As people involved in youth work, you don’t need to be told that social media, and the devices for accessing them, are central to so much of your young people’s lives. There are increasing numbers of blogs, books and seminars dedicated to helping the youth worker negotiate the dangers of life online, as well as advice on how to use this brave new world positively for the kingdom of God. Yet relatively few people have discussed the connection between social media and worship. What happens when your teenagers avert their eyes from the screen to check Facebook during a time of sung praise? Is it good that they are tweeting during the talk? And to take a wider view - what impact is the culture of social media having on the way young people engage with God and their fellow Christians?
The truth is, new developments in technology have always changed worship, and throughout Church history this has impacted our perceptions of God, worship and each other. The invention of Gutenberg’s printing press shifted the emphasis from an oral tradition of worship (through memory, community, symbol and sacrament) to a text-based form of worship (centred on hymn and prayer books). The introduction of the pipe organ in the 1800s pushed out the ‘West gallery’ music groups and brought worship music under the control of one individual. More recently, the technology of overhead projectors and PA systems helped the transition into contemporary, song-driven worship. None of these developments are purely negative - they have their strengths and weaknesses. But they have significantly altered the congregation’s experience of connecting with God. (For more on this, see Shane Hipps’ book Flickering Pixels.)
Technology is a shaper of culture, and Christian worship needs to have a ‘yes and no’ approach to the culture it finds itself in. If we try to run away from it, or ignore it, we will end up as hermits trying to escape the world. But if we embrace it without thinking then we are in danger of being absorbed by its agendas.
If we do not allow young people to express themselves in some of the ways facilitated by social media within worship, we risk disconnecting their faith from their everyday experience. But if we let social media set the agenda, then we can let some of the more negative aspects of this cultural form overwhelm the kingdom values which should be central to our worship services. Here are some examples which might help us to tread this path.
Turn it on:
User-generated content
YouTube, Soundcloud, Twitter, Instagram and many more appeal to teenagers because they get to provide the creative content. This is self-expression through their words, pictures, videos and songs.
This is very different to the majority of worship services, where one or two people provide the ‘content’ for everyone else to consume. You could get your young people to Instagram pictures of things that reminded them of God during the week, collate them and project them during worship. Or get them to shoot 10-second video clips of places in your area which need your prayers, and then loop them on the screen during a time of intercession. Or encourage them to record the sounds of places they go to during the week - school, work, home, etc. - and post these up to Soundcloud, where they can then be used as a sound collage during a time of recommitment to live for God in our everyday lives.
Asking questions
Social media is not one-way communication; it facilitates comment, debate and argument. Church worship is so often a monologue, but smartphones could help you facilitate conversation. For example, you could share a Bible passage, and encourage people to Tweet their questions about what the passage might mean. These questions could then form the basis of a talk or group discussions.
Continuing worship
Some of these tools can also help your young people take their attitude of worship out into their everyday lives. If you have a blog or a Facebook group, you can set challenges for the young people to engage with throughout the week. For example, they could be encouraged to turn potential moans into prayers of gratitude (‘I missed the bus - but thank you God I am healthy enough to walk!’) and then post these prayers on your network.
You could post lines from songs or prayers used in your worship meetings on your group’s page, as a reminder of the ways you had been worshipping God. The group might also be a way of preparing for the coming meeting: post your upcoming themes and invite the young people to be thinking about them ahead of time, and considering what they could contribute.
Turn it off
It should also be said that there are aspects of the ‘Facebook culture’ which can be counterproductive to true worship. The ‘cyber’ world can be a place of unreality, developing unhealthy self-image based on the amount of people who ‘like’ our ‘selfies’. Sherry Turkle has warned that with smartphones we are in a ‘tethered’ state, always on, afraid of missing out but not truly connecting with people (see her book Alone Together).
In this context we have a powerful message - that our true identity is not found on our amount of online ‘friends’, but by being ‘in Christ’. Is there a challenge to your young people, to discover who they really are as children of God? And will that not sometimes mean choosing to turn our phones off for a while and be satisfied to be in God’s presence, in the midst of God’s people?
This would take quite a bit of Bible study and discussion to help your group ease into the concept - just banning phones in worship is not going to work! But you may be able to reach a place where for some meetings or sections of meetings you encourage the young people to place their phones in a box and simply focus on God and the physical people around them. This could then be extended to other aspects of life - how about turning our phones off an hour before bed and letting our final thoughts of the day be what God thinks of us, not what our social media network is saying?
