If you were paying attention to the news over the past few months, you may have been shocked to see Google acquire the rights to YouTube, a popular on-line video-sharing website, for the staggering sum of 1.65 billion dollars.  If you had never heard of or visited YouTube before, let me share a couple more astounding facts about this phenomenon – first of all, it was founded in February 2005.  That’s right – after being in existence for only a year and a half, its three founders sold the rights to YouTube for over one and a half billion dollars, the greatest get rich quick scheme ever.  Secondly, by July 2006, 65,000 new videos were uploaded to the website every day by people around the world, while 100 million clips were being viewed daily.  The most popular video, called The Evolution of Dance, has been viewed over 38 million times since it was added nine months ago.

Is your head spinning yet?

Have you stopped to notice what is going on in our world, especially among emerging generations?  Take a look sometime at the most popular American websites according to Alexa.com.  Listed in the top twenty are myspace.com and facebook.com, two social network sites that exist for the purpose of allowing people to make new friends and keep up with old ones through the creation of personal profiles, the existence of on-line groups that can be joined, and other friend-making avenues.  Another site is wikipedia.com, an on-line encyclopedia that is created collaboratively as people around the world help create the entries for each item.  Other sites in the top twenty include digg.com, flickr.com, and blogger.com, more sites that are very user-driven or community-created.  Thanks to the Internet, anyone in the world can put their innermost thoughts, their family pictures, their most creative videos and anything else they want to out there for all to see.  And, judging by the popularity of these sites, guess what – billions of people are doing just that, and in the process interacting with friends and strangers from all over the world.

It certainly seems that if there’s one thing the emerging generations know how to do, it is connect.  They know how to meet people and develop relationships with all sorts of people.  After all, if you have a myspace profile, it will only be a matter of time before you’ve got a hundred or so friends, if not more (the most popular person on myspace has over 1.6 million “friends” – makes for quite a birthday party).  Throw up a video on youtube, and before the end of the day 500 people will probably have viewed it, and if it’s any good, probably another thousand by the end of the week.  Post your thoughts on blogger, and who knows who might read your thoughts and resonate with your feelings about your latest crush.  Keep it up, and in no time you’ll have more friends than you know what to do with.

Or will you?

This past Sunday, I continued to unveil the mission, vision, and strategy of NewLife as we move forward as a church.  The keyword two Sundays ago was Transform, as I shared our mission of joining God in His mission of transforming lives, transforming our community, and transforming our world.  I am so excited about what our future holds for us as we serve God with this purpose in mind, and I know that although the goal is lofty, it is certainly better than the alternative of wasting our time and our lives going through the motions with God. 

This past Sunday, the keyword was Connect.  I believe that personal transformation happens largely through meaningful relationships – first and foremost to God, and then to other Christians and to those outside of the church.  These transformative relationships can happen through more formal settings such as home fellowships and ministries, or through just being good friends with another believer who knows you and can pray for you and challenge you on your spiritual journey.  Most of us can look back on the spiritual growth that has happened in our lives and point to a spiritual mentor, small group of friends, or disciple of ours who was able to lead us into God’s presence and model His heart of love to us.  I truly believe that as we increase the opportunities we have as a church to connect with God, each other, and those outside the church, we will increase our ability to experience personal transformation and in turn transform our community and world.

Which brings me back to The Evolution of Dance and myspace. 

What drives someone to post a video of themselves dancing on youtube, or to create a profile and try to connect with old friends and make new ones on myspace?  What drives someone to post their thoughts on-line in a blog (which I am doing now, ironically), or to put their picture on-line at flickr? 

I see two core desires behind this booming phenomenon that are worth listening to as we attempt to connect with people of this world and bring the transformative power of the gospel to bear.  The first is a desire for friendship and for community.  With the internet, it is easier than ever to keep in touch with people from our past, and very easy to begin new friendships as well.  In my desire to reconnect with old youth group members, I created a very simple facebook profile, and within a couple of weeks was able to reconnect on a surface level with over fifty people, mainly ex-youth group members.  What at inventive way to continue to maintain a relationship with people whom God has brought into my path at one time or another!  And these on-line social networks offer thousands of groups that you can belong to where you can meet people with common interests.  To some extent, then, with a simple click of the button you can find a hundred over people who love Bruce Lee movies or who really liked the latest All-American Rejects CD.  Friendship and community, all with the click of a mouse.

The second desire I see is the desire to be significant, to know that you matter in this world.  Think about what it takes to be famous, to be considered a person of importance in the eyes of this world.  At one time, in Ancient Greece for example, it was linked to the impact you had on generations that came after you, to whether or not they would remember you for your deeds.  Once the newspaper and television came about over the past few centuries, fame was much more available to anyone who could get themselves in the paper or on TV.  And now, with the proliferation of reality television and now the Internet, you can do just about anything to be famous, from farting “Jingle Bells” and putting it on the internet (I wish I were making this up…) to taking off most of your clothes and posting pictures of yourself on-line.  Fame has become synonymous with public attention, whether or not you have any impact for good through what you have done.

In next week’s blog, I will deal in more detail with the desire for significance.  This week I want to deal with the desire for friendship and community.  As we discuss the phenomenon of on-line social networking, consider these questions:  At the end of the day, after my video has been viewed by two hundred people, and my thoughts and pictures have been perused by twenty more, and five new friends have been added to my network, who have I really connected on a meaningful level with?  Anyone?  Or have I just spent three hours out of my day in superficial contact with more people than I really care about?  Am I really experiencing friendship and community, or just a second-rate substitute?

Who have I been real with?  Even though my blog contains lots of things I might never say to my parents and my pictures may be from events that I wouldn’t show to my teachers, who really knows the real me?  Am I just presenting an image of myself, a virtual persona, a carefully-edited character that I want people (and perhaps even myself) to think is the real me? 

I certainly can not speak for every person who uses social networks and on-line sites such as the aforementioned ones to post their lives for all to see.  Of course some people develop meaningful relationships on-line and use these sites to great benefit.  But I know that there is a danger in believing that because someone is listed as my “friend” on-line that I now have real friends who will pray for me when I’m hurting, challenge me when I’m going the wrong direction, be there for me when I am depressed, and walk with me through the highs and lows of my life.  There is a danger in constructing a virtual, carefully edited character, instead of developing authentic relationships where you are known for who you are, for better or worse, and loved for all of it.  There is a danger in being part of a community that exists for the sole purpose of on-line friendship, self-promotion, and entertainment, instead of a real community that exists to spur one another to be more like Jesus and to find ways collectively to bring God’s transformative power to this world. 

This is why our church needs to increase opportunities to connect more with each other, and to invite others to connect in various ways to our fellowship.  The intense, God-given desire for friendship and community will always be there, and is obviously there in great amount in the emerging generations.  And this is part of what our church must be – a community of Christ-like love and acceptance where all are loved and cared for and challenged to become all that God has created them to be, so that our community and world might become all that God desires them to be.  As widespread and simple as these on-line “connection opportunities” are, in the end they are no substitute for the real thing.  With God’s help, may we become the real thing.

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