Missions Reviewed

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also the fastest growing social network. 1

Facebook’s growth is different among regions:

• North America is still growing at a healthy 38 %
• Europe (with 35 million visitors a month) is growing nearly ten times as fast.
• Middle East and Africa 403% growth in the
• Asia Pacific 458% growth
• Latin America 10,555% growth

Much of these huge growth numbers come from the fact that Facebook had hardly no presence in many of these regions until recently when it started its major push to translate the site to other languages. One year ago, there were only one million monthly visits in all of Latin America, three million in the Middle East and Africa, and four million in all of Asia Pacific. 2

Facebook has adapted one of the key elements every missionary team needs to remember the language of the people. When people are seeking community they want what is comfortable for them. I have recently heard people say they speak a broken English well enough to understand me. Yes, but what language do they use when they tell jokes to their children.

When missionaries share the gospel in English, im not saying a seed isn’t planted. What I know to be true is when the gospel is shared in the persons heart language they understand and the % of response increases drastically.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 6:35 am and is filed under Community, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.