Viral Faith!

Can you write a statement of faith in 136 characters or less?

A wonderful example of viral media happened this weekend. This is an example of how one little idea takes root and becomes something more or less of an established practice for people. It is also an example of why micro-blogging is a rather powerful medium to spread ideas over a lot of space in just a short amount of time.

What do I mean by viral? Media theorist and critic Douglas Rushkoff developed the idea in his book Media Virus! over a decade ago as a way to explain how small marketing ideas propagate through populations over time through technology. These simple and small ideas replicate, transform and take root in communities and often translate into real dollars for media companies as PR strategies. For example, the book The Shack began as a modest little independent publication before rapidly spreading to communities and families before becoming a best-seller. Ironically the idea of viral media spread, well, virally.

If you look over on the left of my blog here, you see a list of small posts under the heading "Follow Me". Those are my most recent Twitter posts. It is an extremely interesting tool, but only when you are participating in the medium with other people. This is called "following". It is far more than just expressions of mundane activities like watching movies and drinking coffee – even if it is that too. This is an example of how the mundane might transform into the rather profound.

Here is how this particular viral idea started:

Adam Walker Cleaveland was working on a statement of faith this weekend and was looking for ideas among his fellow Twitterers. In response Neal Locke wrote this:

"mstrlocke: @adamwc @shawncoons – anyone recording these? Would make a great compliation… maybe we should hash tag them: #TOF"

And a small idea began to propagate to various blogs in addition to the so-called "Twitterverse". Pomomusings, Mark Time, RevDarth, Swinging from the Vine, and Presbymergent have all represented the idea with blog posts to spread the word. These are only among the blogs that I follow regularly. I am sure that others have posted as well. There is also a Facebook group that already has 137 members and counting created by Ryan Kemp Pappan. Here's what to do:

1. If you’re not on twitter yet, click here to see what it’s all about and why you should be.
2. If you’re on twitter (or just joined), log in and tweet your personal statement of faith…in 140 characters or less.
3. Add the hashtag #TOF somewhere in your tweet. That will actually make it 136 characters, but it also makes it easy for us to find and compile all of these statements.
4. Encourage your friends to take the “Twitter of Faith” challenge, too – imagine how cool it would be if this meme spreads, proclaiming the gospel across the Internet (well, at least across Twitter).

This was my contribution:

dtatusko Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, reconciling the world to himself, revealing life's ultimate intelligibility #TOF about 9 hours ago from web

So…what do you believe?

Related posts:

1. revised statement of faith
2. harvey cox: from the secular city to the age of faith