Here's the soical media part of the Cape Town Commitment that was just released by the Lausanne Movement, based on our congress last September in South Africa.
4. Truth and the globalized media
We commit ourselves to a renewed critical and creative engagement with media and technology, as part of making the case for the truth of Christ in our media cultures. We must do so as God’s ambassadors of truth, grace, love, peace and justice.
We identify the following major needs:
A) Media awareness: to help people develop a more critical awareness of the messages they receive, and of the worldview behind them. The media can be neutral, and sometimes gospel friendly. But they are also used for pornography, violence and greed. We encourage pastors and churches to face these issues openly and to provide teaching and guidance for believers in resisting such pressures and temptations.
B) Media presence: to develop authentic and credible Christian role models and communicators for the general news media and the entertainment media, and to commend these careers as a worthy means of influence for Christ.
C) Media ministries: to develop creative, combined and interactive use of ‘traditional’, ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, to communicate the gospel of Christ in the context of a holistic biblical worldview.
. You might also want to listen to Dr Dion Forster at Lausanne World Congress on the topic of social media. He was the leader of our social media team in Cape Town. Download audio – Mp4
It would be great to have some conversation on this. I am thinking a lot about how to move forward this year in training new media storytellers . .. and have already begun to do so. What are you thinking? You can leave response here or even jump into a larger conversation on the Lausanne site.
