I am really encouraged and excited about the tech-direction of Campus Crusade for Christ in the next few years.
I just got out of a Social Networking seminar that (though sparsely attended) was headed in very good directions helping our staff to think about blogging, Twitter and Facebook and how they can be used to bring more students into the conversation on campus about Jesus.
There were older staff who were interested in starting blogs and asking great questions. There were staff who were even asking for what hosting service they should check into. These are huge steps. I underestimated us significantly.
There were also at least 25 staff who probably just signed up for Twitter.
The largest, and most encouraging thing is the Connect Deck. There are 5 of us at each main session who are monitoring the Social Media streams (Twitter, Facebook Chat, SMS) and pulling things out of it to put into the conference itself. It’s been great to be seen as some sort of authority on it – and I think I may be within our organization. I have felt behind the larger curve, but I am ahead here.
How do you think we could be using these technologies better?
I’m helping to run a major conference’s social media/networking team (Campus Crusade for Christ US staff conference; 6,000+ people). It’s been working well all week, but now it’s not…
Oh, wait. It’s working now.
Way to get on the ball Twitter.
After being on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ for 6 years now and thinking through different views on missiology.
Missionaries are those who bring the Gospel to a cultural or sub-cultural context which they are not natural members of.
John Piper would not essentially agree, saying that the real missionary spirit is bringing the Gospel to places where it has not yet been. Ever. I’ve heard similar sentiments from others (though, in a much more mean-hearted way) while I was raising support.
The difficulty in this view is that the number of places and peoples that the Gospel has never found a home is extraordinarily small. While we look at most of South America, Asia or Africa and see a very dark place that seems like the Gospel has never found a home there; this is not the reality. Before the 10th century the largest populations of Christians where in Africa and Asia – especially in Persia, India and China. Most of the modern peoples in these lands have ancestors who were Christians.
Jesus was the essential missionary.
The faith that was true to who God really is had been on the earth before him. There were people who were faithful to God in heart and truth before Jesus came.
Jesus’ culture is not here. Jesus’ home culture is the community of the Trinity. He made himself perfectly relevant to our culture and stepped into it.
