sticky sheep

This posting originally written for Sticky Sheep

I’ve been reading this article by a Jewish Rabbi about social media, its impact on youth culture, and what the bible has to teach us about participation in social media.

(I read)”..much of the narrative element of the Tanakh as a series of facebook or twitter posts. Frequently, the biblical narratives come not in long flowing prose but in short burst – often, dare I say of less than 140 characters a passuk. One of the great joys of the brevity of the biblical narrative is that it leaves much room for commentary. We are left to guess at the motivations at the contexts. And we do.”

A couple of things I’ve gleaned from this Rabbi’s thoughts.

Never thought of the bible as a mass of Tweets and Facebook Status Updates strung together, but when you do string that stuff together you can get a glimpse into the life of that person.
There is an embarrassing side to sharing everything. Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder doesn’t get into the fear factor thing of, employers are going to look at your drinking pictures and assume you are bad, type of thing. But instead takes a bit of a higher ground in suggesting, David’s story was a bit of an over share.. Same with Abraham. Surprised didn’t mention Amnon.. <Awkward!>
The short ‘missives’ leave a lot of room for interpretation. Sometimes we do that intentionally. But when we want to truly be understood. Or when others, more importantly, want to be understood we need to know we operate in this short text world. Instead of interpreting what the story is from folks, take that extra moment to listen more deeply and understand more clearly. That is remarkable
Apparently this guy wasted his time.. God already did it.

“History is written by the winners” or so that quote is said. In today’s world, we might as well change that as “History is written by the players” (or those who play social media).

Makes one think of how people perceive us through our social media interactions (or the lack of interactions). We are able to write our story, but it ultimately is rewritten by those others we might call critics, customers, congregations, friends, family, & more.

Now I’m wondering what the bible has to say about texting?…

john ellis and i started hanging out about two years ago and chatting on all things business, church, marketing, web, technology, family and more. eventually some of our thoughts and conversations about the business church marketing technology stuff had us thinking, "we need to write this stuff down. there might be two or three people who want to hear this." so we started writing a book (scary i know). as we are developing the book we have gone and launched "sticky sheep" our concepts home portal. so if you are interested in some of the new ventures of me and/or want to get a glimpse of this collision of business and church then subscribe. i plan on doing a weekly wrap up, such as this, of what have been my musings over there as well.

this week in sticky sheep

you can also check us out on facebook & twitter of course.