Social Witnessing

“You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”     Acts 1:8

When Jesus commissioned his disciples for sharing their witness of his teaching, resurrection, and life changing way of living He surely was not able to offer the tools for witnessing we have nearly 2000 years later. Today, witnessing goes beyond face-to-face relationships to include a host of technological innovations allowing our witness to go from home to the ends of the earth in a nano-second.

The earthquake that hit Haiti in January was devastating. Millions of people living in Haiti were directly impacted by the quake losing their homes, suffering a multitude of injuries, and dying. One of those people that suffered and lived through the disaster was Danny Fevilien whom I met during two trips to Zorange with the Hope for Haiti Foundation. After the quake everyone Haiti-side and state-side was concerned about Danny and our friends in Haiti then Danny began to post on Facebook. He was able to share his sufferings as well as his faith in Jesus in the midst of that suffering. I used his status updates to share with my congregation at the time a personal connection to the events.

This past week I staffed ACS (Annual Conference Session for Youth). 230 Senior High youth were called upon to consider the Risky Business of following Jesus. The youth were also challenged throughout the week to tell the story of their transformation. My hope is their witness at home and to the world via Facebook, Twitter, and all forms of social media will allow them the opening to share more of their story.  Already, Facebook is full of young people sharing witness to the event. In addition, a webpage – letmegetawitness.net – is open as web presence for all NCCUMC Youth Ministry event participants (young and young-at-heart) to share their transformational experience as a living witness to the greatness of our God.

While social media should never take the place of personal relationships, social witnessing is a great way to begin telling the story.  Our culture is open to sound-bytes and 140 character tweets that catch our attention. Once the attention is caught we can surely unfold more of the story.