What is the Point of Twitter? The One Week Old Story

Funny how great ideas come out of a great conversation.  Always seek out interesting people and engage them. While chatting with a guy called Karl Udy we talked about the idea of using Twitter for prayer.  I thought, well why not? A couple of days later, early one morning, I conceived of Prayer4U on Twitter.  I set on the sales pitch: Become part of an international prayer network. To be prayed for DM Prayer4U or email: Twitterprayer@hotmail.com   The basic idea is to make use of Twitter to connect prayer needs with praying people around the world. And here I am one week after launch.  How has it gone so far?

164 people are now following Prayer4U with more than 40 prayer requests sent.  And with many of them being re-tweeted, that is send around other peoples networks.  So prayers are reaching thousands of people.  And amazingly, someone has come forward in that first week and offered to serve this fledgling ministry!

So check it out, and become part of this international prayer network at:  http://twitter.com/Prayer4U 

Prayer4U

I have just set up a new Twitter account that aims to gather together a community of people to pray for each other.  Called Prayer4U the idea is that in following you will receive the prayer requests as they come in.  If you would like to be prayed for you can send a Direct Message to Prayer4U or email:  twitterprayer@hotmail.com

To sign up to become part of this new prayer network head to:  http://twitter.com/Prayer4U/

Also I will be taking a week off from blogging.. see you soon!

Yo-yo’s, Twitter and Swine Flu

At around the age of 12 I was convinced my true life path was to become the worlds greatest Yo-Yo-er. I commited to practicing every day, working my ‘walk the dog’ my ’round the world’ moves.  I was completely sold on the Yo-Yo hype, all the kids were doing it.  The basic hype path was: 1) kids pestering their parents to buy them a Yo-Yo, 2) spending every available moment trying moves and showing off to friends, 3) getting annoyed by the constant need to untangle the string, and 4) finally giving up, distracted by the next hype focus (breakdancing?).

While there may have been heaps of people who owned a Yo-Yo, there we very few who actually used them often and for an extended period.  The idea that it is widely and heavily used is Hype, the impression of mass take-up - clearly a long way from reality. As Tateru Nino states, hype is exaggeration.  And the danger is that people confuse hype with fact.

Right now we are being bombarded with the so called swine-flu (what a branding nightmare for the Pork industry) which is mostly hype with very little fact.  When dealing with hype, the key is to seek the truth.  Just because 100 people say it is the reality doesn’t mean it is.  It may well just be that 100 people think it is reality.

We are seeing a ton of hype around Twitter.  We hear about massive growth, Oprah joining (celebrity endorsement - here comes more hype), and that it is shaping up to be the next big thing.. (hand up, I am guilty of saying that); and then there is fact.  Nielsen Online has just released research that shows that yes, Twitter is growing at a crazy rate, but the truth is, 60% sign up in the US and don’t return the following month.  It was the same with Second Life.  Huge hype.. millions signing up to get a piece of the ‘action’ and then finding themselves in the virtual world asking the question, ‘what is the point of this?’  Now both Second Life and Twitter will grow, will be effective and make an impact on how we relate through the web, but the hype is no where near the reality.

We need to seek the truth, to take a good hard look at the impressive Old Testament prophets, who, NO weren’t famous for predicting the future (misnomer) but sought to speak the truth.  And quite often they spoke the truth against the majority opinion and in some instances against the view of the government of their day.

Seek the truth. Speak the truth.

The Great Twitter Experiment: Result

Curious as to how many people actually read my tweets I posted the following message over the 24th and 25th (NZ time):

B part of the Great Twitter Experiment: how many peeps read tweets? 2 show you have read this clik here http://brownblog.info/?p=810

So how many people clicked my link?  About 1.8% of those following me.

Now I acknowledge this is rough research being practiced here.. but the result is worth exploring further.  I think the question of how many people actually read tweets is an important question in the face of the massive Twitter hype raging at the moment.

Perhaps you can try the same experiment and let me know how it goes for you?  Contact me :  @revmarkbrown

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Methodology: post the tweet a couple of times over two days to capture diff. time zones; then analyse click traffic through Google analytic which provided unique traffic count from twitter to my blog.

How the Digital Revolution Might Affect the Church

When I wrote The Digital Revolution and the Church (1348) I purposely kept it open ended, wanting people to discuss as to how they might deal with the challenges the revolution presented.  Since then I have read a lot more around the topic and have started to think through how this revolution might specifically affect the church. So this blog post takes the next step on from my paper.

As I discussed in my previous blog post, Generation F have grown up online and therefore as willing members of the revolution their understanding of authority, of communication of cultural identification and of how to relate, is vastly different to those who are new or foreigners to the net.   The challenge before us is that by in large, the church is mostly still functioning out of the old worldview.

The church is an institution, we exercise our faith through and with the institution.  And most churches have in place particular rules about who can exercise what and when.  In a sense the church mediates the believers relationship with God and moderates the believers practice. This sees authority held and dispersed by the church, which is an important safeguard and can be a positive thing.  But the fact remains that it is likely this approach will be in conflict with the expectations of the emerging generation.

Generation F Christians have little respect for such institutional practices, preferring to bypass institutions in favor of a direct, unmediated relationship with God.  Their question may well be, ‘What is the point of church?’ Continue reading »

Generation F?

Regulars to my blog will be aware that I write quite a bit around how the net is going to affect the church moving forward.  (For more see: The Digital Revolution and the Church (1348) ).  I am convinced that the change/impact will be dramatic for the church and that we need to act so as to make sure we don’t lose touch with the society we are called to impact/influence.  And now the emerging generation apparently has a name, ‘Generation F‘.  So who are they and how might they change our church? Continue reading »

The Great Twitter Experiment

Curiosity around Twitter continues…  how many people actually read the messages of the people they are following?  Over at @revmarkbrown I have 3,296 followers but do they read what I post?

So to test this I have sent out a message to those folks inviting them to come to this blog post, and thanks to the lovely people at Google I will be able to tell who responds.

Report to follow!

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Digital Evangelism - how?

I have come across an interesting ministry role and an interesting ministry opportunity.  The role is Digital Evangelist and the opportunity is to participate in an online ministry program.

I caught up with Paul Watson who is the Digital Evangelist and chatted to him about him and the online ministry program he is organizing.

1# Tell us a bit about yourself?

Well…for starters, I was born in Fort Worth, Texas. My parents were in ministry together and started churches in the United States among the deaf community. God called them both into missions and, at the age of seven, I moved with my family to Hong Kong. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I lived in Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and Singapore before returning to the USA for University.

I met my wife, Christi, the first week of University. We were good friends for some time. I proposed to her in my second year. We’ve been married ten years now and have two children. My daughter is 6 and my son just turned 4. We live in Texas and my wife is a science teacher at a local middle school.

I work with CityTeam Ministries and started their Reaching the Online Generation Initiative to create and implement the strategies necessary to catalyze Gospel Movements among online communities.

#2. What does a Digital Evangelist do?

I divide my time roughly into thirds. One third of my time I’m online ‘walking’ through different social media and following the breadcrumbs of human interaction that guide me toward communities. When I find a community, I search for the person of peace Jesus describes in Luke 10. Specifically, that is a lost person who is spiritually seeking for answers and will respond to the Gospel and open up their home or community for a Bible Study to learn more about the God of the Bible. Continue reading »

Is online community real community?

Recently the influential National Pastors Convention happened in the US.  One of the speakers was Shane Hipps author of the recently released Flickering Pixels who recorded an interview on the nature of online community.  In the interview he boldly stated that ‘virtual community is not community.’  To check out the interview click here. Hipps then stated on his blog,

When I say that “virtual community” is not “community,” that does not mean it has no value. As I indicated in the interview, I know that all kinds of deeply meaningful connections and interactions happen online all the time. I have experienced them myself. Some may want to call this “community.” Fair enough. I just don’t call it “community.” That is not intended to dismiss or demean any one’s experience online.

Of the range of responses posted the one that impressed me the most was by Douglas Estes, author of the soon to be released book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World.  I contacted him and he was happy for his response to be re-printed on BrownBlog.  So here it is:

Last month on the Out of Ur blog, Shane Hipps shared in an impromptu interview at NPC what he believes to be severe problems with labeling online connections as “virtual community”. Scot McKnight raised some questions (view comments); Anne Jackson mostly defended (view comments). Not to mention Shane’s clarifications. As much as I tremendously respect Shane, I feel I cannot let his fundamentally flawed assertions (and assumptions) about virtual community go unchallenged.

First, let me tell you what meaning virtual community has for me: on the one hand, I seldom participate in any type of virtual community. I’ve attended a number of virtual churches, but for the sake of my marriage I’ve stayed away from World of Warcraft, and I don’t blog (this is my very first!), Twitter, or yet do much else online as far as community goes; on the other hand, I’ve spent the last year asking some hard questions about virtual community for my forthcoming book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World (Zondervan, 2009). Hard questions that started not by what I felt community to be, but hard questions that came out of my readings of the Fathers, church history, theology, and philosophy as they relate to community.

Let me start with a pointed critique of Shane’s criticisms of virtual community. He lists four necessary ingredients at the beginning of the interview, the first three of which he argues are lacking or absent in virtual community: Continue reading »

The mighty inbox burden

Chatting to a friend the other day who confided she had 3,500 emails in her intray.  3,500, owch.

She wasn’t flashing her popularity but expressing, perhaps as an extreme example, something quite common these days: the mighty inbox burden.  Continue reading »