I am speaking twice in Los Angeles – an informal retelling of a bible story at a church and a boring lecture at a mission organization. Come along and say hi if you get the chance.
1. At the Tribe of LA community on Sunday [Jan 9] I am telling the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 and discussing the fine art of life-streaming in today's world. Should be pretty casual.
2. At the US Center for World Mission [Jan 11] I am giving a talk on social media and the great commission in what I have called the "1024 Window".
"We are familiar with the idea of the 10/40 window as a geographical grid to view the world's population and their access to the gospel. The 1024 window is a way to understand accessibly to the gospel through new media and the internet. 1024 pixels represents one line of pixels on most of the world's computer displays (1280×1024, for example) as well as digital camera footage (divisible by 1024 pixels), phone displays (1024×480) and even the new iPad (1024×768)
With 2 billion people now online, and another billion coming soon, it is a common experience for many people to have their first interaction with the gospel through a computer screen or phone. And for many others around the globe, the screen has become the primary means for communication with other Christians as well as accessing, storing and retrieving and passing on information.
We have seen the birth of the cyber-church, online communities, evangelistic web events based on synchronized aggregations of Christian content, and millions of people clicking a widget to indicate a decision for Christ. This is just the beginning."
This talk will deal with the potential for social media to impact the 2 billion online people through storytelling and online publishing, as well as look back at some historical precedents to get some bearing on where we are now. The USCWM is well remembered for mapping out unreached people groups but there are other ways to map out the world also, as the image below suggests.
ok- that map is just scary… makes me want to just go off the grid completely … start writing with pen and paper, use the post and light candles.
xocat
wish i were seeing you guys! poo!
The 1024 talk sounds very interesting (I’m a web developer). Any chance it’ll end up online?
Yeah, Andrew. Very interested in the 1024 talk. Could you write a more extensive blog post on that? Maybe something that we could link? I’d love to spread that around a bit and have it in a form that I can reference. I think that the implications for world mission are unending – the Roman Roads of the 21st century. Still, you don’t see many people really working through the implications.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for this post. I love your phrase ‘the 1024 window’ – super! Indeed there is a great deal that Christians can do in order to bring the Gospel of Christ to bear on the ‘new frontiers’ of our relational and interactive consciousness.
In part my talk at Lausanne on technology (social networking,mthe internet) and ministry was informed by this article that I wrote in the Lausanne World Pulse – entitled, “How technology is changing, or should change, the way in which we share the Gospel” see: http://www.lausanneworldpulse.com/themedarticles.php/1297/06-2010
Rich blessing as you blaze a new trail for God’s Kingdom!
Dion
PS, there is another amazing infographic that visually represents how Facebook’s size compares to China, India and America.
You can see that here: http://digitaldion.tumblr.com/post/2640389876/if-facebooks-population-was-compared-to-the
Of course Facebook has grown even more since. But, it is still a great visual illustration of the ‘size’ of Facebook as an example of where we should be doing mission in the Internet age – the 1024 window!
It seems to me that we need more stories which bridge the gap between Christians and non-Christians. Christ came to save the world, not just a sub-group, and his most powerful command was John 13:34-35, which transcends all groups.
In my e-novel 2077 AD (written under the pen name John Bolton) I try to portray a world under the power of the Holy Spirit and to reach people of all races and faiths (including atheists). In 2077 humankind is moving, but still struggling, towards the peace prophesied in Isaiah 2:4. The link below is to my blog associated with the book.