Why blog?

For the last year, I’ve become pretty deeply immersed in the online social networking craze.  I’ve been a casual social networker since the Myspace “olden days”, and like most people, made the switch to Facebook a few years ago.  I maintain 25+ social media accounts for the company I work for, but really only keep up with a personal Facebook account away from work.  I’ve also blogged professionally as a web content manager for a couple of my most recent employers, but I’ve never blogged away from work on topics that I’m really passionate about.  It’s time to change that.  Enter ChurchSurfer.  This will be my contribution to the online community about what I feel is something that needs attention…and maybe God will use this to make a difference in someone’s life out there.  Stranger things have happened.

Lonely Christians

Here are a couple of rhetorical questions to make you think about the current state of your social Christian life.  How many people at your church do you consider close personal friends?  How many of your close personal friends are active Christians?  How many people do you have a conversation with when you go to church service (not counting casual greetings)?  If you are like me, the answers to these questions are shameful and embarrassing.  No members of any church I have attended since adulthood have ever become close personal friends to me.  Only a handful of the people who are my close personal friends are active Christians.  At an average church service I probably don’t have a real conversation with anyone, and most interaction could be described as small-talk or casual greetings.  I’m sure the enemy just loves this!  Christians are meant to be close, connected, communal, loving, giving.  We are supposed to be family to each other.  I think of the Bible verse “as iron sharpens iron, so does brother sharpen brother.”  But if we aren’t living up to God’s desire for us to be a tightly knit community of believers, we are actually becoming lonely Christians, starved and deprived of brotherly and sisterly love.  Read more...