Obama, Blackberry, and the "Right Now" Culture.

At the risk of getting too political on a youth ministry blog, I came across this story today, and thought it might have something to say to us about youth ministry, particularly when it comes to the idea of a right now culture.
To summerize quickly, Obama has a self professed "addiction" to his mobile communication device (is there any point in refering to it as a phone anymore? Do any of our kids actually make phone calls?). However, because of the security and legal issues that might surround the President owning such a device, his staff is threatening to take it away. Obama has suggested that "They're going to pry it out of my hands.", drawing his line in the sand. Hopefully better than these guys:

While it's a cute story that news agencies are reporting because they have no desire to focus on how little money we all have, it's gotten me to thinking. How do we do effective ministry in the instant culture? When our President can no longer live without instant text messaging and e-mail in his pocket, what are we simple youth ministers to do?

Of course, the advertising companies have already caught on to this. People hardly have need for the simple flip phone I would have killed for in college.
(Ahead of his time)
This Christmas, the fine makers of my phone debuted an advertisement series that attempted to make their phone's look cool, but only wound up making many of us hate Santa:




(Weight Watchers?)
I suppose the gist of this post is a question: should we speak out against the "need" for constant information and connectedness, or should we embrace it and attempt to use it for the better? Veritas already has a Facebook page, and a txt message service to keep our students up to speed on things, but should we embrace this culture even further, or run from it as fast as we can?
Your thoughts?

Godspeed,

Jason

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

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