The Church Endorsement

So, yesterday one of my events at work was a lunchtime meeting titled, "Social Networking." The presentation was given by the Church's CIO (Chief Information Officer), Brother Dehlin, who spent an hour talking about different websites that help us connect and express. He went over Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, ChaCha, LinkedIn, and much more (but note that he does not endorse MySpace). It was a fascinating meeting.

Bro. Dehlin says that this social networking on the Internet has completely changed the traditional friendship and acquaintance. For example, in the past a teenager would go to EFY where they would meet new people but those relationships usually terminated at the end of the week. Now, those teens go home and immediately find their new friends on Facebook and through the years will maintain some sort of contact with them. Coincidentally, yesterday I received a friend request on my Facebook page from a guy I met about 15 years ago at a Youth City Council Conference in St. George. I haven't seen him since those three days ended and yet he remembers me and found me on Facebook. Amazing this social networking thing, isn't it?

During the last portion of his presentation, Bro. Dehlin demonstrated ways we non-talented people can artistically express ourselves on the Internet by posting blogs, photos, video, artwork, etc; including our testimony and belief in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. He said that the Church actually did itself a disservice by being wary of the Internet for many years. Unfortunately, during that time anti-Mormons used it as a sounding board to circulate their arguments and persuasions. We have a lot of work ahead to catch up but Bro. Dehlin encouraged us to use the Internet as a missionary tool to spread our testimony of the gospel to anyone who may stumble across our blogs, YouTube videos, or Facebook pages and even showed comments from people who decided to join the Church after viewing a video of someone bearing testimony on the Internet and receiving the witness of the Spirit.

Isn't the Internet cool! Though there is a lot of bad out there on the world wide web it is incredible to see all the good it can do too. What a great blessing it is to live now and have such an exciting medium at our disposal. Use it and use it well!