Christian Social Networking - Linked in Jesus

I am at a new co-working space in Dallas right now called Company Dallas  It is only one of 3 I know of in Dallas, but the second one to open in the last 2 months.  Co-working is taking off around the country, as smaller businesses and startups look to save money on traditional office space. 

What is co-working?  It is a “cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.  It is shared office space with cafe culture, designed to be better than “working at Starbucks”.  There is a good video about it on the Coworking Community Blog

So my questions is…why aren’t churches jumping on this?  Churches have space during the week, many already have coffee shops, and it is easy to offer free wi-fi.  Creating a co-working space at your church…and especially if you made it free…could be a great outreach to your community.  Someone who might never otherwise walk through a church door might come for co-working.

Sadly, most churches are behind the curve not ahead of it, so I don’t expect to see many churches doing this any time soon.

I am pleased to announce our new Christian video site, MyFaith.com.

MyFaith is a community of Christ-followers who believe Jesus is Lord and are “broadcasting Jesus”. This is a new kind of video sharing site, because every video on MyFaith is also reaching the world on YouTube.

We believe the Church must share the Good News of Jesus and the truths of the Bible with the world, and therefore when you add videos to MyFaith you are adding them to YouTube at the same time.

This is a fresh new approach. In the past, pastors and Christian leaders have wanted to get video on-line and reach the world, but were hesitant to point their congregations to YouTube because of other content on there. So what happened? Several “Christian YouTube” sites sprang up, and Christians flocked to them. That is great, but what about reaching the world? Over 100 million people are on YouTube every month, and YouTube is easily accessible on the iPhone and other mobile devices. Shouldn’t the Church be on YouTube?

Yes, we believe the Church should be on YouTube! But there is also nothing wrong with having a place where Christ-followers (Christians) can watch video without worrying about what else they might see. So rather than fighting against YouTube, MyFaith uploads your videos to YouTube. With one upload, churches, ministries and music artists can reach Christ-followers on MyFaith and the world on YouTube!

The site is live now so join and if you are a church or ministry start broadcasting!  We will be adding more features in the months to come, so be sure to join the Facebook group as well and give us your feedback.

Last night I was at a dinner for Christian leaders, and one of the most prominent pastors in the world was at my table. It was a delicious 3-course meal, and my steak was cooked perfectly.

Also on the table, above each place setting, were bags of dirt from Compassion International. The world hunger problem is at a new low today, and in Haiti ‘cookies’ made of dirt are being served by deperate parents to their starving children because of food shortages and skyrocketing food prices. Compassion was reminding us that the children in Haiti are part of the thousands around the world who die every single day from hunger-related causes.

When the desert was served, I had a thought in my mind, “push that aside, and eat the dirt.” But then I thought, “what would these other prominent Christian leaders think?” I thought, “Perhaps they would think I was doing it for show”…”Perhaps I would get sick”…”I shouldn’t draw attention to myself”. Even though the thought came to my mind as one of those thoughts that only come from the Holy Spirit, in my own pride I ignored the dirt sitting in front of me and ate my delicious desert with everyone else at the table.

Recently I blogged about being a slave of Christ, and interestingly yesterday morning in church I heard a powerful message from John MacArthur on the same topic. But am I living it? If I feel the Holy Spirit impressing upon me to do some thing that seems extreme or radical, am I willing to do it? Shouldn’t we be willing to eat dirt or do anything Christ our Master asks us to do?

I will never know what would have happened at the dinner table if I would have eaten the dirt. I know I would have wept for sure. Perhaps the Lord would have moved and given me and perhaps some of the others at the table a true sense of what He feels when He looks upon the children in hunger around the world. I know that Jesus is weeping when He looks upon the suffering of the world, but is my heart really beating in line with the heart of Jesus?

We say that times are “tough” for us in America, but we can all spare enough to sponsor a child with Compassion. I also encourage you to get involved by hosting Compassion Sunday at your church…start now because it is coming up April 29th.

Also take a moment and ask yourself are you really a slave of Jesus Christ? Are you willing to do whatever He asks? I don’t think God asks us to do radically things like eating dirt every day, but when He does next time in my life, I want to be ready.

In case you did not notice, GodTube is no more. Well, they are still around, but have changed their name to “Tangle” - Tangle.com.

I welcome and wish the best for them as they move more into Christian social networking, but I was sad to see one thing. Several months ago, we announced our new mission statement for Christian.com - “Search, Connect, Share and Grow”. I see that they now have an almost identical one- “Connect, Share and Grow.” I will of course give them the benefit of the doubt that they came up with it on their own. I am not sure yet if we will change our mission statement because theirs is now similar. Our new site will launch later this year (in God’s timing), and hopefully I will hear from God on what our mission statement needs to be, and more importantly, that we will fulfill the mission statement to the fullest extent bringing glory to God!

The Christian.com community will hopefully remember that I posted our new mission statement here several months ago (we since have changed that page) and that our mission statement is listed with our trademarks. I just mention this because I don’t want anyone thinking that we copied from them!

I heard that the original GodTube founder, Chris Wyatt, is no longer with the company. (That is what I heard- anyone see anything officially on that?) I hope that God would continue to entrust me with leading Christian.com for many years to come. But I remain a humble servant of God and of the community, and whatever God has for me and for Christian.com is my heart’s desire. Following the example of Jesus, “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work.”

“Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is requred in stewards that one be found faithful.”- I Cor 4:1-2

I am thankful that we have some very faithful servant leaders in the Christian.com community. I can’t mention everyone of course, but I wanted to give a special shout out and thank you to three special and very faithful servants.

A year ago I am sure D.D. Skreamer had no idea he would be serving the Christian.com community. He was happily serving at FaithItUp.com (which Christian.com purchased in April ‘08) and ministering to that community. When the communities merged together, D.D. rolled with the changes and continued helping in many areas least of not which has been keeping the community a safe and secure family-friendly environment for all. I appreciate D.D.’s heart for people and for God. He is taking a break from site admin tasks for awhile to “just” be a member for awhile, which is something I try to encourage everyone to do so that no one is ever burned out with serving. But he has a servant’s heart so I am sure as “just a member” he will continue ministering within the community.

Janet (God’s Creation) is truly God’s Creation! She also loves God and loves people, and has the best interests of the community at heart. She probably wouldn’t want me to say this, but just this week she worked countless hours to help get the chat back up and running (she told me L4J was a big help with this too) and now all of our “chatters” are enjoying a new chat system. She also “rolled with the punches” this past year (well, hopefully not punches but there were a lot of changes) since she came to Christian.com from HisHolySpace.com, and continues to serve the merged community faithfully.

Everyone of course knows Jeff Broderick. Jeff’s committment and passion for the community is unbelievable. He has a heart for evangelism and loves God. I am amazed that I did not even know him a year ago, and have been blessed this past year getting to know this brother in Christ. Jeff was instrumental in growing HisHolySpace to nearly 40,000 members and continuing to grow Christian.com to over 59,000 members today. He is also committed to making the community a “safe alternative” to secular social networks while encouraging Christians to continue evangelizing on MySpace and other secular sites. Jeff also has a heart for God and his continual spiritual growth is evident. Word is that he is starting up again the very successful and loved HHS Radio podcast soon, so I’ll be sure to post about that once it is up and rolling.

There are many others who serve on Christian.com- helping flag profiles, welcoming new members (our “Guardian Angels”), and active praying for member’s prayer requests in our prayer room. Yes, a lot has changed in the past year, and 2009 will see a lot more changes (improvements) on the site, but as I have always said, the site is just our “building” but the real Christian.com is the people - the community is the Body of Christ loving and serving one another.

To the 3 mentioned above and to all of the Servants of God on the site, and thank you from me is very little…what should give you tremendous joy is that Jesus Christ - the Son of the Living God - has called you His friend!

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends.” - Jesus (John 15:13-15)

From a few real-life stories I have heard lately, Facebook is apparently a good place to start an affair.  A big part of Facebook is reconnecting with people from your past, but often for Christians, some of the people in your past are not people you should be reconnecting with.  Sometimes what seems like innocent flirting with an “old flame” can lead to the destruction of a marriage and the breaking apart of a family.  I have recently heard about 3 such cases of Christian marriages being critically damaged as a result of affairs started on Facebook.

Part of the problem is that Christians often what to be quick to embrace new technology in order to connect with the “culture” and be “relevant”.  As a leader in new media, I of course am in favor of the Church leveraging new technologies and media for Kingdom purposes.  But I also know that Christians must be wise and circumspect in our use of new technologies.

Ever wonder why many Amish communities do not drive cars, but they have tractors on their farms?  They are obviously not opposed to the technology of the engine.  So what is it?  While in business school at Regent I studied a little about this, and one researcher who studied the Amish said that they carefully consider each new technology and weigh how it will affect their values.  They ask, “How will this car affect this present and future generations of our families?”  “How will it affect their Christian faith, their relationship to their families, and their way of life?”  After careful consideration, they determined that the long-term affects of cars would be that families would drift apart.  Brothers would live in separate states from their sisters, children would move away from their parents, and grandparents would only see their grandchildren a few times a year.  For the Amish, this was unacceptable.  They valued the close family unit as more precious than the economic gain that cars might provide them.

So am I saying we need to adopt the ways of the Amish?  Well, not completely.  But we do need to “stop and think” before embracing new technologies, and think HOW they should be used.

I don’t have all of the answers on the best ways to use Facebook, but I have might offer a few suggestions for your consideration:

1. Give your spouse your Facebook password, and permission to log into your Facebook account at any time.  Don’t feel ashamed to do it like you are guilty of something.  You can print this and show to them and just say “I think this is a good idea- here is my password.  I love you and never want to leave any door open for an attack on our marriage.”  Having that kind of openness and accountability in your marriage will build a trust and deeper relationship.

2. If you are tempted by lust, consider signing up for a service like Bsafe Online.  We have promoted this service for years on Christian.com and I can say that it has helped thousands of men and families.

3. Don’t accept all friend requests.  If you don’t know someone, or if they are a “blast from the past” that if you stop and think about you don’t have too good of a past with, just ignore their friend request.  It is OK to just have 30 friends on Facebook- it doesn’t mean you are not as cool as the guy who has 200.  It’s not Jr. High…you are an adult…OK?

I hope these 3 suggestions helps someone, and that you consider how you will use new technologies in your life.  I like Facebook, and many of the things I have learned on Facebook and other social networking sites will be features on the new Christian.com site.  But I hope we can build a site that is safe for everyone and protects marriages.  Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we build the new Christian.com site.  May we build something that makes a difference in the lives of Christians and is a tool for churches to build better communities and unite the Body of Christ.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 6.7 billion people in the world. According to Romans 6, all of them are in slavery.

In Romans the apostle Paul writes about two forms of slavery. Neither is the form we are most familiar with, “a legal system facilitating exploitation of labor” (wikipedia definition), and such slavery in human history and throughout the world today is truly horrible. But there are other forms of slavery, and Paul writes about two in Romans 5-8. The first is slavery to sin, and the second is slavery to God.

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer myslef who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature…Now if I do what i do not want to do, it is no later I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:14-20

Perhaps you have felt like that - like you have sin in your life that you cannot stop doing. You are right. The truth is, in your own power you cannot stop. Paul reveals an important truth here. We think of “sins” as bad things we do against God’s commands. Paul is explaining that it is more than that…”sin” (singular) lives in us. This is also called the “sinful nature.” Each human being was born into slavery to sin. We cannot control it. It is master over us. Society passes laws against stealing, murder, rape and such to restrict us from the worst of our sinful nature, but we still covet, hate, and lust. This is why Pauls sums up this revelation with these words, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

While billions of people who have not received Christ’s gift of salvation are living in slavery to sin, many Christians are as well. Many have not recognized the clear choice that Paul describes in Romans. As Christians, we have a choice- slavery to sin, or slavery to God.

“Don’t you know that when you offer yoursleves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the own whom you obey- whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). He goes on to say, “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurities and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”

Many Christians feel like they can just “stop sinning” but don’t really have to give their lives over to God. But the truth is that you can’t stay in neutral. Either you are a slave to the sin nature inside of you, or you are committed to seeking first the Kingdom of God and His rightousness, and learning how to overcome sin through the power of Holy Spirit (which by the way is revealed to us in Romans 8). If you think you can get rid of sin and all of the bad effects that go along with it without yielding your heart and life to Jesus and choosing to be a “slave” to God, then you are deceiving yourself and will only continue year after year as a slave to the same sins because of your sinful nature.

So why choose slavery to God? It is a major decision- perhaps the most important one after the decision to receive Jesus’ gift of salvation. Some believers make this decision at the same time they receive Christ as Savior, but for many Christians it is a separate decision that they either never make (and continue in sin for many years), or make some time after becoming a Christian. All I can say is making that decision- whether you call it “giving your life to Christ” or “making Jesus Lord of your life” or becoming a “slave of God” - is the first step on a journey God will take you on to righteousness and a better way of life.

For me, it was a decision I made several years after becoming a Christian. One simple verse spoke volumes to me one day “the very hairs of your head are numbered” (Luke 12:7). I realized I have no idea how many hairs are on my head, much less having them numbered. But God knows more about me than I know about myself. Once I realized that, I realized that He knows what is best for me, too. I began to realize that the “rules” of the Bible were not because God did not want me to have any fun, but really were to protect me from living a second-rate life. God’s Way of living is far beyond a life I can create for myself. Once I realized that, the decision to serve God with my life seemed the logical choice for me, and it has been a journey with God ever since. I still have a long way to go, but it is wonderful to look back and realize all that God has done in my life over the years.

You, too have a choice as a Christian - to serve sin or serve God. If you decide to become a slave of God instead of a slave of sin, you have chosen wisely. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There is a good business leadership book called “Good to Great”- it has been on the bestsellers list for past 2 years or so.  The study of truly great companies showed that they focused on working with their team to “get the right people on the bus, let the wrong people off the bus, and helping everyone find their right seat on the bus” before taking the bus on a journey.  This is something I am working through right now with the Christian.com leadership, and it will not happen overnight, but it is essential for us to take this community from “Good to Great”!

Christian.com will continue to follow the “essential doctrines of Christianity” as laid out in the TOS and as commonly accepted in the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed.  However, we recognize that not every member of the site will agree with myself personally or others in leadership on the site, and we will certainly not require them to.  As long as members do not teach against the essentials, we can have a diversity of denominations, doctrinal beliefs, and perspectives on this site, as one community being respectful of one another.

I do not agree with everything the Baptists teach, or Methodists, or Catholics, or other Protestants and non-Protestant Christians.  But many of them are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and many of them serve Jesus Christ and are seeking the truth of God’s Word.  In order for God’s Church to have unity, we have to agree to disagree on certain things, with the love of Christ. 

People who want to be in leadership but are dogmatic to the extreme on their beliefs and can’t be respectful of other Christians are ones who have to “get off the bus” as far as leadership is concerned.  Leaders must be respectful of other’s opinions, but balance that with always seeking and embracing God’s Truth without compromise and encouraging others to do the same.  I believe this is true in the local church, on Christian.com, and any Christian community.

The Change We Need is not political - it is revival! Repentance from sin and turning our hearts wholly to God.

This week, Christian.com is proud to be a sponsor of the Revival Conference in Atlanta, which you can watch live on-line.

The new movie Fireproof, from the makers of Facing the Giants and starring Kirk Cameron, is demonstrating once again the strong demand for media with a Christian perspective.