#15 Social Media Missionary Work

Today in church for the third hour we had a special lesson put on about what was titled "Modern Missionary Work" and how to use the internet and social media to share the gospel and spread truth to everyone who participates. I honestly haven't done much since Elder Bednar's Education Week address, so I thought the content of the lesson was something I needed to hear. 

We discussed first what was difficult about sharing the gospel with others, how it can be difficult, scary, and a huge time-commitment on our part. Then we discussed things we saw in social media from our friends and what we liked/didn't like about their methods. Some people in the group actually began the discussion by arguing that people should stop posting as often, that they didn't appreciate their news feeds being bogged down with multiple links to videos or status updates consisting of long passages of scriptures or general conference addresses. They argued that this becomes white noise and quickly ignored the more frequent it becomes. Others argued against it, saying that the more posts we get out there, the more voices bearing testimony, the better.

I (quite characteristically) seem to find an opinion near the middle: I think that we need to get as many people on board posting and sharing, but I think that it can be done in a more thoughtful, heartfelt way. There are tons of posts and shares out there that are done quite passively, posted with no comment or expressed reason. If each link or message shared were accompanied by one's testimony or reasons for posting, I think that, yeah, the number of posts would be reduced, but would be replaced by higher quality messages for others to pick up. 

An even greater approach would be to find specific people to share a message with and send them something more personalized. Our teachers discussed how a good strategy to becoming a better social media missionary would be to find someone you're connected with online, get to know them better (the term they used was "Facebook Stalking" but I don't want missionary work to get creepy), and then simply follow the Spirit in deciding what to do next. I feel like there isn't much work for me to do out here in Utah with members surrounding me on all sides, but there are still those who need to hear the Gospel online and within an email's reach.

I've decided to give this a shot and make effort to get my testimony online for everyone to see. The Lord gave us the great gift of technology, it's time to use it for a greater purpose.