Saturday, February 07, 2009

Facebook, "Submitting to Be More Vile" and How is Kathy B Like Unto George Whitfield?

First, for you folks from St. J., she knows this is coming!

Because just as George convinced John Wesley to go and preach in the open air (something that just wasn't done by good Anglicans back in the day - to them such a notion was quite tacky), thereby putting both he and message within the domain of the people who would be the backbone of the Methodist movement . . . to which, on April 2, 1740 Mr. Wesley recorded in his journal...

At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation – speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city – to about three thousand people. The scripture on which I spoke was this: Is it possible anyone should be ignorant that it is fulfilled in every true minister of Christ? The spirit of the Lord is upo n me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

so,

my friend and parishioner Kathy B has gently persuaded me that to reactivate my Facebook account would be a good thing and a way for me to be in touch with my flock.

Now, I know I railed about my previous strange, brief journey in "the" Facebook last Summer, and I still do have some issues about the whole "friend" thing...but she's right, and I'm wrong on this point.

So, I'm swallowing hard, and "submitting to be more vile" and doing this thing.

For good ole JW, he was shocked by how wrong headed his previous bias against going into the field and preaching in the open air to the masses was...I suspect I'll find something of the same thing.

I'm not going to live in that world all the time...

But I'll be around...

I've been evangelized by a good soul...thanks Kathy B!

Oh, and JB, your efforts at persuasion did not impact me in the least!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I've already left my comment on your Facebook profile. :)