Facebook is useless

“I don’t want to waste my time on Facebook” was what I heard from a friend.  I too held a similar belief at one point, that is, until I actually tried it out.  Go figure.  This statement is very similar to people who critique a movie and/or book without ever having seen it.

I would agree that Facebook is useless IF you DON’T want to

• connect with people that you haven’t seen since college;
• discuss a topic of interest with people of like minded interests;
• stay up on what your friends are doing;
• connect with people for ministry purposes.

Facebook has been a tremendous tool to connect with people.  In the last several months my wife and/or I:

• reconnected with college friends;
• have been able to connect with people at Suncrest and other friends who we ordinarily wouldn’t get to spend much time with;
• found out someone from college lives in the same town as we do;
• reconnected with a elementary school friend who converted to another religion but was now reconsidering her decision.

The thing on Facebook I am most excited about right now is the new Suncrest-East group I created.  I think this will be a great way to discuss some relevant topics, shoot out prayer requests, promote events and inform about important issues.  Right now I have a discussion thread up generating some stories on “worst Christmas gifts” for this weekend’s message.  I’m getting some great stuff.

Facebook is working on Facebook Connect which will be released soon.  This will undoubtedly be one of the most valuable tools for churches when it is released.  It will basically give you Facebook functionality on any website.  So, I would be able to add it to our website and create an “intranet” right there through our website.

In the end, Facebook is useless…if you don’t use it.  But if you jump into it, experiment a little, be willing to risk, you may find that Facebook is one of the most useful web applications out there.