If you keep up with the internet, you already have an idea by what I mean by viral. If not, I am not referring to a disease. Well, some may argue with me on that.<\/p>\n
Viral is the new release from Leonard Sweet, and I got an advance copy from Waterbrook Multnomah in exchange for my reviewing it.<\/p>\n
Viral is about the social networking opportunities provided by the major websites available today, more specifically, how they should be seen as opportunities and venues to share the gospel. Without getting into the discussion about whether the internet, and with it Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, is bad, I agree with Leonard Sweet when he says that they can open up new opportunities to share your witness with others.<\/p>\n
To start out, he talks about two basic groups, those who grew up without being immersed in technology, and those that did. He describes their outlook on how relationships should be, and how people should act. Looking through how he broke them up made me realized I have good and bad pieces of each group, and that one is not any better than the other.<\/p>\n
Just to give an example, and to provide a base for some other parts of my review, he talks how the without technology group can tend to focus on numbers and rules. On the other end, the with technology group focuses on relationships. Though both schools have a point, focusing on on any one of those things can cause trouble.<\/p>\n
After he gives you a background into the groups he’s using, and where he sees himself fitting in, Leonard Sweet tells how the technology is here, and it would be better to use it, instead of railing against it. He tells how he uses some of the big names, like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, and how it would benefit people who say they want to share Christ with others to use them as well.<\/p>\n
He also explains that, since times have changed, how the gospel message is shared needs to change. Not the message itself, but how it is delivered. Stop going for the big numbers and buildings, go out for the individual people.<\/p>\n
He does mention on several occasions that the older generation does a lot of talking, whereas the younger generation acts. That, too, I agree with. I see more talk often in the older generation, and, sadly, do the same.<\/p>\n
I might have missed it, but I would have liked to see a warning about letting the social networks consume all of your time. I think that is way too easy to do unless you have set boundaries. Of course, that is true of any pursuit.<\/p>\n
One kind of odd thing, and this may just be me, it seemed like the paragraphs tended to stand on their own. They flowed together, but I could see a structure of short thoughts, like you would see on social networks. I was curious about that at first, but then I remembered that I think like that anyway.<\/p>\n
Overall, I enjoyed reading Viral, and I believe it does a good job of relating how social media can be used to continue following Jesus. However, I do think that in some chapters he spent too much time making his point. The chapter on poetry, and how it actually fit in with life and the gospel, seemed to go on and on. That is my opinion, so you may see it differently. Also, I do disagree with the point he appeared to make that relationships are better with social media. I do see that, but\u00a0I also see quite a few real life relationships that have suffered because of virtual relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you keep up with the internet, you already have an idea by what I mean by viral. If not, I am not referring to a disease. Well, some may argue with me on that. Viral is the new release from Leonard Sweet, and I got an advance copy from Waterbrook Multnomah in exchange for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}