We have moved to www.theprognosis.org

I’ve been thinking about the Facebook thing. Interesting isn’t it? Gossip, flirt, stalk. Or find old friends and keep in touch with family around the world. Or maybe a bit of both. The choice is yours.

Choose friends, ignore friends, control what other people can see about you. Choose what information you give out, and manufacture a profile. Add to your friends, look popular. Communicate with them as often as you wish (which may be never) but you can still have a look at their holiday pictures. A virtual community for a virtual generation. Virtual relationships have been epidemic for a while, but now they just got global.

Isn’t Facebook terrible? No, not really. At least, not if the concept of demand and supply has any truth in it. At the end of the day we will put it to whatever use we feel the greatest need of. Facebook is popular because it gives people what they want. If anyone is to blame then it’s uncomfortably nearer home. I’m not sure we need to blame anyone actually, it’s hardly the purge of our generation. But it’s an excellent snapshot of it.

On a different note, I came across a couple of Facebook groups the other day which worried me. I’ve referred to one already, (in the comments on my ‘Golden Compass’ blog). The second group which worried me is called ‘Let’s get Tim Hughes to number one‘, and it’s reason for existence is as follows:-

Firstly, can I be very clear that I have nothing against Tim Hughes at all, he has written some great songs that we would do well to use in our churches for the building up of God’s people. Secondly, I really, really don’t want to be a heresy-hunting, grace-killing, sniping critic of brothers and sisters in the Lord. I sincerely believe that the organisers of this group have the very best of motives. But at the same time, I do see a lot here to worry me. I have some questions:-

• Precisely why is it “about time some Christian music was all powerful in the charts and therefore on our national airwaves“?
• Why have we chosen Tim Hughes and why is this song deemed most suited?
• How exactly does this qualify as a “mission“?
• Is quoting Colossians 3 v 23-24 as justification for this venture, really a great use of Scripture?

I imagine I’m preaching to the converted here, but in all seriousness, does this kind of thing help to present the gospel to people? Or does it make Christians look rather… well… ‘cult-ish’? Unless I’m mistaken, what is being proposed here is the manipulation of the music charts to prove… to prove… well what exactly?

It’s tempting to rant about what alternative charitable use 5,000 x 79p’s could to be put to, but my own failure in stewarding money would make me a hypocrite.

But here’s an idea… How about we all got our heads out of the Christian music ghetto for 5 minutes? What if we got 5,000 Christians to spend 79p on iTunes to download a song their work-colleagues are loving, spend a bit of time thinking about how it relates to the gospel, and trying to start a gospel conversation? (Now we might start using Colossians 2 in a bit of context…)

The ghetto might be a lovely place to hang out, but nobody else is listening.

That’s right folks, we’ve caught up with coolness and got ourselves a facebook group! Click here to go to the group. Or if that doesn’t work, just search for us while logged into facebook. For those who don’t know what facebook is, it’s like myspace but better! Go to facebook.com to join.

Use the group for suggesting topics to cover, people you want interviewed, guest authors you’d like, and whatever you want to talk about. So join in and get talking!