Martin Spriggs

For more than a little while I’ve been fielding questions from churches about the wisdom of starting Facebook pages. Up until now I had no first hand experience. Last month my church’s Board of Adult Discipleship, of which I am a member, decided to start a page. I plan on documenting our experiences here.

A little background on our decision to start with. We are beginning a “Read through the Bible in a year” program at the beginning of the new year. We plan to offer One Year Bibles to each member and make this a congregation wide event. Peace Lutheran in Hartford WI has 1800 members, so it’s quite an ambitious program. In order to create and maintain interest for the program, we began to explore ways to both stay connected with members and hopefully connect members with each other as they journey through God’s Word. Facebook came up as a part of that strategy.

Check back for updates as we encourage members to join and we begin to rev the social network up. I’ve included the initial proposal we used below.

Peace Lutheran Social Network Usage

Introduction

Social networks today have become a regular part of the internet users way of life. While email still is the primary communications tool, both one-to-one and one-to-many, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are an increasingly important part of digital communications. Depending on the age demographic that is observed, social networks are the preferred communications tool.

The question for churches in the 21st century is should and how might they take advantage of these ubiquitous communications channels. The nature of a social network is obviously the social nature of it. Like minded people, friends, or group members “gather” to talk, share, encourage, brainstorm and get to know each other better. For churches those are all important components of member-to-member communications. Some might even call social networks digital fellowship.

Clearly the goal of fellowship is to bring people together in Christ to socialize, to work, to share, to love. However, the goal of social network use by churches should be to strengthen the desire to “meet together” both online and in person. Hebrews 10:25 cements this goal, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Recommendation

Peace Lutheran Church should create a Facebook “page” at http://www.facebook.com/peacehartford. The site will be administrated by the Board of Adult Discipleship. They will moderate all content. Members can post content. The site will be primarily for members over the age of 13. The site will be promoted through the newsletter, email, activities sheet and word of mouth (member-to-member).

The site will be used for:

1. Event promotion (all events can be posted and then automatically appear in the “feed” of all members who have “liked” the page)

2. Congregational chatter (members can write on the “church wall” about anything they’d like to talk about)

3. Promotion of peacehartford.org content (new content, newsletters, sermons, etc can be promoted on the page)

4. Discussions (discussion topics can be started around Bible classes or sermons)

5. Photos and videos (media like photos and videos of church/school events can be posted for members to view)

6. Posting of evangelistic materials (members could direct friends to the site to view materials/topics that can assist in their personal outreach)

I’ve been writing a lot lately about internet social media sites and how the church might consider using it. Just wanted to share a nicely done slide presentation I ran across this morning. You can find it at: http://churchcrunch.com/social-media-tactics-for-non-profits. It covers all the major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. While there is nothing earth shattering here – lots of common sense kind of stuff – it does highlight the need for planning.

Most churches are considering how to get into this space and are “trying it out.” I believe a bit more thought should go into it. Think through how you want your church to appear on these sites, who you expect to reach and finally the investment of time you are willing to make in the effort. You will also want to pay close attention to how your investment is paying off. You can only measure this if you set goals for your social media strategy…presupposing of course that you have developed a strategy. Think it through. Talk it through. Then see it through.

The happy couple is standing in front of the presiding minister. She looks lovely in her white wedding gown – he dashingly handsome in a tuxedo. The church is filled and everybody is eagerly awaiting the pronouncement of marriage. Just as the announcement is on the lips of the pastor, the groom holds up his hand as if to say, just hold on a minute. He reaches into his vest pocket and extracts a cell phone…then another one…for his bride. Then over the next sixty seconds they both furiously work the keyboards on their phones as the pastor announces to the somewhat amused congregation, “They are updating their relationship status on Facebook!” After they are done, the pastor says “They are now husband and wife on Facebook and my book too.”

The video on YouTube has received almost 1,000,000 views. Don’t think Ben and Tracy will be the last to do this. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are now a part, a big part, of the lives of many people. The natural question is are we going overboard with all of these social networks? The statistics are astounding. A study earlier this year completed in the UK estimated that teenagers spend 31 hours a week online, mostly on social networks. My guess is the hours spent on homework aren’t that high.

So is it a parental oversight issue? Perhaps, but parents are spending more and more time online as well. You can be sure that as our digital natives grow up, they will bring their online habits (addictions?) with them. Spending time online is no different than any other pursuit. When I was a boy I enjoyed spending time in video arcades…probably spending more quarters than I should have. But this might be different.

This is not a pastime, but to many the preferred way to communicate. It used to be letters, then email, now networks. There will be something next. There always is. As a Christian technologist the interesting part is trying to find appropriate uses of “whatever’s next” to spread the Gospel and share your faith.

I guess the point of all this is make sure we are asking the right questions. The right question probably isn’t “are we going overboard”, but “are we going overboard in our efforts to share Jesus?” 1 Corinthians 9:19-23