Today at the NCCL 2011 conference I participated in a learning session on using social media to promote parish programs. My portion of the session focused on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and how they are similar and different.

For those that participated in the learning session, here is a list of resources (some of which I mentioned in the presentation) with more information on how these services can be used to enhance your ministry:

Facebook

• Reaching Parishioners with Facebook – The video from my webinar on how to set up a parish Facebook page
• What is a Facebook Page and Should Your Ministry Have One?
• The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing

Twitter

• Go, Tweet It On The Mountain: Understanding How To Use Twitter
• How I Use Twitter – A brief video explaining how I personally use Twitter

LinkedIn

• Adult Faith Formation LinkedIn Group
• Association of Catholic Exploring Social Media LinkedIn Group

General Social Media Tips

• Social Media: Friend or Foe, Google or Hornswoggle?, Bishop Ron Herzog, USCCB Communication Committee
• USCCB Social Media Guidelines
• 9 1/2 Social Media Strategies for the Church - The video from my webinar on how to use social media for your ministry
• Anatomy of a Blog: Creating a Great Parish Blog
• Social Media Strategy: Allow for Control

For many years I was ambivalent about abortion in the United States. As a teenager, and even through college, I didn’t give it much thought becuase a) I’m a guy, and would never have to directly make that decision, and b) I never planned on getting a woman into the situation where I would need to help someone else make that decision.

I knew the Church’s teachings on the matter and accepted them halfheartedly — like the vow of perpetual celibacy, I knew it wasn’t going to impact my life.

Then, while I was in graduate school, I saw a statistic that jolted me out of my complacency: My generation is 25% smaller than it should be because of abortion.

That seemed incredible to me. In fact, I didn’t think is was accurate. Surely abortion wasn’t that prevalent! So I ran the numbers:

I was born in 1978 — one of 3,333,279 live births in this country that year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1978 also saw 1,157,776 abortions.

4,491,055 pregnancies. 1,157,776 abortions. 25.6%.

That shocked me. I thought about the kids I should have known in school, the kids I should have swam with on the swim team, the kids that should have lived down the street from me.

And I thanked God that my mom chose life.

I still don’t consider myself a “crusader” for the pro-life cause. But I do consider myself proudly pro-life. Not just becuase “the Church says so,” but because I came to realize what abortion has done to my generation.

There are many ways in which the Church is out of step with our secular culture, but I think in no way more obvious than at this time of year. While the wider culture seeks to rush us towards Christmas (carols on the radio before Halloween? Really?!), the Church asks us to slow down and wait. While lights are strung and increasingly outrageous decorations are mounted on the front lawn, we light candles on the Advent wreath. While television commercials entice us to buy more and bigger, the Church points to a child born in poverty in a manager.

This is a great time of year to reminder ourselves – and the families in our Catholic schools and parish catechetical programs – about what is really important.

If I could make a small request, I would ask every catechist and catechetical leader to invite your families to Christmas Mass. Not with a note or Sunday announcement, but a face-to-face invitation. I know not every Catholic family is in the habit of attending Mass every Sunday. But if we could encourage them to start out the Christmas season on the right foot — not by tearing open wrapping paper, but by giving thanks to the God that has blessed them — we just might start a few more on that path. And what a glorious gift that would be.

Here are a few of the resources I cited during my talk:

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky
• American Millennials: Generations Apart (poll by the Knights of Columbus in partnership with The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion)
• The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy by Colleen Carroll
• “New Vocations in the Province of Saint Joseph: Ecclesial, Historical and Cultural Perspectives” by Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, O.P.
• National Study of Youth and Religion
• Moralistic Therapeutic Deism–the New American Religion

This is not to say that we are less virtuous as a people than those that came before us. It is, rather, that

We know more about what is less than ourselves but less about what is more than ourselves. When we act morally, we are better than our philosophy. Our ancestors were worse than theirs. Their problem was not living up to their principles. Ours is not having any.

Kreeft wrote Back to Virtue in 1986, and shortly after finishing the book I read an article that offers some pretty damning evidence that Kreeft was on to something. The article detailed the National Study of Youth and Religion. This study surveyed over 3,000 American teens about their religious beliefs and found that the overwhelming majority could not offer any articulate explanation or defense of their own religious beliefs or the beliefs of the religious body they belong to. Rather, they espoused what the researchers described as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” a religious philosophy that, while acknowledging the existence of a divine power, sees as the central goal of life being happy and feeling good about oneself.

This god, in the words of the researchers, “is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”

I hope I don’t have to point out that a religious philosophy more antithetical to authentic Christianity would be hard to find.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism hinges on a god made, not so much in our image, as to our liking – a god that never criticizes, never badgers, never demands. A god that stays safely away in a box until we find ourselves in some crisis or in some need, who can then be marched out not to make things right but to make us feel better. This is a safe god.

The God of Christianity, however, is not safe. He is dangerous. He pops up when he’s not wanted, not invited. He charges us with impossible tasks. He asks us to build arks, to leave our homeland and travel to a strange new land of promise. He tells us that we are to lead his people out of slavery and gives us the strength to battle giants. He tells us to leave behind our families, our possessions, our lives to follow him. He tells us to take up our crosses.

He asks us, in the mystery we celebrated just two weeks ago, to die with him.

This is a far cry from the disinterested deity society seeks. This is a God who stands for something and expects us to do the same. This God pursues us like a jealous lover, a God so aptly described in Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat — and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet –
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

What this attitude fails to realize, of course, is that we are finite beings. Despite what we are told in ads, we cannot “have it all” — and even if we could, how would we find the time or energy to enjoy it all? Imagine how difficult it would be to keep track of it. (To say nothing about the taxes!)

We have perverted free will — and our language to describe it — to such an extent that we put bandwidth caps and children in the same category as obstacles to our freedom. This is a gross failure to make some fundamental distinctions about authentic happiness and freedom, and one need only look at our culture to see that we are the poorer for it.

The wellbeing of millions of children across Britain is being damaged by adults’ aggressive pursuit of personal success, a three-year inquiry by the Children’s Society concluded today.

The society – a charity allied to the Church of England – blamed the problems of young people on “a belief among adults that the prime duty of the individual is to make the most of their own life, rather than contribute to the good of others”.

It said this “excessive individualism” was the cause of high rates of family break-up, unhealthy competition in schools, unprincipled advertising and acceptance of income inequality that left millions of children living in poverty.

(h/t: First Things)

We also hear about leadership within the Church. Sometimes its criticism of the bishops’ leadership or that a new pastor has been brought in the lead the local parish. This is understandable; after all, modern organizational practice seems built on a foundation of charismatic leaders who can inspire others to greater productivity and cooperation. Just look at the many books outlining systems and tips for leadership which have become staples for CEOs and VPs around the country; I’ve even got a small section of shelf space devoted to such titles as Leadership on the Line and Heroic Leadership in my office.

But speaking of leadership in the Church is, I think a misnomer — or, at least, a deviation from the way God has ordered our communal life as the People of God. God does not call people to leadership as such; nowhere, as near as I can tell, does Scripture describe leadership as a role in the Church or a gift of the Holy Spirit. (Even the gift of kubernesis in 1Cor 12:28, sometimes translated as “leadership,” is more akin to administration — it is the root of our word “govern”.)

God does not give us leaders; rather, he grants authority to those he chooses for specific roles in the community. This may seem like a small distinction, but it is, I think, a crucial one. We follow leaders of our own accord, subject the whims and fancies of fallen man. I may like this politician one week and another the next, depending on my mood (to say nothing of the popular consensus). But we are called to obey those with authority, not because we want to but because it is the natural way of things. We are all called to different roles. A foot is a foot and the head is a head; they each have a proper role to play in the body (cf 1 Cor 12:12-20). It would be improper — not to mention disastrous! — if we tried to use our head as a foot and vice versa.

To take a simple example, parents have authority over their children (who are, in turn, commanded to respect their parents). It doesn’t matter how likable a father is or how much charisma a mother has; families are comprised of a natural hierarchy. Parents guide and teach their children to live a good, virtuous life. Their authority is not arbitrary; it has a purpose and an end towards which it is ordered. A child cannot govern a household (a fact that may not be apparent on most television shows these days), and it is a tragedy we all recognize when a child is called upon to act as the adult in a home.

Not don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying the child is less important or less deserving than the parent. Merely that it is not their role to head the household. There may even be exceptions (as in those regrettable circumstances when parents cannot, or will not, run the household in a right and just manner). But those exceptions, by definition, are not normative and should not be seen as equal — either qualitatively or quantitatively — to the norm. We should strive of the ideal, even when we must content ourselves with the actual.

So it is in the Church. We all have our roles; we are not all given the same role or authority. To forget this distorts the natural order and leaves us, in times of crisis, with no stable foundation on which to reside.