I’m no longer a denizen of the Net.
While attending high school way back in the 1970s, I was introduced to a very primitive computer, a simple math machine. In college there were some slightly less primitive machines, but still very difficult to learn. It was only in the US Army a decade later that I had to use them regularly. Somehow, I became quite expert in terms of being a power user, but not as a technician. I dabbled in the technician part much later, starting in the late 1990s. Even then it was a matter of knowing how to do what I really wanted to do. I was not enamored by computer technology itself, but how it could enable all kinds of wonderful things involving shared information.
It led me to using Linux and BSD for quite some time. It was right and proper for me. Still, the focus was more as a power user than a technician. As part of the wider technology community, I translated the highly technical stuff into something most users could grasp. I wasn’t so vested in the technology itself that I had no time for users, but I wasn’t a mere user myself.
Now I am just a user. So there’s not much point to messing with Linux and obscure networking protocols. By no means am I telling you that you should back away from messing with computers. Rather, I’m telling you that God has led me to put it all aside and prepare to focus on more of what I can do in meat space. My message will reflect that.
It’s highly unlikely I’ll stop using networked communications to keep in touch with my brothers and sisters. Rather, it won’t be the center of how I find them. Previously, that was about the only way I could find them. Dare I suggest that things will be changing so radically that it won’t be necessary? It’s what I believe. It seems to me that what God is doing will close the door on spreading the gospel via the Net, but at the same time, He will open the door to meeting more people in meat space who are ready to hear the message He has given me.
They’ll be ready to hear things like this: The gospel message — “how to be saved” — is not about obtaining spiritual birth, but it’s all about harvesting the heritage of that birth. The message assumes you have it already. The mission of the church is to breathe life into that heritage, to teach people who to walk in the truth that already burns in their hearts. We don’t make converts in the sense of what that means in English; we find them wherever they are.
The salvation of the New Testament is not spiritual birth, but the life that arises from it. It’s all about the covenants and covenant identity. It’s about walking in your convictions, the heart-led life.
Considering what God has given me, what His calling and mission is for me, that work is no longer possible on the Internet. I’ll use the Net to communicate, but it’s not the field of harvest any more. The field of harvest is somewhere here in meat space.
It’s not the end of communion with those who joined me via the Internet. How you got to know me and my ministry is not the point. But how you and I maintain spiritual and moral communion will change. It won’t feature that public broadcast any more. It will become increasingly private and protected, traveling upon the networks, but no longer aimed at the Net. That path is closing quickly for me.
That’s what my convictions say. I have no idea what the Lord may demand of you unless you tell me your convictions. But I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t warn you of the changes I must implement.
Side note: I’m not sure yet how this affects my photography hobby, but for now I’ll keep sharing some of my images here. It’s part of my gospel message still, until it isn’t. I can’t tell you when/if that will change. I may eventually find another way to present them.
