Firestarters

Today, I was doing my typical web surfing, and I came across the Christian vs. Christ-follower post over at Think Christian. Basically, they have a set of three commercials that parody the Mac vs. PC commercials you've probably seen either on the internet or TV. Now, while the commercials are interesting in their own right, they're not the reason I'm pointing you to Think Christian.

The reason for that is way that Think Christian is using an available and popular technology in the embedded YouTube videos, to spark a conversation amongst visitors (and not just a little one...this has over 133 comments right now). And look how little other content the author added: almost none. This is a good way to get things started, especially with content that could potentially be divisive as the readership may not know where the author stands. This allows both sides to more freely have their say than if they already know the discussion will be biased. Very savvy!

Secondly, I'd like you to notice is the date of the post. It went up on November 1st, and there's regular comments that go through today, and will probably go on for a while longer. In this day and age of the internet, that's a long time for regular conversation over a blog post. Usually that means that people are talking about the post elsewhere, either in real life, or in their own blogs. This is the viral effect that we often hear about.

The lesson here is not to be afraid use these resources available to us to stir the pot a little bit to get people talking. After all, we can't start conversations about God if we don't start any conversations in the first place.