Over the last few weeks I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to meet a number of people. What’s been interesting to me, is how I met them.

Last week I was in IKEA buying a chest of drawers. Actually I was taking one back and swapping since I managed to get it wrong first time around. I arrived and parked the car and just took a moment to scan my twitter feed and noticed that Krish Kandiah (@krishk and he blogs at http://krishk.com/)  was at Stockholm airport for a couple of hours while waiting for a flight. A few tweets later and I was driving up to the airport to catch up over a McDonalds.

Then this week I met another church leader in Stockholm who tracked me down via Facebook and today I met Andy Robinson and his friend Liam. Andy leads Kings Church Horsham (@spdar and blogs here) and with Liam decided to visit 50 capital cities over the next five years before Andy hits 50. Then they decided, wouldn’t it be good if we met some church planters on the way, so a quick google search later and Andy sends me an email. The fruit of which was a few hours with them in the beautiful but decidedly wet capital of Sweden. It was great time making new friends.

All three encounters were formed through social media and the internet. I have also met people in more traditional ways, introductions which lead to more introductions. What struck me but shouldn’t surprise me is that social media is now increasingly the key way to meet and connect with people. Google first, meet later.

I’m on record as being cautious and wary of Facebook and the like, not least because I can so easily get sucked in to inane triviality but also because it’s a very shallow way and lazy way of keeping in touch with people. We spread ourselves thin but think we’ve done the job every time we click the ‘like’ button. For more on some of the dangers to Facebook read Tim Chester. But in a recent post he quotes an article in The Atlantic which says,

“If social media let you organize a game of football among your friends, that’s healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, that’s unhealthy.”

I agree. I saw Krish’s tweet

stuck in stockholm airport for 2.5 hours – train is broken so will enjoy getting a bit of work done while watching airplanes take off…

— krish kandiah (@krishk) May 29, 2012

but I made the effort to not only reply but actually go and meet him. Face to face made the meeting. I got a Facebook message asking if I wanted to meet, the answer is yes. I get an email from a guy motorcycling around Europe, ‘can we meet?’ The answer is yes. Face to face and time together makes the relationship.

My last observation was that I’d never of had these kind of encounters in Shrewsbury, they just didn’t happen. For all the good things I love about the place, there’s no airport, there’s no university, it’s not a place often put on summer adventure itineraries. A capital city provides those opportunities – wisdom though needs to remind me that activity is not the same as fruitfulness and that’s what God is looking for and that can happen wherever you are planted.