REDEEMING SOCIAL MEDIA // INTERVIEW WITH NATHAN CAMPBELL @NM_CAMPBELL

I will be presenting a 3 hour Professional Development Seminar at National Youth Ministry Convention 2013 on REDEEMING SOCIAL MEDIA. In the lead up to NYMC I have a series of interviews with Christians using online mediums in a deliberate way for the Gospel. I have asked the same 4 questions to each guest and there are some fantastic posts coming!

The first guest is Nathan Campbell from St. Eutychus. Nathan is on message in the way that he points people to the good news of Jesus as he intelligently interacts on different social and political issues online. See his most recent post for a fascinating book review on the history of social media.

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1) What church and/or ministries are you part of?

I’m finishing up my time at Queensland Theological College at the end of next year, and in 2014 will be the Campus Pastor of a new inner-city Brisbane campus of the church I’m currently part of – Creek Road Presbyterian Church. I’m also on the Presbyterian Church of Queensland’s “Gospel in Society Today” Committee – we think about how we can speak about Jesus in today’s world, to todays issues. Before college I worked in Public Relations and I love figuring out how to apply truths about communication to communicating the truth.

2) What ways do you use online mediums in your ministry and witness?

Personally – I have a blog (st-eutychus.com). It works something like a filing cabinet for me to collect and develop ideas about communication and social media, but it’s also a platform for me to show how I think Jesus, and his spot as king of my life and rightful king of the world, applies to my life, and to issues and events in culture and politics.

At Creek Road – we’re starting to dip our toes into the online world a little more. We’ve hired three video producers to make resources for people to share and talk about online. We’re working on a content plan for our church blog so that we can share ideas and resources with other churches and other Christians trying to follow Jesus in a crazy mixed up world, and we’re thinking about creative ways to use Facebook – like advertising our church to people who have just moved to Brisbane.

3) Why do you think it’s important for Christians to be deliberate in how they use online mediums?

Christians have always used suitable contemporary mediums and genres to communicate the Gospel. It’s vital that we keep doing that. How we use different mediums is important – because the medium (and how we use it) communicates part of our message.

If we’re not deliberate we run the risk of buying into the idea that social media is all about us, and people seeing us being impressive. I think most mediums are morally neutral – but they’ve all been employed by our culture in ways that will conform us to behave in particular ways and value particular things.

Social media is all about image. We need to figure out how we can deliberately represent Jesus – who made himself nothing, and went to the cross for us, to claim us. To paraphrase Paul – who I reckon was a bit of a social media pioneer – we need to remember that the Holy Spirit is conforming us into the image of Jesus, and we have to decrease so that he can increase.

4) What advice would you give someone keen to be effective online for the gospel?

I love that when God calls us to be his people, and part of the body of Jesus, he calls us to be something like what “Doubting Thomas” had in front of him when he doubted the resurrection. How Christians live, visibly, is part of the picture other people get of Jesus here and now. The internet gives us a great opportunity to be visible.

I read this great quote…

“If some day they take the radio station away from us, if they close down our newspaper, if they don’t let us speak, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left, a people without priests, each one of you must be God’s microphone, each one of you must be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always exist as long as there is one baptized person. And that one baptized person who is left in the world is responsible before the world for holding aloft the banner of the Lord’s truth and of his divine justice.” – Oscar Romero

When we’re online, we’ve got a microphone.

The Internet has changed the way people consume media. The newspaper and radio may as well be dead, or turned off… So if we’re all talking about Jesus, into this microphone, the message starts to amplify, and people will notice.

How can people turn to Jesus if they don’t hear about him? That’s why it’s so important to keep the focus on Jesus, rather than ourselves.

When it comes to some of the stuff to be careful about – I’ve constantly got to keep myself in check online – and I stuff up pretty regularly – because the words we type come without a lot of the non-verbal and relational context that words we speak have. So I think you’ve got to work extra hard at keeping Jesus as the focus, and being gracious, winsome, and dying to self.

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Good stuff! Thanks Nathan. Go check out his blog. Follow his tweets. Like him on Facebook. Feel free to interact below in the comments.