Stephen Murray notes in his blog that the most influential people in Western Christianity (if one uses Facebooks as a measure) are:
1. Rob Bell - Rob is the undisputed heavyweight of Christian Facebook leaders. His Nooma/Rob Bell group weighs in with 2775 members.
2. John Piper - The Pope of the Reformed tradition runs with a 1423 member group.
3. Donald Miller - Christian author of the moment Donald Miller weighs in with a group of 1203 members.
I had to admit that I hadn’t heard of them, though I had heard of a couple of people further down in the top ten.
My son, who works in a book shop, says that Tim la Haye, Miles Munro and TD Jakes outsell them all (though I haven’t really heard of the last two of those either).
It makes me question the value of Facebook as a measure. I would have thought that Western Christian leaders like the Roman Pope, Benedict XVI, or Desmond Tutu, or Rowan Williams, were better known, and perhaps more influential. After all, if one uses Technorati as a measure, Ron Paul is a dead cert to be elected US president in November.
Anyway, I decided to try a couple of other things, just to see.
I tried a Google search, and this is how many hits they got:
- Pope Benedict XVI - 3 090 000
- Desmond Tutu - 1 690 000
- John Piper - 900 000
- Rowan Williams - 485 000
- Rob Bell 456 000
- Donald Miller - 321 000
Well, I’m not sure what that tells us, but I think Google is a wider measure than Facebook, or Technorati. But I suspect that the Internet doesn’t really correspond too well with the real world, and not just in Second Life either.
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