The church on Facebook: Why we need virtual community

"Oreon told me she's praying for you," my husband, Gary, said in between bites. He and I were having dinner after work one night when I was in the throes of a particularly stressful time at work. Gary is a pastor at a downtown Chicago church, and Oreon is one of the staff members there.

"Why is Oreon praying for me?" I asked. I hadn't had more than a passing hello with Oreon in weeks.

"She saw your Facebook status message," Gary said.

"Oh," I said, feeling my face go red and my blood pressure rise. I'd forgotten that I'd recently allowed Oreon to become a Facebook friend of mine. What had I written on Facebook? Was it something I felt comfortable having one of the ministers at church reading? I hadn't said anything too horrible, like I wanted to kill my boss or throw something (or someone) out the window, had I?

Gary must have sensed my panic. "Oreon said it sounded like you were having a rough week. She told me she's started using her Facebook news feed as her daily prayer list because she sees what's going on with all these people in her life, and it reminds her to pray for them. And it helps her know what to pray for."

"Wow! Cool," I said, starting to relax—at least a little. For those of you who haven't yet experienced Facebook (and your numbers are dwindling by the second: Facebook reportedly receives around 1.9 billion monthly visits and had about 68 million unique visitors in January), nearly every action you take on this social media site—from uploading new photos of your cat to changing the description of your love life from "Single" to "In a Relationship"—goes into a news feed that streams out to all your Facebook friends. The basic Facebook feature is the status update, a short little snippet you write in answer to the question posed at the top of your Facebook page: "What's on your mind?"