and goes right through Revelation. He makes a point to tell you if something is his opinion or scriptural. I want to use our online presence to spread the gospel as well and not be tempted to get carried away with the toys and forget why we are on.
My church, Eastpointe Community Church is similar to Lifechurch and has a similar style. I feel comfortable in this type of environment. I think we have such a huge platform, that it is ashamed to waste it. I find myself bashing the media for bias. Maybe instead of bashing it, we should join it and change it from within. Is there any rule that says Jesus can not be on the media? As one Pastor said once, instead of cursing the darkness, shine a light. Maybe these guys have a good idea. I will keep checking it out. Well it is getting late so I better get this posted.
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Tony