Thursday, September 9, 2010

When my facebook status changes

You can tell a lot about people by their facebook or twitter status. You can often times learn what people are passionate about or what makes them happy or angry. Some people's status seem to indicate that they don't have any friends since the information they are sharing with the public sounds like some deep emotional thing you would normally only share privately with a dear friend. You can spot the glass half full people and you can definitely spot the glass half empty people. The proud parent and disgruntled employee surface frequently as well. There's the frequent flyer status person who's proud of their new smart phone capabilities and posts multiple times per hour and there's the once a month "out of hibernation" status guy or girl.

You can also tell a lot about people by paying attention to the "changes" in their status. I only follow a handful of people on twitter and in recent days the status updates of one of my dear friends changed immediately and distinctly. No more links. No more pictures of daily excursions. No more funny commentaries. No more sport team updates. No more witty or pithy sayings. 6-7 status changes in a row were about his teenage son that was in a terrible ATV accident and had to be air lifted to the hospital. Updates and prayer requests only...and if I were in his shoes that's exactly what would have happened to my status!

This got me thinking--when your life forces your "status updates" to change, and it will because life is unpredictable, will any of the people reading your status care enough to get involved? Does any one in your life feel a sense of responsibility for you? Plenty of people care about you, but does any one see you as THEIR responsibility? Answer this question now because after the status updates start to change it's too late.

This is just one more reason that I love the structure and mission of our church. We do everything in our power to convince people to be a part of what we call community groups. In these groups you have the potential for Accoutability, Care, and Belonging. Trust me...when your "status" changes you will either be glad that you decided to surround yourself with community or you will wish that you had. Fortunately both my friend and his son have chosen to surround themselves with community and people that care about them and in this hour they need it!
What about you?
NEXT GROUP LINK: September 26, 6:30 @ Levine Senior Center [Sign Up HERE]

1 comment:

Rich Barrett said...

Dude, that was a great post!