In the July issue of the Ensign and Liahona magazines (official magazines for adult members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Church leaders are encouraging members to make use of ‘new media’ in helping to publicise the Church.
The issue of Church members using blogs, comments on news stories, media sharing sites and other forms of communicatory media has received massive attention since a graduation ceremony address to Brigham Young University-Hawaii students by Elder M. Russel Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
In his statement, he urged students to ‘join the conversation by participating on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration’.
But Elder Ballard warned that heated arguments about our and others’ beliefs must be avoided, as ‘contention is of the devil.’
His talk has now been published in this month’s edition of Ensign and Liahona, increasing the scope of his counsel to the entire adult membership of the Church.
Clearly, Elder Ballard was not speaking for himself, but this admonition is coming from the Church leadership and bearing one’s testimony seems to be one of the things the leaders want us to do: ‘Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.’
Leaders also wish members to prudently respond to incorrect reporting and questions posed by non-members.
The Church’s Newsroom site (newsroom.lds.org) has added features which help members to become blogging news agents. They give members rights to use information from the Newsroom:
‘Newsroom.lds.org is the Church’s official Website for the news media, opinion leaders and the public, including bloggers and others using new media. The Newsroom Website is a great resource to find content that you can reuse in your own blog, video, social networking page, etc.’
And Church members will doubtless begin heeding their leaders’ words.
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