SOCIAL MEDIA: THE “DURING CHURCH WORSHIP” EFFECT

The age of the Social/General media and smart phones, as have already established in previous articles, comes with a lot of great concerns that pierces the heart of the church especially through the Youths who in turn are supposed to be the strength of the church. I have had many deep thoughts about [my] youthfulness, about how I have had to represent Christ, at the same time face many challenges that tend to pierce the core of my desire to ‘pursue Christ’. Any young person honest enough will admit this concern.

In the cloud of all these distractions is the social media menace and in the heart of this concern is how the persistent use of the social media can lead to Addiction and Nomophobia (the fear or anxiety experience when in the absence of our mobile devices). Our smart phones and these various social media platform are designed and daily been modified to appeal to and become quickly adaptable to us. The psychology of these mechanisms are intricately designed to alter the minds of users but this is hardly being notice.

The contention for young people in Church is how Social media addiction and nomophobia interferes with our worship of God and other personal devotional activities that draw us closer to the Cross.

Today we find uncontrolled use of smart devices and social media in fellowships, Church gatherings, worship sessions, etc. I have had to address some cases in church where friends chat or surf the internet while service is going on. I must stress at this point that this is unrelated to the church media team working to transmit of share bit of worship activities online. It is just the uncensored, unguarded and uncontrolled use of the phones by young people, and this is disturbing.

When our reverence for God is not deep and our fear of him is unfounded and unreal, we misbehave in His ‘very before’. Young people come to church and are already anxious to leave. They come late and leave early and complain whenever closing time is past with a minute. All this arise because we are so detached from communion with the LORD and so attached to the world around us.The use of social media and phones during Worship is basically instigated by addictive phones usage as already mentioned but being facilitated by a coping mechanism of so called dealing with “boredom” and “passing time”. This is a big problem. When young people begin to give excuses and misbehave during worship activities but never find other secular activities that boring, the church is heading the wrong direction.I consider phone and social media usage during service a disrespect to the Lord. It denotes a disregard for the sovereignty of God. When God shares our attention with these perishable devices, we show no regard for his presence and communion. When we become connected to the service, we become disconnected with demand to respond to our inclination to handle our devices.Cyber-Discipline must be learnt and put in place by every young person who want to wants to a balance between spiritual and cyber life. This is because the internet can be a great distraction and a pitfall, in addition to being a desensitizer. We must come to know where, when and how to use our mobile devices. Agreeing with these facts, I have had to struggle with this balance myself. My attention has had to be drawn time and time again…I have also had to remind myself daily with conscious efforts to regulate this use. We must learn and instill ground use rules to be able to ensure this balance. First, that the majesty and greatness of God must never be made light of especially in His presence. Secondly, that opportunities, we claim to be looking out for using our mobile devices will not pass us by for the short time we put them away during worship. Also, that every time we give God full attention in His presence, we become well equipped to interact effectively with our World. I again use this medium to sternly advocate that mobile and social media use during worship be highly discouraged by the Church Authority. There must be a balance between coming to church with our devices, for emergency sake, and using them during the same. Above all; “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.”       Habakkuk 2.20“The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord is on His heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth, His eyes examine them.        Psalms 11.4

Finally, a million thanks to Bature D. (LCC Hwolaza, RCC Jos), together we shared this concern and subsequent articles will articles will feature most of these menace to be addressed.
Grace and peace be with you all.