Infected

The church’s great hour of Viral Media

I was blessed to be able to give a talk at the May 22nd meeting of Hudson River Presbytery, at Larchmont Avenue Presbyterian Church. Much of my presentation was a very brief rundown of some jargon and thinking that underlies social media, but just towards the end I dived into a concept that I thought deserved a bit more time – the link between Pentecost and the viral media “revolution” of the last few years.

More Complicated

The reason that I’m inclined to enquote that “revolution” is because, really, it’s nothing new. The unusual events were those of the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, the print and radio/TV transitions into “mass” media. All of a sudden, it became possible for a few people to reach out to a HUGE audience – bigger than had ever been possible before.

What’ we’re seeing now with the internet and social media is a return to the old model, done MUCH faster. The peddlers and legates traveled from town to town with the news, spread it to smaller groups of people, information was shared by human contact, across the lines of relationships. What Facebook and Google and Twitter and foursquare and the rest have down is recapture that sense of news as grounded in relationship. They’ve also successfully bridged the gap between mass media and the ancient model of personal media, blending the two practices, and making a heck of a lot of money between ’em.

The Pentecost Epidemic

I need to disclaim this next section by remarking that the work of Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash is profoundly influential in my thinking. He was probably the one who first compared the glossolalia (speaking in tongues) of Pentecost with a sort of mental computer virus. I want to take it in a slightly different direction, however, and say that Pentecost was one of the most successful moments of viral marketing of its era, for two key reasons.

First of all, because the message itself was compelling. People who were exposed to the truth that Peter and the other apostles proclaimed (not all people, but many, as many as three thousand that day) were so moved that they were baptized and became believers. I think one of the greatest disservices we do the Gospel of Jesus Christ is pretending to folks (and to ourselves), that it is not the biggest, best, most important thing that you could possibly share with someone. This is phenomenal stuff! God loves you! God loves you so much he died for you. We seem intent on trying to quarantine the Gospel, which is precisely the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing.

Secondly, what’s absolutely powerful and phenomenal about viral media is that it meets people where they are. The apostles stood up and preached to people, who heard in their native languages. Now, I sadly cannot preach in the tongues of Phrygia and Pamphylia, but I can be deeply attentive to the contexts of the people with whom I share this particular positive virus. I can try to embed it in their context in their understanding, find vectors for transmission that are available and open.

The Language of the Gospel Virus

We have all, in the church, been infected by the Good News of Jesus Christ. We have caught the pathogen, the one that creates empathy with the suffering of Christ. We are borne down by its wellness, rather than illness. We dedicate ourselves to spreading this ease (not disease). And we will do it as all great epidemics have spread – upon the people. Through people, through the contact of human communities, through human relationships. Many of the people of this generation have learned immunity to some of the more extreme symptoms of our Pentecost plague. We must find new vectors, person to person, that share not merely the symptoms but the real changes, the fundamental genetic transformation of the virus of God’s good news. Social media – the original form of media – will be crucial to us as we proceed on this road. Catch the fever – feel the wellness spreading throughout your system. We are the Church, and we’re called to make more Church. Let’s get to it.