I met Andre Yee about two years ago when I was just getting into blogging. He still blogs over at Every Square Inch about “Conversations on the Glory of Christ in Business and Culture,” and he’s really good.

The Social Media Prophet

Andre was one of the first bloggers we hired to write for TheHighCalling.org. (You can read his two articles here.) But lately I think he’s been too busy with his nonprofit start up to write for us!

Andre Yee is like some kind of Social Media Prophet. I’m not joking here. He’s a wiki Moses. The church has has been captive for too long, and he’s leading us into the wilderness of the net. I’m not talking about a series of brochure ware nonsense. Or clumsy facebook groups. Or even webzines.

Andre knows where the wind is blowing–and he’s raised the sail.

Marshall McLuhen warned that the medium is the message. A lot of folks have used McLuhen’s cliche to warn us about how easily computers dehumanize us. Take that thinking to its logical end and we all become obese spacemen in floating chairs waiting for Wall-E to wake us up.

But Andre understands the gospel message is more powerful than any medium.

That’s my interpretation of his Open Source Mission at any rate. Their first major project is the gospel translations.

Open Source Mission

Andre says that nearly 60% of all evangelicals worldwide are in the areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. “But they suffer from a lack of biblically sound teaching material.” He goes on to explain that the current model of translation is expensive and limited in its reach. “Few books ever reach worldwide audiences, and some language groups never qualify for any translations at all.”

But you don’t need to read what Andre says. You can see it yourself. He’s been on me for months now to catch this vision with him. Sorry, Andre, I just didn’t get it. My faith is weak, I guess.

But this video helped me see what he’s talking about. It literally opened my eyes. Now I get it.

If you’re like me, you need to watch the video. Watch it. Then think about how you can help.

If you’re like me, you can’t be one of the translators. But you can help promote Andre’s vision. The Wiki Moses needs us! We can help “proclaim the gospel to all peoples in all languages to the glory of God.”

How You Can Help

I’m not talking about a big investment here. I’m talking about simple word of mouth.

• Put a badge on your sidebar. (I did!)
• Write a post about Open Source Mission. (I did!).
• Use these images from flickr. (I did!)
• Send an email to your friends. Or email the video from YouTube.
• Embed the video on your blog. (I did!)
• Favorite the video on YouTube. (I did!)
• Share the video on Facebook. Just click here. (I did!)

Tell others. Do it. I’ll make a social media press release here in a minute that has all of the tools in one spot to make this easy. (Update: here’s a link to the social media press release.)

And if you still haven’t watched that video, here it is:

A million years ago when I wrote that pens should be mightier than toilet plungers, A Musing Mom commented, “Some truth stinks and we really don’t need to read the smelly stuff.”

That’s a comment that stuck with me. Because it’s such a tricky thing. See, I’m a big fan of Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

If something is true, it will also be beautiful. Something that is true and stinky, still has a stinky kind of beauty. Sound crazy? Have you ever had limberger cheese? Or anchovies? They are truly delightful–and their stench is part of their beauty.

It is stench for its own sake that we need to be careful about.

For example, culling through my own Twitter comments this weekend, I found one that horrified me. Kevin Hendricks was bemoaning the fact that so many writers don’t follow the guidelines we editors send them. “Why?!” he asked.

I responded, “Because they are idiots.”

Ouch. What was I thinking? That isn’t the kind of stinky beauty that tastes good on crackers. In fact, there’s nothing beautiful about that comment at all.

But there is a kind of beauty in my ability to delete stupid, ugly twitter comments like that. So that’s what I did.

Which reminds me about something I just read on CultureSmith. More and more people are getting into the twitter thing, using services like twirl (the application that made Twitter work for me), facebook, twitpic, snurl or tinyurl, and twitterfeed.

Christians have to wonder what it looks like to be the church on twitter. In short, What Would Jesus Tweet? Or would he Twitter at all?

Personally, I think he would. Twitter may have a stinky kind of beauty. But it’s still a beauty that’s got lots of room for truth. As long as I can delete my own stupid comments from time to time.

My buddy Mark D. Roberts linked to me today. What a guy! He’s just finished a series on praying in public venues. You can read the story of my brother-in-law’s chaplaincy in high school over at Mark’s post for today.

And Mark’s link got me thinking about taking our faith public.

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