Rewired

Brandon Cox (Passio)

Rewired, by Brandon Cox, is not a how-to book for using social media. Rather, it’s a challenge to today’s church to access and utilize social media for the advance of God’s redemptive purpose.

Cox starts in the Garden of Eden, demonstrating that silence was the first indication of a broken relationship and that things for mankind had gone totally wrong. Fast-forward to today, and he says the church cannot afford to be silent in the venue of social media. Conversations, which signify the presence of relationship, do not happen in a vacuum.

To neglect social media, Cox says, is to be silent in the conversations of today’s culture—to disregard the enormous potential social media has to take the message of reconciliation through Jesus Christ to the broken world and to bring back multitudes into relationship with Him. And yet many are reluctant to take up this type of communication out of fear—fear of change, fear of falling into self-promotion, fear of failure or fear of being snared by the pollution of the Internet.

Cox is an avid supporter of technology yet doesn’t discount its snares. He maintains, however, that the Internet and social media are not immoral. Social media is just a tool, and that tool can be used for good or evil—it multiplies the effect of either. And while it’s undeniable the Internet has made evils such as pornography easier to access, it has also made the Bible—God’s Word—easier to access too. Why should the devil have all the good toys? Rewired puts forth a challenge that needs to be heard and answered if the church is to reach today’s culture. —Deborah Delk Grady